Let’s say there’s something you really should do, but you dread doing it. Maybe it’s huge, difficult, inconvenient, dirty, unpleasant, draining, or even physically painful. Maybe you dread it because it’s a potential source of bad news (seeing the doctor, doing the bills, estimating revenues for the coming year). Maybe you started doing it, but you stopped, and now it’s been so long that you’re not even sure how you would begin. Or maybe it just has a bad association. Regardless, here’s something you’d really rather avoid but that you know you would be better off doing, preferably soon.

The problem is that dread is anything but motivating. If you could somehow dredge up some enthusiasm for doing the dreadful thing, that might get you somewhere, but dread tends to hold you back. Dreaded tasks often get ignored, avoided, delayed, bumped down the priority list by less important but more pleasant tasks, and so on. It’s certainly possible to take on a task while still dreading it, but transforming dread into something positive will nearly always make accomplishing the thing much more likely. So how can we do that?

Begin by Working on Motivation
The first thing to do is to separate the task of motivating yourself to do the task from the dreaded task itself. Motivating yourself is relatively easy and pleasant compared to cleaning out a filthy refrigerator or completing sixty pages of tax paperwork, and if you complete the job of motivating yourself, then actually doing the task becomes much easier.

In motivating ourselves to tackle a  dreaded task, it’s important to begin to understand what about the task we dread, which means reflecting on our feelings and answering basic questions like “What is it I think will happen when I start doing this task?” and “What about this task is the biggest obstacle for me?”

With a bit of awareness about where the dread comes from, often idea repair and surrendering ourselves to the idea of taking on the task will clear away a lot of the dread. Sometimes talking with a sympathetic friend, family member, mentor, or therapist can help, as can writing about the issue in a journal.

Creating Enthusiasm Even for the Worst Tasks
And when the task is no longer as awful as it has sounded to us in the past, because we understand our feelings about it, have addressed broken thoughts, and have committed ourselves to taking care of business, we can turn to (as weird as this may sound) … enthusiasm. Even a task that seems terrible, if it’s related to something important to us, can have its attractions. One of the most appealing things about a really daunting task can be the vision of just getting it done: if the task is something that’s been put off for a long time, it’s probably a source of annoyance or anxiety, and doing it provides relief.

Dreaded tasks can sometimes be genuinely enjoyable (for instance, a trip to do something difficult could still be a fun trip); they may bring out a sense of pride at being the kind of person who can face these kinds of problems; and they can sometimes remove uncertainty about the future. More motivating even than these can be connecting with the really basic things you’re accomplishing with the task, for instance making your surroundings more welcoming, healing a damaged relationship, or working through a major financial issue. If it’s something you don’t feel like doing, what are your reasons for doing it in the first place? They’re probably significant ones.

Things to Watch Out for
If the task is large, it doesn’t have to be done all at once: doing a few simple things to get started can take a lot of the menace out of the thing you’re trying to accomplish and begin to establish momentum. If you don’t take care of it all at once, though, consider doing it in several sessions close together, for instance once per day until it’s finished, so as to keep that momentum going.

Regardless of how you approach it, there will probably come a point where you have to dive in. Whether you do this by distracting yourself or by finding courage, be prepared to have to pass this point when you start, and probably to pass it again from time to time as you continue. And when you’re done, you can take a good look back so that you’ll remember that you were courageous enough to get it done.

Photo by hapticflapjack

In cleaning up my office recently, I found several notes to take down from older phases in my health and weight loss process. Over the last few years I’ve lost more than 50 pounds (so far), put on a good deal of muscle, and improved my general fitness and energy levels–but it has taken a lot of effort, and it surprised me to realize how many different approaches I had needed over even just the last couple of years.

And when I look the notes over, I realize they were all good tactics. It’s not that I kept trying things and failing, but really the opposite: I would struggle with a set of goals for a while, eventually make them part of my automatic behavior, and then turn my attention to the next step for me, whatever that was at the time. The notes I pulled down today were tucked in places around my desk where I was guaranteed to see them several times a day. They were each at different times a small part of my self-motivation, and when I needed to quickly remind myself exactly what I was working on at the moment, they were always there.

Generation 1
The oldest note I still had up covered six principles that helped me minimize some of my bad eating habits and improve my nutrition and health in general. They’re not so much universal wisdom as the specific things I personally needed to concentrate on. (These were just for eating: exercise was always pretty much a simple matter of “get active, and stay active!”) My note (paraphrased a little) said:

1. Plan food choices instead of choosing while you’re hungry
2. Know how many calories are in something before eating it
3. Eat only from servings*
4. Fruits and vegetables are good choices for snacks and fillers
5. Eat at regular times
6. Write down everything you eat

* For instance, instead of eating from a box of crackers, I would serve myself some crackers on a plate.

Generation 2
As these things became deeply-ingrained habits, I stopped looking at that list, and eventually I created another, this one of things I could do to not eat if I felt hungry (except for fruits and vegetables, which for me personally are always a good idea). They were things like eating a fruit or vegetable, getting involved in something absorbing, drinking tea, etc. They helped solidify my habit of eating only at particular times.

Generation 3
As that grew to be old hat and both good eating and exercise grew to be pretty ingrained habits for me, I added a new goal, task management. Now my reminder note had to do with always knowing what the next thing I wanted to do was, focusing on making good choices every time a choice was presented to me (regardless of the subject), and going out of my way to find enthusiasm for the most important items on my task list.

A Continuing Cycle of New Tactics
What I hope you’ll glean from all this isn’t so much the specifics of my reminders to myself over time as a picture of self-motivation as an ongoing process of acquiring habits. You identify some behaviors you want to change, remind yourself of them every day, and then as they become habits, you set your sights a little higher or make your goal a little larger. For this new vision, you figure out what behaviors you need to change. One goal gives way to the next, and if things go well, you gradually acquire more and more of the habits you really want to have, and lose more and more of the behaviors you don’t want.

