How to Stay Self-Motivated and Find Focus
When you have only yourself to answer to, it’s really easy to put things off, make excuses, and get nothing done. Especially when waiting on things to happen, and people to get back to you, shifting your focus from what might be over to something you can control is tricky.
Self motivation as a solopreneur
I’ve struggled with self-motivation since forever. In school, I was always leaving homework and revision to the last minute. In business, it was a similar story. Unless I was passionate about doing something, it would get left behind until there was no other option but to do it.
What didn’t help in business was the lack of accountability and deadlines. Real, tangible deadlines like tax returns were always submitted on time, but often on the last day. Much like in school, things with deadlines always got done, but I always pushed it close.
This meant that a lot of non-essential business projects and tasks were forever pushed back, often to the point that they no longer mattered.
When I had a team, I was suddenly in charge of not only motivating myself, but also all these other people. Unfortunately stress took over and I did a really poor job of both.
I was clearly lacking accountability but didn’t have the foresight to do anything about it.
I think different solo entrepreneurs need to find the source of accountability that works for them. In my situation, I think if I was working alongside someone, I would not only have the accountability to brief them about what I’ve done each week, but I would get motivation from seeing what they had achieved (and my competitive spark would make me want to do more).
Having a direct work to gain relationship may also be helpful. When I first launched my business, the profit I was getting from buying products and reselling them was going straight in my pocket. Having full control over the process and a direct relationship between work done and money in my pocket was a really powerful motivator.
As the years passed and other people got involved in different parts of the business, the motivation died down. I think a lot of factors came into this, but one was definitely that there was no longer a clear and direct distinction between work done and what I earned.
Finding some self-motivation
I need to stop twiddling my thumbs. Recently, I’ve poured my attention into a few leads that might go somewhere, and found myself doing nothing except watching my inbox, waiting for a reply.
This is completely my fault. For a start, I had unrealistic expectations about the speed I’d be able to get into consultancy work. My plan was to make some money, get comfortable, then start working on a SaaS business in the background. But the last couple of weeks have passed, and I haven’t been thinking about SaaS, I’ve just been blindly following my plan, which has resulted in me waiting for people, and probably coming across as a bit too eager.
I just want to sign contracts and start projects, but those things will come with time. While waiting for such opportunities to emerge, I need to keep myself busy.
I think the best way forward is to think about the future and my end goal, and do things that help support that.
My end goal being to have a SaaS business (obviously).
To support that, I’ve gone through my list of business ideas and ranked each idea, with a view to take the best idea out of the ones that would be easiest to build, and importantly, would be useful to have in my life, and just build it.
To be clear, I don’t agree with building an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) without first doing very thorough market research and making sure there is actual market demand for the problem I’m trying to solve.
But this is killing two other birds with one stone: enabling me to learn a bit more about the full development process; and building something that I’ll actually be able to use in my day-to-day life.
‘Learn’ is the key word here.
I think it’s the best thing you can do while you’re in limbo.
I’m also going to find it about a zillion times more interesting to work on a passion project than twiddle my thumbs.
How to stay focused on tasks
Over the years I’ve tried a few different methods for staying focused on work, in particular big projects that take a lot of focus.
Honestly, I don’t think there is one perfect solution. I’ve tried many things that have worked for a bit but then the novelty of them wore off and I found myself ‘cheating’. I think it’s therefore best to keep using a method until its effectiveness wears off, then try something else.
Here are a couple of my current favourite ways to stay focused.
Pomodoro technique
The Pomodoro technique is great for large tasks, and especially great for large tasks you don’t want to start.
Simply pick a task, set a timer for 25 minutes and promise yourself that you’ll remain focused on that task until the timer runs out.
When the timer does run out, stop working. Find something else to do for 5 minutes, and importantly, don’t think about the task you were doing during your break.
Reset the timer and repeat the process, until the task is done. You’ll find you can work for much longer this way, as your brain gets much less fatigued than it would if you just sat down and worked on a task for hours.
Not only is the Pomodoro technique great because it helps you to split up a large task, but having those 5 minutes in between each section means you’ll get those really short tasks on your to-do list done too.
5 Things in 5 Days
This might be an actual technique that’s called something else. I just made it up a few weeks ago, but it’s been working pretty well for me.
Write down 5 tasks that you need to do, each with a deadline of at least 5 days away. These tasks can range in complexity, but each one needs to be achievable in a day (although ideally in a few hours).
At the start of each morning, depending on your other commitments that day and how you feel, pick a task. Even if you do nothing else that day, make sure you finish the task.
If you stick to it, during and after the 5 days you’ll feel a real sense of success and accomplishment.
This is a great way of getting rid of those pesky tasks on your to-do list that you keep putting off.
One thing at a time
I’m a guy who makes lists for everything. My to-do list is constantly being added to, ticked off, reshuffled and reorganised. I both love and hate it.
It’s great knowing exactly what I’ve ‘got on’, but it’s horrible looking at a huge list of tasks and figuring out where to start. It can be so demotivating to the point that I’ll look at it in the morning and just get stressed out by it, then not actually start on anything.
In these cases, the absolute best thing to do is to pick one thing, forget about everything else, and focus your attention on that and only that.
Or if it’s one of those days where you’re feeling really rundown and struggling to do anything…
…Rest!
Weekends exist for a reason. The solopreneur doesn’t have weekends, but that doesn’t mean you should work 24/7.
Everyone needs rest, and the worst thing you can do is to carry on going when you know you need some time off.
When my mind and body aren’t in sync, not quite working as they should, I take a day off. I do whatever the hell I like, trying to keep an open mind the whole day and not think about work.
I find rest & relaxation, when done right, really boosts creativity and helps me to see things from a different perspective. More than I care to admit, it completely changes my mind on things, in a good way.
Passive motivation
I think podcasts are a great tool to help motivate you when times are tough, and also when they aren’t.
The right podcast, that is. Too many waffle too much and aren’t very good.
One of the good ones is The Startup Ideas podcast by Greg Isenberg. I always find this podcast really stimulating, it gets my brain working and thinking about the ideas presented, which in itself I find motivational.
In the past, I was so motivated by a podcast episode that it encouraged me to take my business to the next level. One evening, I was working alone in the storage unit, moving stock from the loading bay to unit, labelling, packing. I felt quite lonely, I was cold, and the work was tedious. Listening to this episode spurred me on to push myself, grow my business quickly, and try to make my own impact on the world. A lot about it resonated with me at the time, but even if it didn’t, I still think it’s a great story that would’ve had a positive and motivational impact.
Member discussion