Many people experienced changes in their daily habits or routines during the COVID pandemic. There was decreased public activities, more time at home, and a tendency to do fewer things. These changes in behavior also influence our motivation.

Have you ever felt less motivated to accomplish things and would like to change that? This article will look at motivation and discuss a few guidelines on how to feel more motivated and live a more productive life.

What is motivation?

Motivation is defined as our ability to take action to achieve goals. It is that internal emotional feeling that inspires you to accomplish a task or dream that you have for yourself.

Feeling less motivated can result in fatigue, being overwhelmed, and having less energy to get things done. Unfortunately, this can also make you feel stuck in a rut because every day feels the same.

Let’s look at a few guidelines to change this feeling and help you become motivated again.

Define your goals

When examining your motivation, reflecting on your life goals is always a good place to start. However, sometimes, we can get thrown off track by life circumstances, such as the COVID pandemic, that cause us to forget about what is important to us.

We see this in adjusting to a new way of living. Many of us had to realign our lifestyles to be more restrictive in how we interacted with each other in person, at workplaces, and at social gatherings, for example.

This lifestyle change limited our ability to engage in activities such as exercise, pursue our dreams, or live a life based on a regular pattern that we had become accustomed to.

Fast forward, and we find that life has continued to go on, but when was the last time you stopped to review your life goals and revisit what mattered most to you?

Have you taken time to reflect on what you want to accomplish? How do you want your life story to be written for the future? Where do you want to be in the next 1, 3, or 5 years?

Please take a  moment to reflect and write down the answers to these questions and use them as a starting point to regain focus on your life goals.

Take action

A positive outcome of motivation is the feeling it gives us when we complete a task or accomplish a goal. Think back to when you achieved something important and how it made you feel inside. Did it make you feel energized to do more?

Taking action to do something helps us feel more motivated. In other words, the less active you are, the less you feel motivated.

To jump-start motivation within yourself requires taking active steps to move and get things done. And it does not always have to be big things. You can start by doing small things.

For example, simple tasks such as making your bed each morning, challenging yourself to read a few pages in a book, or walking 10 minutes per day are easy ways to implement changes while taking small actionable steps to get you started.

The important thing is to make the more minor accomplishments a habit and challenge yourself to do more over time. Then, keep focused on these actions and use these as inspiration to achieve bigger goals.

Limit Distractions

To accomplish more in life, change your focus. This involves limiting distractions such as social media, television, and anything that keeps you from working towards your goals.

Rather than allowing distractions to hinder your progress, place yourself in a place that helps you focus more. For example, if you have a goal to read a book, try not to read in bed because you may be tempted to fall asleep. Instead, move to an area where you are sitting up with more lighting to keep you engaged in your reading.

If you want to eat healthier, remove unhealthy snacks that tempt you. For whatever goal you are working towards, try to minimize anything that keeps you from reaching your goal.

Reward yourself

Rewarding yourself occasionally is also suitable as an incentive to keep yourself motivated. This can be a simple reward for accomplishing a task, such as cleaning a room or completing a portion of a larger project that you are working on.

Take time to reward yourself with a special treat or experience the satisfaction of accomplishing what you have set out to do. Let this serve as inspiration to do more.

Pat yourself on the back and use positive self-talk to acknowledge your accomplishments. Then, each time you reward yourself, set a higher goal to work towards and keep challenging yourself to achieve more.

Final thoughts

In conclusion, we have examined the meaning of motivation and reviewed guidelines to help improve your motivation to get more done and live a more productive life. These guidelines included defining your goals, taking action, limiting distractions, and rewarding yourself from time to time.

Just as you had to adapt to changes during the pandemic, implementing changes to your daily routine is critically important to help you stay motivated to improve your life.

Remember that this is a process, and take action by doing what you can and use small incremental changes to increase your daily motivation to get more things done in your life.

Please share your ideas and comments on what you have done to improve your motivation. Your time is greatly appreciated, and thank you for visiting.