You would think a garage sale wouldn’t be difficult to figure out. You prepare a little, you advertise, you put things on card tables, you wait. I’ve been wanting to help my son set up a garage sale of a lot of things he’s outgrown, where he could be in charge and receive the profits, but I’ve been stopped by the idea that I can’t. I live in a fairly rural area, on a dirt road that doesn’t get any traffic. I’ve been held up by this idea that we should have a garage sale, but I don’t know how to set it up so that people will actually come.

I was thinking about the garage sale this morning and once I really turned my attention to it, I realized the idea that I didn’t know how to make it work was ridiculous. We will either have a garage sale or we won’t. If we do, we’ll either have it here or have it somewhere else. If we have it somewhere else, we just have to figure what lucky friend is going to get us taking over their porch or garage soon, and ask permission. The only reason I’ve been thinking “I don’t know how” is because I haven’t been wanting to face it. Garage sales take preparation, which I don’t feel like I have time for, and they last a whole day, which I definitely don’t have time for, and what if no one shows up and all of the effort is wasted and we still have the things left over? It’s not that I don’t know how to do it, it’s that the idea has been making me anxious. Dealing with anxiety has a lot to do with facing things and answering questions. A few simple answers sorted my situation out. We should have the sale, because my son will enjoy earning the money and will learn about money from it, and because we need the room the old things are taking up, and because it’s a waste to have them here if we can get them to someone who will actually use them. We should have it here so that he can mind the sale and I can do the other things I need to do, checking in with him regularly. And we’ll attract traffic as well as we can by putting signs out on the main road right near us, which will probably give us more custom than we would get in a suburban neighborhood.

Your something may not be as easy to figure out, but there are several useful ways to do something you don’t know how to do. So, what are they?

1. If you really can’t do it, move on
If you really have no way of accomplishing the task in front of you, even after reading the rest of this article,  then the problem isn’t doing the task: if you honestly can’t do it, then it’s not your responsibility. Instead, the problem is facing the inevitable consequences of not doing it. This requires a difficult but powerful tool: surrendering to reality.

The same situation applies if the only way you can do the thing in question is to not do something more important. For example, if the only weekend we could do the garage sale was the only opportunity we’d get for some time to see family members visiting the area, then we’d need to give up on the garage sale. Fortunately, there are often more options than there seem to be at first, which is what the rest of the article is about.

2. You don’t have to do it if it doesn’t need to be done
Sometimes we resist doing things because they really don’t make sense for us to do. If it were for me instead of my son, I probably wouldn’t have the garage sale at all, because the amount of money it brought in wouldn’t justify the time. Instead I’d donate everything to a local recycle shop, which would sell the items to lower-income people for very affordable prices. If you feel concerned about how you’re going to tackle a problem, make sure first that it makes sense for you to do it at all before you start worrying about how.

3. Do it differently if there’s a better way
Sometimes difficult problems become much easier if they’re approached in an unexpected way. If you have something you’re worried about doing, consider whether there are other approaches you could take that would simplify things. If my son had a few major items and otherwise mostly things that would sell for next to nothing, he could sell the major items on eBay or Craigslist, still learning about money and reaping the rewards, and we could give the rest away to the recycle shop.

4. If it can wait, improve your position and then do it
Some tasks need improved skills before they can be done well, in which case a combination of practice and patience will put you in a much better position to get the thing done, provided it can wait. Keep in mind that research overwhelmingly supports the idea that practically anyone of at least average intelligence can excel at almost anything if they get in enough deliberate practice. If I were worried my son wouldn’t do a good job of running the sale, we could spend some time doing pretend sales and finding educational computer games about buying and selling to help him learn. We’d have to decide whether the sale was worth the effort and whether we could wait that long to get the unneeded things out of the house, but it’s possible the effort spent learning about money would be more than worthwhile.

Other tasks benefit from a change in situation. If I were going to move in the near future to a location that’s better for a garage sale, I might store the sale items away and have the sale there once we’d moved.

5. If it would work better with help, get help
Sometimes a little advice or active assistance from a friend, family member, mentor, or even a hired professional can go a long way. This might be as simple as getting a better idea of the task from someone who’s done it already, or as involved as finding and hiring a business manager for your new venture if you’re great at the core activity of the business but not so great at marketing, accounting, and the other general business tasks. For example, I probably have friends who have things they’d want to sell too, and a two- or three-family garage sale might attract more people.

6. If it works best to do it now, just do it the best you can
If it needs to be done, if there aren’t good alternatives, if others can’t really help, and if it’s best to do it now (due to ongoing problems, limited opportunity, a deadline, etc.), then you’re in the same place I was: face things and provide answers. If you don’t know the answers to the questions, get the best information you can and answer them as well as you can. If you’re having trouble facing things, it’s probably due to broken ideas, which means it’s fixable.

7. If you know what to do but don’t feel motivated, get in touch with your reasons
Of course, it might be that when you think about it, you realize you really do know how to tackle this goal, and it really is an important one, but you don’t feel inspired to get in motion. If that’s the case, it can help a lot to get in touch with your real reasons for accomplishing the goal. If they’re someone else’s reasons, or if you’re just trying to fulfill expectations or fit some role, then it may be that it’s not such a good goal for you after all. But if the reasons are your own, get in touch with them: write down what made you decide to do the thing in the first place, or visualize what it will be like to do it–or to have gotten it done.

Regardless of what approach you take, remember that “I have to but I can’t” is a logical impossibility. If there’s really no way to do it, you’re off the hook: no one can make you do something you truly can’t do. If there is a way to do it, all you have to do is figure out whether you’re going to decide to, and if so what the best way is. There’s not always a good way, but there is always at least one best way. I hope you find yours. As for me, I have to help my son go sort through some old toys.

