15 Minutes

Real Moment: I am very unmotivated right now. I was unmotivated yesterday, and I’ll probably be unmotivated tomorrow.

The world has felt like total chaos for the last year, and frankly, 2021 hasn’t felt any better. The pandemic has hit the world harder than anticipated and lasted longer than any of us hoped. Since I had already been working from home, I was thankful to still be employed and figured the only changes I would really have to deal with would be changes to my social life. I counted myself lucky to be living with someone I adore, and we would support local restaurants by ordering in as opposed visiting them personally. Social distance was a pretty easy thing for me to deal with as well since I’d been used to being at home and not having to interact with many people. I already shopped during non-peak hours, and if I wasn’t comfortable going to a store I could probably live without it - anything super necessary could be ordered online or grabbed at curbside. What I wasn’t prepared for was how long this would continue. The longer I spent in isolation, no matter how many creature comforts, was starting to drag on, and the worldwide changes began taking a toll financially. Couple financial difficulties with the prolonged inability to feed my extroverted nature effectively, and I was in a deep slump which resulted in zero motivation.

Now I’m in 2021, and this is the busiest time of the year for me at work. I feel like I have motivation one day and can’t get out of bed the next. It’s really screwing with my brain. Last month, I laid out some goals, and I feel like I made some great progress. That said, that progress was gained in small steps on days where I didn’t feel motivated at all. This isn’t about just “powering through” a slump. That isn’t in line with my intentions for this year. Instead, I decided to figure out how best to utilise the small amounts of motivation I could muster. Here’s how I did it.

When I did feel a sense of motivation, especially early on, I took the time to “dream big.” I wrote down the things I wanted to do if I had all the time and energy in the world. What I found was that a lot of things fell into only two or three pretty broad categories. Then I looked at my lists and my environment and asked myself, “What will make doing anything (no matter how small) on this list manageable?” The answer to that question was what I would choose to do.

For example, I wanted to close out the books for work. It’s a large task that was making me feel overwhelmed by the amount of work that needed to be done, and I couldn’t make myself sit down and do it. So I looked at my office and realised that my office was messy and felt disorganised which did not help my ability to get things done. Even if I couldn’t tackle the paperwork right that second, I COULD tackle the mess of papers, supplies, mail, etc that had piled up in my office. I can do 15 minutes of anything, so I set a timer and started. When the timer went off, the task wasn’t done, but I still felt like I could keep going, so I set the timer again. After an hour, my office as well as the space connected to it was tidy and organised. If I had allotted an hour at the beginning, I wouldn’t have started. That felt too big. By giving myself a time frame I could mentally handle, I was able to feel small victories and actually complete the task while I still had motivation to do so. What I found at the end was that having a tidy office and connecting space (my office connects to our library) made me feel less overwhelmed about the work I needed to get done. I could then sit down and actually tackle some of the things on my to do list. Success!!

I acknowledge that I work best when my environment is tidy. After that particular exercise, I made it a point to actually take the time at the end of the day to tidy my workspace. It’s two-fold: I get to create an end of the day ritual where I close the door on my day job and I delineated a space where work occurs. I can’t see past the library doorway and see anything else that needs to be done around the house. Is the kitchen a mess? Absolutely. Is laundry piled up in my bathroom? Yes. I can’t see it though. I had already made a list of things that need to be done, and even though I didn’t have enough spoons to do it right then, at least it was out of my head.

Timers have literally made my progress happen this year. I’ve been doing the same thing whenever I feel overwhelmed. When I walk into a space that makes me feel overwhelmed the first thing I ask myself is “What can I do right now that will make me feel less overwhelmed?” Sometimes the answer is “Walk out of the room,” and that’s okay. I’ll go check on the plants, or play with the puppies, or lay down. I set a timer and figure out if I can get something done on my to-do list. A lot of what runs through my head these days is “I can do 15 minutes of anything.” I’m okay with that. Fifteen minutes isn’t a lot of time in the grand scheme of things, but lots of 15-minute intervals can make a lot of things happen. You’d be surprised by how much happens in 15 minutes. It’s a victory and an accomplishment. All those little moments add up.

I still have days where I can’t make myself do much of anything. That’s okay. I give myself grace to be messy and know that there is still tomorrow. So really, I’m unmotivated today. I was unmotivated yesterday, and I’ll probably be unmotivated tomorrow. But I have fifteen minutes and a timer.

What are the things that help you get through your day? How do you handle your moments of motivation?