Here in the Automation section – we (the Zoomination team) are excited to introduce ideas that spur productivity. By productivity, we generally meaning “doing something helpful for the business” – better productivity meaning, doing less for a greater effect. Today’s discovery more or less comes from Mark Manson’s “Do Something Principle”, which flips our idea of motivation on its head. You normally think that in order to achieve something, you need to be motivated first to do it, right? But motivation can be a funny thing, because it’s simply a feeling that supposedly drives us towards a goal. When you don’t have any motivation, inspiration, ideation or proclivity to start creation – you may wind up distracting yourself.
And distraction can take shape in a billion ways (seriously.) In fact, distraction might take shape as justification – just look here:
- You discover that you need coffee, and you need eight of them, throughout the day.
- I need to answer these WhatsApps now…
- I really need to brush my teeth today, and by today, I mean now.
- You know what’ll get me motivated? A Youtube video – no no, a funny Youtube video. 2 hours of funny Youtube videos.
And you get the point? We try to motivate ourselves – but end up stalling the starting line. Mark says a helpful tip, involves simply starting!
He tells a story of how his math teacher in high school told him “Whenever you get stuck on a question, don’t just sit there – write the question out again.” This would spur him (and his brain) to start working – and it works!
Just “do something” on the topic of this thing you want to do. Your brain, you, don’t need to be specifically motivated to do this small thing – but by doing something – anything – will motivate you to take this task to the finish line. It doesn’t have to be great to start – but in order to be great, you need to start.