Photo by m.gifford

Here is part II of excerpts from my interview with 6th dan black belt Gordon White, where we pick up with him traveling to Korea during college to push his Taekwondo training to the limit. You can read part I here, or read the full interview on this page.

 An all-you-can-train buffet
So, I landed in Seoul, Korea in late summer, 1991. I got set up in the dorm, and I attended practice 4 and sometimes 5 days a week (20 – 30 hours a week) [in addition to academic work].

I woke up every morning in Korea ready to hit the ground running for whatever Taekwondo experience I could get . It was hard. I got homesick, and some cultural things freaked me out (it was not uncommon for the coach to discipline the students with a baseball bat across the back of the legs), but these obstacles were squashed by desire to work and excel at Taekwondo. I guess it’s like being hungry and not feeling like there is enough food in the house–and then you go to an all-you-can-eat buffet, your eyes get big, and you dive in, knowing there is more food here then you are ever going to be able to eat, but you still want to get your money’s worth: that is what my year in Korea was like. There was more Taekwondo there then I could ever consume in a year, but I tried.

When the stakes rise, so do the expectations
I started to feel some pressure to perform, however–it was completely unintentional–but I got loads of letters from the Blue Wave. Everyone was very proud of me being in Korea and training hard, but the expectation was that I was going to come back and mop up the competition at the Nationals. I came home from Korea to attend 1992 nationals, there was a big fundraiser to get me there, and everyone expected me to do well … but I didn’t. I fought OK, but lost my second match of the day. It was very disapointing, and while I knew that no one was disappointed “in me,” many people were still disappointed for me. I headed back to Korea to finish out my final months at Yonsei–interestingly, still very motivated and excited to be there …

Simplifying … and winning
When I got back to Vermont, I was happy to be home but anxious about the upcoming year. I needed to focus on school again, but I still had my heart set on doing well at nationals and attending Team Trials. I had set a goal for myself to attend a world-level event and place. Considering I had only placed at nationals once, this was a pretty big step.

Some changes in how I was living helped: I moved back home, I didn’t re-open my Taekwondo School, and I only worked weekends. The following year, I placed at Nationals, and went to Team Trials and placed second, earning a spot on national B Team, and was picked to represent the US at the World Games in The Hague, Netherlands.

My goal was to make the US Team, but that was not all I was motivated by. I loved Taekwondo, loved how it made me feel, loved the people in it and the relationships I had with them. All these things played into my motivation to continue to train, get better, and simply do my best, had there been no competitive aspect to Taekwondo. Had my only real motivation been competitive, I don’t think I would have been so involved in the Blue Wave Association. I was very close with Master Twing. When he got sick with cancer, he asked that I become president of the Blue Wave Association, not because of my physical ability, but because he knew that I wanted the Blue Wave to be successful, to grow and continue to be a positive influence in people’s lives.

From competitor to teacher
[Lately] I have been busy getting the Taekwondo fall schedule up and running, attempting to solidify a new working relationship with an equipment supplier, getting the details straight for the Black Belt Conference taking place in November, and trying to secure a location for Winter Camp 2010. So “why” I do it is something I often ask myself and I am not sure I have a good answer for.

Transition from competitor to teaching was a natural process for me. As I said, I always imagined myself teaching, and teaching was something I did for a long time. Grandmaster Lee and Master Twing worked with me and expected me to help spread the information, and I think from the start it was very rewarding to teach, and I also felt responsible, Taekwondo was something (I felt) had given me so much, and this was my duty to give back.

In 1998 I fought at the Massachusetts State Championships. I had 3 fights to win the division. It was a lot of fun, I fought well, and when it was all over, I told Calvin (my wife) that I was pretty sure that I was done competing. I knew what it took to get to a high level of competition, and also what it took to stay there. It has to be your priority, your job to train and compete, and something inside me said that I’d had enough. It was around the same time, however, that I was getting very excited at the prospect of teaching and having my own school. I felt ready to teach: I felt like I had a lot of experience and depth and could be a good instructor. Having Master Twing’s overwhelming vote of confidence simply reinforced what I was feeling. Teaching, running a school and building the Blue Wave was the next place for me to place my passion for Taekwondo.

It’s interesting: you often hear that teaching is such a selfless job, you have to put the students first, but honestly it’s not entirely selfless. Teaching has made me understand Taekwondo far better then if I had just remained a practitioner. I think this is what is part of the motivation for me. I still get something from it, so there is still a selfish element. The satisfaction comes in seeing the school grow, watching the student progress and the competitor’s performance improve. There is a certain amount of pride in knowing that you have something to do with it. You share in the success and failure of every individual in the gym. The ups are wonderful, and downs equally disappointing.

Find more videos like this on The Blue Wave Taekwondo Association

Master White demonstrating a kicking technique to students in 2007

What keeps the fires burning
I often wonder if I should give up some Taekwondo–have more time to relax, more time with my family, etc. Right now, this is what I am doing, and as long as I get up in the morning and more often then not am looking forward to the Taekwondo tasks ahead, I will probably keep doing it.

So the point is that yes, teaching is about the students, building the Blue Wave is about the members, and coaching is about the athletes, but it is impossible to give these things 110% without it fueling you back, keeping you excited about what you are doing and giving you knowledge and experience that adds to the person you are. I don’t know, some day I might have the same type of revelation that I had in 1998, and it will be time for what is next, but right now, I have to finish this email: Junior ATP [Athlete Training Program] starts up tonight, and I’m excited to work with my students.

Photos and video courtesy of Gordon White.

