I’m one of those people who tends to jump right into a project with a lot of enthusiasm, hard work and big ideas. But also, with not enough planning and thinking through it. This leads most often than not to be completely burned out half way through the process, bringing depression, self doubts and the lot.
I had already recognised a few years ago, that short term projects do work best for me as the initial momentum is enough to get me to the end; we are talking monthly commitments tops. Although, even in those instances, sometimes my interest shifts after a few days or weeks.
I guess it is totally normal to feel like this at times, but I felt the need to dig a big deeper and figure out why this happens.
I recently started listening to some podcasts while driving back home after my morning school run, and a few weeks back I came across the Creative Pep Talks by Andy J. Miller. In one of the episodes (sorry couldn’t figure out which one was) he talked about the some of the key factors one should have to accomplish anything. And apart from familiar terms, like skills, planning, etc. the phrase the most resonated with me was “knowing the whys”. Knowing why you are doing some particular project, why you are committing to this particular job, why you do things the way you do it.
It is not always easy to answer, at least in my case, but asking oneself the question at the beginning of a project (and maybe writing it down) I think will help keeping in mind the end goal, and will serve as a motivation to get through the hard part of it.
When I started my #100daysofleaves, the idea was to, and I quote, “commit to something just for fun”. Well, the fun ended about half way through it, when I realised there were other things I wanted to do and spend time on. The motivation, the why, behind starting this project was not strong enough and not well thought to keep me afloat during the dry spell. We are now on day 64 out of 100, and I just posted on Instagram my group picture for the past 4 days….
Clearly I feel like there is no point in carrying on with this project, yet my tendency to self destruction and stubbornness is keeping me from leaving it.
I also feel that the failure for not keeping it up is equally depressing that the failure for doing a bad job. So there’s no win here.
However, finding new motivations, creating new goals and actually shifting the why of this commitment from “doing something just for fun” to “create something good everyday”, or “make a small leaf painting everyday”, could bring the spark back and help me reach the end in a much better state than I feel right now.
What keeps you motivated throughout a project? Any tips you want to share?
