Psychological Hacks to Increase Your Motivation

Motivation is the one thing that can take from days to weeks until we finally feel like a 100%.

We plan to torch it through the week and get burned out by Wednesday. Even the most passionate and energetic ones among us take a long-weekend off once in a while.

When we come back from a weekend, we feel detached, frustrated and unmotivated to proceed.

We just can’t kick ourselves into the right mindset after the days have past.

For many of us it could mean loss of productivity, distraction during family time, and lack of satisfaction with life in general. We can’t operate at our peak levels and are always flummoxed as to why we feel that way.

Is it diet and exercise?

Or is it mindset?

We’re always confused between the two and never truly get a sense of an answer.

Thankfully, there are psychological hacks that you can apply to your life and make a real difference for yourself. These hacks only work if you apply them regularly and don’t stray from the focal point too much…

#1 Visualize your goals –

Visualization is key when it comes to staying true to your goals.

Just the act of goal setting puts you in the right frame of mind to conquer them.

When we feel demotivated or have a lack of inspiration in our lives, we often resort to distractions or cravings. We must think about our goals and visualize them.

How they make us feel and how we can get there if we put in the work.

Long-term goals require a lot of work on our end, which can take away from the focus we have in our every day life. If we need to perform at our best, we need to create goals that have an impact in our life and allow ourselves to think about them clearly.

#2 Start now –

The number one reason why people don’t stick to their tasks is because of delays and reliability on our “future self”.

We assume that our future self will take control of our decisions because that’s how it's always been.

This is why students don’t prepare until its one night before the major exam, or don’t apply for college until it's too late to apply. The hardest part is getting started and you’d rather tackle that today than tomorrow.

You can always tell yourself that it's an experiment and that you’re trying something new just so that you can kick your old habits.

Starting now, is a brilliant way to get things going.  

If you apply this rule frequently enough, you’ll realize that you’re in a better position to function as a productive member of society.

#3 Have Timed goals –

The meaning behind timed goals is simple.

When you have a goal of – “finishing 10 projects by the weekend”, you tend to shift doing 8/10 of them towards the end of the week.

It’s a natural tendency that we all have, and it allows us to refocus at the end of a long break.

What we should focus on instead is to have a timed goal that’s short term.

E.g. I will finish 1 project every 5 hours. And I will finish 20% of that project every hour.

You can break it down into minutes and be completely “locked in” to the zone.

#4 Share your goals with a partner –

Whether that’s financial or related to weight loss, you want to talk about your goals to your friends and family. When you tell someone what you want to accomplish, there’s a natural “high” that both partners share.

This aspirational component to a relationship drives both partners and friends to go harder at work or at the gym. The caveat to the rule is that you shouldn’t tell anyone about your goals if you’re just starting off.

You might be too sensitive to criticism, and give up without giving it a full attempt.

But when you’re working hard and seeing results coming in, that’s the perfect time to talk to a partner about long-term vision and have them check up on you every now and then.

#5 Change your mindset –

Your mindset is reflected heavily upon your attempt at work and how hard you push yourself.

If you’re not in the growth-mindset, then you’re wasting precious hours willowing.

You want to be able to get all the benefits of using your brain instead of questioning your actions every step of the way. You have to change your inner monologue.

It gets dramatic, focuses too much on failures and doesn’t allow you to have a channel of peace and focus. Positive self-talk, on the other hand, gives us more leverage at work and allows us to perform at our best.

We have higher motivation, better self-esteem and mood. A great method that works in-between “positive self-talk” and “negative self-talk” is “goal-centric self-talk”.

If you ask your mind to focus on a goal and try to accomplish it, your inner self-talk starts finding ways for you to accomplish it.

#6 Track your milestones –

Its important to note your milestones down and see if everything is in order.

You should have a clear system of function and flow, and understand where your milestones may not be getting accomplished.

Have some introspection about the consequences if you don’t reach your goals.

Visualize where you were these past few months and where you want to be in the years to come. Thinking about your milestones and achieving them daily is a good way to approach the problem of procrastination and motivation.

If you stick to your milestones you’ll overflow with a feeling of fulfillment.

Conclusion

The right way to approach this problem is to understand that even if we’re 55 and at the lowest point of our lives, we can still change our habits and moods by making adjustments.

What got you here isn’t going to get you to the next level.

It’s something that needs a whole different mindset when it comes to approaching life.

Start now and make positive goals for yourself.