Gordon White holds a 6th dan black belt in Taekwondo Chung Do Kwan, a rank that takes upward of 20 years of hard practice and constant study to attain. He has sparred and won medals both nationally and–as a member of the U.S. national team–internationally, teaches Taekwondo on his own time four or more days a week, and serves as President of the Blue Wave Taekwondo Association, a New England group with hundreds of members.

It’s through Blue Wave that I know Master White: I’m in training to test for my 1st dan black belt in March of 2010. Having long been struck by Master White’s passion for Taekwondo as well as by his drive to teach, I asked to interview him for The Willpower Engine. When he agreed, I received some unexpected and enlightening answers to my questions.

Following is part I of excerpts from the interview in Master White’s own words (except for the headings I’ve added), with part II available here. To read the full interview, unedited, click here.

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It started with bullies
I started  Taekwondo May 13th, 1983. I was in the eighth grade. The 6th and 7th grades were tough on me: I was picked on and beat up a lot, and now was nervous about being a freshman in high school the following year. My older sister had a boyfriend who practiced Taekwondo, and he invited me to visit his school.

So my parents brought me over on Friday night. We talked to the instructor, who had me fill out a form. There was a list of about 20 different “benefits” of Taekwondo training. Self confidence, physical fitness, self defense, competition, etc. I checked off all but 1 or 2….(I think weight control was one that I left off). I signed up that night, and was hooked. For the next 2-1/2 years, my parents drove me to Winooski 3 to 5 times a week. While I had other interests (drumming, skiing, BMX biking …) which I continued to be involved in through High School, they quickly became a second priority to Taekwondo.

Self defense is what motivated me to walk in the door of a Taekwondo school, but what kept me there were number of things. I was good at it, but I also felt like belonged there. I was surrounded by 5 men in their twenties who were black belts, and in my eyes were like having 5 Bruce Lee’s to practice with. I wanted their physical skills, strength, and confidence, and my instructor made me feel like I was capable of achieving it. I was made to feel that I had tremendous potential, and that by practicing Taekwondo and dedicating myself to it, I would be successful in anything I wanted to pursue. While my motivations and goals changed–instructing, competing, etc.–I guess once I started Taekwondo, NOT doing it was never an option.

Parents’ and instructors’ expectations
Part of my motivation was driven by my desire to to live up to someone else’s expectations. My parents, instructor, and coaches all played a very important role in me staying motivated and dedicated to continue with Taekwondo. Those that come before you have the experience to know what is possible–so they set high expectations for you, higher then perhaps you can imagine on your own. It’s fantastic, because it helps you do more than you would most likely accomplish otherwise. However, with it comes pressure. I see parents all the time who don’t think they are putting pressure on their kids, coaches who have a “low pressure” philosophy, but as long as there are caring instructors there will be pressure on the students.

From the time I started Taekwondo and got my yellow belt [an early beginning rank], I intended to be a Taekwondo instructor. I was fortunate to find the Blue Wave and Master Twing–but if I had not, I don’t think it would have stopped me. I think I would have continued to search until I found an instructor that I could connect well with.

The pressure to perform vs. enjoying a thing for its own sake
Luc, in reading Keyna’s favorite movie list, I was reminded of one of my all time favorite movies Searching for Bobby Fisher. The main character, Josh Waitzkin, (this is based on a true story) has supportive parents and coaches, [who all] see his potential (he’s considered a gifted chess player) and are driven to support and push him, thus creating tremendous pressure for him. The conflict he feels between wanting to just enjoy chess and excel to the point that he thinks his coaches/parents want is very well portrayed in the film.

By the time I was in college, my desire to do well in Taekwondo was driven almost entirely by my own motivation. I think the trick with motivation is that if it’s a chore, it’s not really motivation: real motivation has to come from within. External influences can help, but I think this can turn into a feeling of responsibilty, or a fear of disapproval. No one was telling me to get up early to run–or give up social events on Friday night because I was traveling to a training session or tournament. I did these things on my own, because I wanted to. It never felt like a sacrifice for me.

College as a goal–and as an obstacle
College got in the way of Taekwondo … My first two years of college were done out of responsibility–not motivation. All I wanted to do was Taekwondo: studying was not high on my list, but my feeling of responsibilty to my parents to “get a four year degree” had me putting in minimum effort to get by. It was a bumpy road – 6 years for a four year degree including some time off and a year abroad, but in the end, Taekwondo is what provided the real motivation for me to finish school. I FINALLY claimed a major, “small business management,” which allowed me to link what I was learning, to what I eventually saw myself doing, owning a Taekwondo School.

Another obstacle for me was the lack of training partners and travel distances. When I started Taekwondo in 1983, I was able to train 4 or 5 days a week. But in 1986, I began training with Master Twing in Randolph, Vermont, a 100-mile round trip. I was only getting down 1 or 2 times a week–when Grandmaster Lee arrived in late 1987 and came back again in 1988, I would often spend weekends at Master Twing’s house, training with Grandmaster Lee in the basement.

A montage of board breaks and sparring by Gordon White from 1987-1990

The missing ingredient
By 1990, I had failed to place at Nationals after 3 attempts, 1987, 1988, 1990. I missed 1989 due to knee surgery–another obstacle, I suppose. I felt like I should be on the podium, but something was missing–the people that were placing had something I didn’t, and it wasn’t physical skill: it was confidence. While I spent all of my training time sparring with people that were not as good as I was, the best players were from big cities, training with teams of national level competitors. This was the difference. The only time I had experienced this was in 1987: Grandmaster Lee took myself and one other black belt to Korea for 6 weeks. We traveled around the country, training at different schools and getting our butts kicked on a regular basis. The dramatic increase in skill and confidence I gained just in these 6 weeks was something I needed much more of.

