Motivation, that powerful drive that moves us forward to accomplish our goals, is something all of us feel lacking sometimes — especially when what we’re working on isn’t so fun or interesting.

This week, we’ll learn some ways to pump up our motivation when it’s way down at zero.

Start Small

We're going to start small with our first tip.

If you can’t seem to find any motivation, ask yourself: do I have no drive at all right now, or do I just not have drive or energy for a particular task?

If there’s just one thing you don’t want to do, we suggest starting with one tiny step: like opening a folder, or writing a crappy draft of that email.  

(For focused space members, that’s why we tend to ask you “what’s the very first step?” when we zoom into our goals every morning).

If you aren’t feeling drive or capacity to dive into anything, or are feeling overwhelmed to the point of exhaustion, it’s probably time for a break, and some vital self care.

When we’re worn out, attending to our basic, self care needs replenishes our bodies and spirit, and prevents burnout. This is a perfect time to take really good care of you. 

(P.S. If you struggle with procrastination, you might like the conversation we had recently with Time Management expert Risa Williams.)

Next, let's dig into a method that uses the subconscious to drive forward momentum.

Visualize Success

Visualization has been popular with athletes for decades, with research based results — and is increasingly used by folks wanting to achieve other kinds of goals.

How does it work?

When we visualize, we create detailed pictures and “movies” in our mind of what we want to achieve (but haven’t yet).

The tension between these two states is something psychologists call “structural tension,” and happens in your subconscious mind, and body, when you visualize something that hasn’t happened yet.

The theory is that the subconscious mind seeks to resolve the tension that your visualization created — often by making that vision happen.

Here is a guided visualization meditation. We hope you’ll try it every day this week, and beyond, especially for larger goals.

Worth noting: some people prefer visualizing the process to reach their outcome (for example, the experience and senses that come with each step) and some prefer outcome visualizations (for example, how they and their lives would look, feel, etc., once the outcome is achieved).

Try This

✨ For 30 days: Ideally twice daily, before sleep and upon waking, take some time to imagine completing an important goal.

Imagine how it will feel, who will be there with you, what it will look like, sound like, smell, feel, and taste like (you can do this for the process, our the outcome itself as noted above).

Reward, Strategically

Now let's talk about how to leverage our brain’s reward pathways for greater, more sustained motivation. 

Many of you have heard about dopamine, the “feel-good” chemical driving our motivation and reward experience.

Dopamine is harder for some of us to access, which makes it hard to engage in tasks that aren’t especially interesting — this isn’t news to people with ADHD, who probably have the best tips for leveraging rewards!

It turns out, there are a few ways to boost dopamine without a drop-off that often happens after a reward, which can help support motivation over the long term. 

First approach: embed fun or engaging moments in a task. Here are some things you can try:

• Set a timer and challenge yourself to complete in that time,

• Challenge a friend to a task-off (if social rewards are your thing),

• Or even… give yourself a strawberry for each task completed.

Another approach: if you’re struggling with motivation, you can try engaging in what neuroscientists call hormesis (hor-me-sis) — which are activities that are a little uncomfortable, but result in a sustained bump in dopamine.

This can include taking a cold shower or cold plunge, exercising, or breathwork. It can be especially powerful early in the day.

This guy likes it!

Find Meaning

We’ve talked about visualization, optimizing reward systems, and now we’ll share another tip for when the motivation just isn’t there: looking for meaning within the task, and reminding ourselves of it. 

All of us have things we care about and value, and these underlie who we are and what we do. In times when we’re feeling unmotivated, it can help to take some time to identify our core values (and values that underlie any work projects we’re engaged in).

Sometimes these are easier to see — we may provide a service to help our clients with their lives and work, or work in law, because we care about fairness.

We may not be able to easily access our core values, and that’s ok too. Here’s a values inventory to support you to explore and hone in on some of yours!

Align Your Values Toward Motivation:

📝 Write down your core values, and post them around your home or office.

✨ Next to your daily goals, write a meaningful reason, or personal value that aligns with it.

💪🏽 Bonus: If one of your values is “Learning,” paste it where you can see it, helping you remember this value whenever you’re engaged in something challenging.

Wrapping it all together

This week, we’ve shared some ways to grow motivation when it’s really hard to find, offering tips for the body (self-care), mind (dopamine management and strategic rewards), and spirit (inspiration from core values). 

This topic isn’t complete without a focused space favorite, research-supported tip: practicing self-compassion.

If you’re feeling a total lack of motivation, try offering yourself some self-compassion for this very human experience of… lacking motivation sometimes 🙂

Here's something you can tell yourself: “Sometimes it’s really hard to find energy for things. This is true of all humans. Right now, throughout the world, many people are also having this experience. I am not alone.”

We’ll also add that there at focused space, we deeply believe no one should have to do all of this hard stuff alone.

It’s why we have focused sessions, which is our final tip for the week — keep showing up! We're here to help you find motivation, bust through procrastination, and push through the hard things.

I hope you enjoyed our tour through motivation research and practice this week. See you at a Community Session!

— Anna, focused space host

P.S. Members, we'd love to hear your motivation strategies. Drop us a line on Instagram or hello@focused.space

And if you want or need additional support, you might consider finding additional professionals who can help. We at focused also believe in mental health support of all kinds, and have a partner network we’d love to help you tap into.