Working for yourself is tough. You don't realize that until you start doing it - working from home that is. Your dream was of breaking free of that 9am - 5pm grind of office politics, ungrateful bosses and salaries that just didn't match the work you were putting in. You got sick of it and set up your own business. You no longer had to worry about anyone cracking the whip over your head. Or did you? Now you're the boss. Of yourself. You have to crack the whip over your own head to keep things going. That single task is a lot more difficult than most entrepreneurs would believe. Most home business owners find that it's easy to get distracted. A friend calls. There's something on TV. They have a longer lunch than usual. Then they get a bit behind in their work. Then the pressure mounts. As the pressure increases their motivation drops off - quickly! It's starting to feel like your old 9 - 5 job again all of a sudden. Now that your motivation is suffering everything else tends to suffer with it. Your inspiration and creativity suffers. Small problems now seem huge and impossible to deal with. Heck it can get so bad that you almost consider going back to your crummy daytime job again. So how you do beat this motivational nightmare? Use the 24 Hour Goal method! The what? How does that work? When most of us lack motivation business and its related tasks seem like a huge mountain in front of us that we can never climb. It's simply too much to handle. What about if we just decided to get as far as basecamp as our first step and then worry about the other stages later? The highest mountain can be climbed one stage at a time. That's what the 24 Hour Goal method is. Bite sized chunks of work. Simply sit down with a piece of paper and write down something you need to achieve for your business in the next 24 hours. Write it down on paper where you can see it. Stick it up on the wall near your desk. You need to be reminded of this constantly. The goal or task needs to be realistic and achieveable within 24 hours. Don't go trying to reinvent the wheel. Now for the next 24 hours after setting that goal you sit down and make it happen. Literally no matter what! You need to be laser focused on this one single task. Let nothing distract you. Make this single thing happen! The sense of satisfaction you'll feel after achieving this single goal will amaze you. Not only that but you'll find yourself motivated to working at your full potential again and taking on bigger and bigger goals to conquer. I suppose this whole process comes from that old joke: "How do you eat an elephant?" Just one bite at a time :-) Now you understand how to get your motivation back. What are you waiting for? Set those goals and conquer them in the next 24 hours. What have you got to lose by using the 24 Hour Goal method? |