I headed to the International Education office at UVM and asked what my options were for a year abroad in Korea. I was given information for attending Yonsei University, and started making plans for it. In order to go, I needed to get my grades up at UVM (I did); I needed to close my Taekwondo School (one of my students, Tim Warren, wanted to open a school in Milton, which gave me a place to send my students); I needed to continue to train as hard as I could–I still had nationals to attend and if I hoped to keep up in Korea, I wanted a good foundation–and lastly, I needed to earn as much money as I could, because I would not be working for the year there. I waited tables at the Peking Duck, picking up extra shifts.

Click here to read part II of the interview, following Master White to Korea, back to the U.S., and to the heights of competition.

Photos and video courtesy of Gordon White.

The conventional wisdom for taking on something new in your life is that it’s best to wait until everything’s going smoothly. This comes out in statements like “I can’t deal with that right now” or “It’s hard enough just keeping my head above water” or “I don’t need another thing to worry about.”

Assuming you’re not already involved in diligent work on some life change or major project, though, there are some compelling reasons that taking on that kind of goal might be one of the most beneficial things you could do. Here are some of the doubts that come up about taking on new goals, examined a little more closely to reveal reasons to reconsider.

“I already have enough stress: taking on something new will just add more.”
There’s a pretty common idea out there that effort equals stress, but in fact the reverse is probably more accurate. Research on stressful situations suggests that the most stressful ones are those in which we don’t feel we have any control. Taking action by its nature gives us a greater sense of control, and making progress gives encouragement and self-confidence that each are doubly valuable in times of stress.

In addition, many kinds of goals–fitness, better nutrition, improving sleep, incorporating meditation into your life, cleaning up your home or work space, organizing, addressing financial problems, and sorting our personal conflicts, to name a few, can directly address some key sources of stress in your life and/or make you physically more resistant to stress. Exercise particularly has been proven time and again to relieve stress, and not getting enough sleep has been identified as a key culprit in creating anxious moods.

“I don’t have time to take on something new right now.”
Only you can decide what you do and don’t have time to do, but any number of goals can be pursued in just a few minutes a day. For example, studying vocabulary for a foreign language for five minutes three times a day is an excellent way to rapidly expand your mastery, because we learn best when we’re given the same material several times with a few hours between exposures. Other examples of goals that can be pursued with just a small amount of time include a 15-minute-a-day meditation, beginning to get an office organized by filing just a few papers at a time, and even certain creative activities, like writing or practicing an instrument. Small blocks of time may not be what you’d picture as an ideal, but they do allow for noticeable progress and even have some special advantages over larger blocks. (Thanks to Robin Dickinson, who started learning Chinese in one minute a day, for comments that contributed to this point.)

“I’m too worried about other things to think about a new goal right now.”
One of the benefits in taking on a new goal that you’re excited about is that it gives you something positive to think about, something that can even distract you in helpful ways from thinking too much about a negative situation from which you might need a little distance. If you choose a goal that’s truly inspiring for you, you provide yourself with a means to turn anxiety into creative work.

“I don’t need to pile on more responsibilities.”
Goals certainly can create stress–and often wind up completely unsuccessful–if they’re taken on grudgingly, out of a sense of obligation. For instance, thinking “I really should lose some weight” (or worse, having someone else goad you into trying to lose weight) tends to be one of the worst mindsets you can bring to a fitness goal. What kinds of goals work better? As mentioned here, doing things because of the immediate benefits to your quality of life is usually much more successful than doing them because of a distant goal (especially if you have trouble believing you can reach that goal). Taking on a goal that makes you truly happy adds an enthusiasm rather than a responsibility to your life. If you’re feeling like you’re responsible for too many things but aren’t already pursuing a constructive goal in your life, consider whether there are any constructive goals that would deliver immediate benefits to you on a regular basis, perhaps even benefits that can help make your other responsibilities easier.

“I’ll get to it when things are easier.”
One final reason to consider taking on a goal even during difficult times is that easy times don’t necessarily come around very often; it’s much more convenient to turn bad times into good times than it is to wait for the good times and only do constructive things when everything else is going smoothly.

Photo by danepstein.

Willpower needs a metaphor, and it needs a metaphor that has something to do with how people really acquire it, none of this stuff like “iron will” or “inexhaustable drive.” Those not only sound unattainable, but they also don’t even sound very fun. Real willpower is actually pleasant to have, doesn’t require bionic implants, and in many ways is exactly like owning a dog.

Practically anybody can be a successful dog owner if they really want to be: you don’t have to have any special qualifications. This is not to say it’s always easy: it’s just doable. After all, the things you have to do to successfully own a dog are:

1) Actually want to get a dog,
2) Understand how to take care of your dog, and
3) Do a few simple things on a daily basis–like feeding the dog and going for walks

Similarly, the only things you need to do to be motivated to do a particular thing, or to have willpower in a particular area, are

1) Actually want to pursue the goal,
2) Understand how to take care of your motivation, and
3) Do a few simple things on a daily basis–like visualizing where you’re going and and maintaining a feedback loop

Even though self-motivation requires getting several things right at once, and while it does take a continued time commitment, it really doesn’t take heroics. You keep at it every day, even though sometimes you succeed and sometimes you fail (like accidentally leaving the door open so the dog gets out). You keep things in perspective, deal with problems as they come up, and try to learn from your mistakes. Sure, you’ll need to take time out of your day to keep on track. And sure, you’ll probably need to learn some skills, like idea repair, mindfulness, and visualization … just like taking care of a dog means taking a little time out of your day and requires learning how much to feed it, how to keep it from chewing up your favorite shoes, and when to take it to the vet.

Speaking of which, dog ownership also gives us some guidance about what to do if motivation falters–if the dog gets sick. First of all, observe the symptoms: what’s wrong? When did it start? Are there any patterns to it?

Second of all, and dogs are pointing out something very important here, if your dog gets sick, you don’t abandon it (unless you are a heartless fiend): you pay more attention to it. You take it to the vet, give the deadly nightshade plant away to a single, petless neighbor, and offer your dog some extra attention. The same thing applies to your motivation, with the wonderful difference that instead of eventually getting old and slow, your motivation will just get stronger the longer you have it.

If we expand the idea for a minute to say that willpower is like having a pet, and that every different goal is like a different species of animal, we get a better picture of why we don’t try to simultaneously adjust our lives to, for example, a new boxer and a new snake. There’s enough to do when adopting just one species at a time: once the puppy is comfortably settled, there will be plenty of time to go shopping for heat lamps.

Dog in snow photo by digital_image_fan
Dog and snake photo by b.frahm

I’ve been particularly looking forward to the sleep chapter in John Medina’s book Brain Rules (one of my current reading books) because I was interested to know once and for all how much sleep I needed. Was 8 hours really the magic number? What were the consequences of averaging, say, 7 hours, or 6? What about naps? I was interested in knowing how sleep affects our brains so that I could begin to see how it might affect self-motivation.

The answers were very helpful in some ways and completely unhelpful in others. What are the findings about how much sleep we need? Research so far seems to say that there is no definite number, and sleep needed varies widely from person to person. Some people (who have a condition called “healthy insomnia”) only need 4 or 5 hours a night and don’t seem to suffer any ill effects. Kids going through puberty definitely need more, preferably in the morning. There also seem to be genes that determine whether someone is a morning person (a “lark”), a night owl, or (like most of us) a “hummingbird,” which is to say someone with a “normal” sleep schedule. Sleep needs and daily schedules change as a person ages, too.

Too little sleep has serious costs
But one very clear finding across the board is that not getting enough sleep actively sabotages the brain’s abilities. As Medina puts it, “Sleep loss hurts attention, executive function, immediate memory, working memory, mood, quantitative skills, logical reasoning ability, general math knowledge … manual dexterity … and even gross motor movements.” Also, interrupted sleep or inadequate sleep severely limits our ability to remember things we learned that day, increases stress, and causes effects that mimic accelerated aging. Not getting enough sleep even forces the body to crave sugar while reducing our ability to make good use of sugar when we get it, playing havoc with healthy eating.

Figuring out your own sleep needs
Most of us already knew that shorting ourselves on sleep was bad (though maybe we didn’t realize it was that bad). But how do we figure out how much sleep do we actually need to not condemn ourselves to tired, inattentive, grumpy days? The best answer I can give is that we probably already know. If you wake up feeling overtired, it’s probably no secret to you that you could use more sleep. Some of us treat sleep as expendable if something else important is going on, but since even small sleep shortages can have a major impact on performance, we may be more effective if we get the right amount of sleep even though that takes away from the waking hours in which we can actually get things done. If you find yourself adding in extra “down time” during the day because you’re tired, or making mistakes, being distracted, or having trouble getting things done because of a sleep debt, then the “bonus time” you’re getting by cutting out sleep–and possibly more time besides–may be getting used up by the problems caused by not getting enough sleep. In other words, shorting ourselves on sleep is both unpleasant and unproductive.

The need for naps is built into our genetic code
Pretty much everyone, it turns out, is programmed to need about a half-hour nap in the early afternoon, although some of us need it more than others. This isn’t just an artifact of not getting enough sleep at night: it’s a normal part of the sleep-wake cycle in human beings. Many of us won’t have the option of getting this extra sleep on a regular basis, but it may be worth experimenting with it when you do have the freedom to try and seeing if it doesn’t give you a lot more energy and attention. In one study, pilots who took a 26-minute afternoon step performed 34% better than pilots who didn’t. That’s a big improvement!

At the very least, it’s best not to schedule things that require a lot of attention in the early afternoon if you can help it.

Sleep and self-motivation
How does this affect self-motivation? Pretty profoundly, it turns out. Self-motivation requires knowing what you need to do, paying attention to your priorities, devoting a little time and focus to moving forward, being self-aware, and solving problems that come up with your process. All of those things are compromised when we short ourselves even an hour or two of sleep a night. So with enough sleep, self-motivation will tend to get noticeably easier.

I know you will have gotten the advice to “get plenty of sleep” time and time again, and if you aren’t currently getting enough, it might be because you are trying to get enough time in the day to accomplish everything that’s important to you. Only you can judge whether or not a little sleep-deprivation is worth being less intelligent and less capable while the sleep debt lasts. In the past, at least, I’ve often gone with a little sleep deprivation in the service of what sometimes seems like a good cause. Put in this light, though, I’m not sure I want to continue to make that kind of a bargain. I’m beginning to think of it this way: if I can accomplish everything I already accomplish without always getting enough sleep, how much better could I do if I were actually operating at full capacity? It’ll be worth finding out.

By the way, if noise interferes with your sleep, or if you just want a little more silence in your life, you might want to try any brand of soft, foam earplugs with rounded ends (above). I’ve found these very helpful, especially for sleeping when someone else has to get up early, during travel, working while someone’s watching a TV or listening to music nearby, concentrating while my neighbor is mowing the lawn, etc. I haven’t been as happy with plastic earplugs or with the kind that are made of harder foam and don’t have a rounded end. Fortunately, the earplugs don’t block out sound completely, so it’s still possible to hear (faintly) a phone ringing or an alarm going off even while wearing them.

Photo by tempophage

Nancy Fulda is a writer, editor, entrepreneur, Web developer, and mom who created AnthologyBuilder, a service that lets people edit their own anthologies of short fiction by professional writers. Creating this service from scratch took a lot of doing, and is a useful illustration of tackling a big task with no immediate payoffs along the way. I interviewed Nancy about that process and about some of the unexpected insights into her own motivation that came out of it. The rest of this post, except for headings, is in her own words.

The idea: a site where people could create their own anthologies
AnthologyBuilder is a custom anthology web site. Let’s say your nephew is fascinated by genetics and asks you for stories about geneticists. You’re not likely to find anything like that at the bookstore, but you can come to AnthologyBuilder.com and choose stories for inclusion in a mail-order book.  You can pick your own title and cover art, too. The finished anthology costs $14.95 and looks just like any other book.

I started AnthologyBuilder because I was tired of buying magazines and books where only a few of the stories interested me.  “What I want,” I said to my friends, “Is a do-it-yourself anthology web site that let’s me pick whatever stories I want.”  The response was so overwhelmingly positive that I decided to build it.

I had a pretty good idea what the initial effort would be.  I was a bit surprised, later, to discover how much work goes into maintaining and improving a project like this on a daily basis.

The first major obstacle
The hardest part was finding a programmer.  I have some background in computing, so I had a pretty good grasp on what the site would need to do, and I was surprised and dismayed to discover that there weren’t any programmers willing to take on the job for rates we could afford.

“It’s not that hard,” I kept griping to my husband.  “I don’t know why no one wants to do this.  I could almost program it myself.”

And in the end, that’s what I did.  It required teaching myself PHP, figuring out how to encode PDF documents, learning to purchase and administer web hosting, and brushing up on internet commerce, but after three months of work, the first prototype of the web site was ready to go.

How she stayed motivated
I think what helped most was keeping the Big Picture in mind.  At the beginning, the web site wasn’t much to look at, but I tried to see it for what it could be instead of for what it was.

I made mistakes, of course; everyone does the first time they try something new.  But I tried not to let those mistakes discourage me.  I’d tell myself, “It’s ok, I can fix this.  It will all work out in the end.”  And so far, it has.

Starting a business from home, with kids
The home environment [was] an ideal work locale for me; I have the mornings to myself while the older kids are in day care.  Afternoons get a bit crazy sometimes, but I often manage to sneak in an hour or two of work during the afternoon.

I tend to focus on one task at a time.  There’s a weird sort of rhythm that I get into when programming.  Some days, I can code up several web pages in far less time than it takes me to write a page of text.

My most productive work times — and this is going to sound odd at first — happened on the days when I spent the most time with the kids.  Happy kids make for better work sessions, you see.  Crabby children interrupt me more often, and I can’t concentrate well because I’m too busy feeling guilty.  I learned pretty quickly to put the kids’ needs first even if there were five urgent emails in my in-box.  I get more work done that way.

Dealing with distractions
One of the biggest hindrances at first was the number of internet communities I belonged to.  I enjoy hanging out with my online friends, and I’d spend up to two hours catching up on blogs and discussion forums before actually settling into the work day.

After a while it became apparent that I was going to need to change something.  It took some effort, but I finally convinced myself that I didn’t have to stay up-to-date on every thread of every discussion forum.  In real life, I miss conversations all the time, so why should I feel the need to be a part of every single thing that happens online?

I also learned that I prefer to take care of the ‘little’ tasks of the day before settling into the ‘big’ one.  By ‘little’ tasks I mean things like answering emails, paying the bills, and so forth; individual items that take less than five or ten minutes to accomplish.

I used to be so enamoured of the current project that I’d push all that little stuff aside and dive right into the ‘real work’.  The problem with that was that all those unfinished tasks weighed on my mind.  It was like a mountain of work hanging over me, this big dreadful pile of Things That Needed Done, and it sapped my energy like a vampire.

The thing is, that huge dreadful mountain tasks seldom took more than an hour to complete.  I learned that if I cleared that stuff off my plate first, I’d face the rest of the day with only a single (albeit large) task looming over me.

How things changed once the business was launched
AnthologyBuilder seems to run in one of two modes: “Coasting” and “Renovation”.

In “Coasting” mode I spend 5-10 hours per week on housekeeping tasks: reading submissions, processing orders, responding to customer emails, and so forth.  AB goes into Coast mode whenever life gets frantic.  It’s a comfortable, familiar pattern that requires little emotional or intellectual investment.

“Renovation” mode comes along every two or three months and tends to last for about a month.  This is where I implement new features, run promotions, rework the site design, and otherwise try to push the site to its next level of potential.  Renovation mode requires 15-30 hours per week and sucks up a lot of brainspace.

When I’m in Renovation mode, I’m bursting with excitement and new ideas.  I’ll find myself jotting notes down during breakfast or planning a new feature while playing with the kids.  This saps energy and attention away from the family, which is why I try not to let Renovation mode continue for too many weeks in a row.

I envision my various projects (AB, family, work-for-hire, and so forth) as a connected system, kind of like push-buttons that pop up when one of the other buttons is pressed down.  Whenever one project is the center of attention, all the others are Coasting.  I try to swap it around and make sure every project gets its fair share of attention over time.

Sometimes I wondered whether AnthologyBuilder was unfairly sapping resources the family needed elsewhere.  Every time I discussed it with my husband, though, we both felt strongly that we should stick with it.  So we made adjustments and kept plugging along.

I would have abandoned the project without a second thought if I’d felt that AB was causing too much stress or that the family structure was cracking under the strain.  I firmly believe that knowing when to let go of a good idea is just as important as knowing when to snatch one up and run with it.

Advice for entrepreneurs
I’m often asked what advice I’d give to young entrepreneurs.  Two thoughts spring immediately to mind:

(1) Just because an idea doesn’t pan out doesn’t mean it was a mistake to try it. You gain skills along the way that will help make subsequent projects successful.

Perhaps more importantly, trying and failing brings a peace of mind that failing to try never can.  Okay, so it didn’t work out, but at least you know that.  You won’t spend the rest of your life wondering what might have happened if you’d tried.

(2) Don’t risk anything you’re not willing to lose.  This includes, but is not limited to, money.

Family picture courtesy of Nancy Fulda.

It can be truly humiliating. Maybe it’s never happened to you, but it certainly happens to a lot of us: you’ve been grappling with something for years–your weight, organization, starting a novel, getting the house in order, changing how you act with other people–and a day comes when you’re inspired to do something about it. So you do it! You change your eating habits or start running or create a strict rule for dealing with all incoming e-mails. Then a week or two pass, and you find you’re gone off the rails: your eating habits are worse than ever, or a busy day put you behind on your organization and you never caught up, or the trick you were going to use to remember people’s names has been forgotten itself. What happened?

There’s a simple answer to this and a more detailed answer. The simple answer is that we start things in different circumstances than we continue them in. A New Year’s resolution made at a party with friends on a full stomach (for example) turns into a thankless, lonely grind week after week, and it loses a lot of its sparkle that way.

Don’t worry: the detailed answer is much less depressing than the simple answer. But the simple answer reminds us of something essential: inspiration may drive us to start new things, but it’s our own efforts to rise above obstacles that get us through in the end.

Certainly there is such a thing as a badly-chosen goal, or a good idea for a goal that’s not practical at the moment. But for goals that are worthwhile, there are at least seven ways something that started well could run into trouble. Here’s what those seven kinds of problems are, and how to get past them.

1) The novelty wears off
Annoyingly, somewhere in our evolution we acquired a built-in trait that only allows us to enjoy something for a little while unless it changes. A dish that tastes “amazing” on the first bite and “really good” when we have it again in a few days continues to wane in amazingness as long as we keep eating it regularly. This is known as “hedonic adaptation,” and it means that anything that was delightful and new and exciting eventually becomes old hat unless there’s something renewing that excitement. When we first take on new goals, it helps a lot to understand that we need to not only take the steps to reach our goal, but to keep actively renewing our enthusiasm.

2) Our mood changes
Everyone has better and worse days, days when we feel we can do more and days when we’re mainly just trying to keep things from going wrong. What may seem easy to do on a good day can be the last thing we care about on a bad day. Fortunately, we can stop having bad days if we try, but it also helps to use tactics like rule-making and decision logging to keep ourselves happy with our goals.

3) Things get harder; complications arise
Sometimes we’ll start pursuing a goal when things are going well, but then things get harder: there are new demands on our time or finances or attention, for instance. It may become harder to find time to follow our goals. When the going gets tough, the tough organize and prioritize so they won’t lose track of what’s most important. Goals that aren’t nurtured through busy times tend to get lost in the shuffle.

4) We begin to forget
Goals and new habits need to be nourished and maintained by a process of regular feedback. If we don’t regularly remind ourselves of what we were doing and review our progress, our goals become vague, distant, and easy to forget. Once we’re no longer actively thinking about what we want to achieve, we’re sunk: those habits aren’t going to change themselves. Focusing on our priorities consistently can save them from being forgotten.

5) Just when we start flying, someone shoots us down
There will always be naysayers, whether they’re people who feel threatened by another person’s success or people who genuinely want what they think is best for you but aren’t ready to support your choices. If any of them get to you, figure out what it is they’ve told you that has sunk in and use idea repair to pull it up by the roots. Recruit them to your cause or harden yourself to their criticism: we’re each responsible for our own lives, so while it makes sense to consider good advice, if we’ve considered it and decided to go a different way, we don’t need to consider that same advice again: we’ll need our energy for other things.

6) A new interest takes over
Since things we’re getting used to become less exciting through hedonic adaptation, we human beings are seekers after novelty. This can be fine in a lot of circumstances, but not when it repeatedly derails us on old projects by tantalizing us into taking on new ones. We generally have the resources to undertake only one new thing at a time. After we’ve been in the groove on one goal for a long time, we might consider adding something else, but add something else too early and like it or not, the old goal will very likely go by the wayside. When you’re tempted by a new direction, think carefully about what you’ve invested in the goal you’re already working on and about why it’s important to you in the first place. Of course we have to keep some flexibility, but guard your progress jealously against all but the most important replacement goals.

7) Just announcing it was enough
One interesting psychological study with law students found that students who announced a study goal tended to do worse at achieving that goal than students who kept their goals private. One of the reasons this may be happening is that sometimes, a person can get enough positive feedback for just committing to something that they don’t feel the need to actually follow through–and very often the people who are there to encourage us when we start something aren’t going to be looking over our shoulders to make sure it gets done. Not following through under these circumstances isn’t so much a character flaw as it is a logistical error. Who knew that we would feel so much more satsified and resolved with our current situation just by announcing the intention to change? The enthusiasm for the actual change leaks away, and we may not even realize it’s happening.

If you might be in danger of falling prey to the announcement trap, the safest course is to only announce your goals to people who will be holding you accountable to them. Note that this is hard to do over the Internet; it’s too easy to avoid the subject, or the place where you announced it, or to say vaguely that you’re working on it. Someone who’s going to greet you in person every morning and say “Hey, how’s the novel coming?” is going to be much more help than an online friend who asks the same question, and someone who doesn’t listen to the answer isn’t going to be helpful to you regardless of where they are.

Starting new things and failing at them is so common in human experience that we tend to mark it down as a character flaw, to think that we “just don’t have the willpower.” Fortunately, willpower isn’t so much something you have as something you do. By anticipating the efforts we’ll need to make to move forward with our goals and by proactively handling the kinds of problems we’ve just talked about, we can keep ourselves on track and find ourselves just as committed on day 100 or day 1,000 as we were on day 1.

Photo by greekadman