Motivation - where do you find it?

Homesteading & Country Living Forum

Help Support Homesteading & Country Living Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
angie_nrs

angie_nrs

Awesome Friend
Neighbor
HCL Supporter
Joined
Dec 8, 2017
Messages
8,029
I thought this might be a fun thread to toss out there. Some days I have a difficult time trying to get motivated to do things that need to be done. Some days I'm on a constant run and doing all kinds of things. Other days, I struggle to get out of the chair.🪑 Most of the time, I fall somewhere in between. I find that I definitely have more energy when I eat properly and get adequate sleep. Sometimes I'll read a thread here that lights my fire. For example, I'll read a post of someone canning something or even just cleaning up a shelf and it motivates me to do the same.👍

What I usually do is make lists. For some odd reason, crossing things off a list makes me feel more accomplished. Usually my lists take several days to get done b/c I also do things that are not on the list (life). I'll reward myself with downtime like book time or computer time if I do A, B, and C. When I don't get through it, I don't get the reward time until after dinner. I also hate a kitchen table that's not cleared off, so I'll put my paperwork that needs to be done on the table. In doing that, I usually get it cleared off much more quickly.

The dogs are a motivation to get outside b/c they need to be walked, regardless if I want to or not.🐕‍🦺

My mind games work most of the time, but when I put something on the list I REALLY don't want to do, I dance around it like you wouldn't believe.🕺 LOL! I hate getting tax stuff together for example and I procrastinate until finally I can't handle the sress in my brain anymore and just get it done. I reward myself by giving myself permission to do whatever I want to for a full day like Sunday. Funny though, I usually get a lot of stuff done on that supposedly 'off' day.

I've always been a person who enjoys play/relax time much more if work was done to 'deserve' it. I guess it was just the way I was raised. I'm curious if anyone else uses these types of mind games to get things done.
 
angie_nrs said:
Some days I'm on a constant run and doing all kinds of things.
Click to expand...
Most days, that's me. I'm on fire most days with the occasional Sunday that I make myself sit.
angie_nrs said:
What I usually do is make lists. For some odd reason, crossing things off a list makes me feel more accomplished.
Click to expand...
Me too. I love crossing things off my list for the day. Have one of those large daily calendar books.
angie_nrs said:
I also do things that are not on the list
Click to expand...
I add those to the list so I can cross them off. LOL
angie_nrs said:
when I put something on the list I REALLY don't want to do, I dance around it like you wouldn't believe.
Click to expand...
Guilty. Mostly adulting things like business phone calls. I finally do a lot of them in one day.
angie_nrs said:
I've always been a person who enjoys play/relax time much more if work was done to 'deserve' it. I guess it was just the way I was raised.
Click to expand...
Agree! Work first then play. Pay bills then buy food. How I was raised.

To answer your original question, I thank (and sometimes blame) God. He has given me my DH and animals to take care of and I take that responsibility very seriously--and literally.
Since I started taking L-Lysine, I don't get sick, so kind of lost that down time. My life is pretty much full time, anyway. That's fine with me!
 
I too am a list maker, the more I cross off the more I want to do!! The critters are a huge motivation! They need love, attention, food. The donkey and dog love to be brushed and walked. Money is a motivator, got to go out and make it to live! And worst of all, lol, I am the controlling bossy type! (Really Pearl, we never would have guessed)! So making sure everything is done, done correctly, in place, and running smoothly really motivates me!!😉😃
 
Well, Angie nrs motivated me to sit and do some reading time daily again...I'm well in to the Left Behind Series. And my pork canning didn't look that great, didn't fill up the jars enough and it looked pathetic, but Snappy making her own dogfood made me realize that I just made dogfood for the first time, so there's that. Weedy is motivating me to clean out closets, and I will get to that, soon.
You guys here are all motivators.
 
When I wasn’t working full-time I could get a lot of projects and cleaning done. Now I struggle even on my days off. I’ve been trying to come up with new lists, rewards, motivations, etc and started researching and reading on what I’m missing. Mostly it is commitment and discipline on my part. I get psyched up for getting something completed and then lose the gumption. I need to push myself harder. Sometimes I just can’t and I hate saying it, but that’s ok.
Setting deadlines works only sometimes for me. Being alone now has made it even harder.
I’ve got lots of lists and things I need and want to accomplish. I’ve thought about asking forum members if anyone wanted to have a group going for encouragement on getting things done but I’m not sure how committed to that I would be. 🤣🤣🤣
 
It is terrible trying to motivate by yourself. My motivation comes from knowing that someone else is doing something. Either hearing about it or seeing it.
I have a hard time getting organized enough to get something done with husband's crazy medical schedule. So now I try to break up a big project into a lot of smaller ones. Makes the house messier, but if I at least get the things out on a project I'm working on, it's there to do just a little more.
 
ClemKadiddlehopper said:
If it's outside work of any kind, or animals I can work all day. All I have to do is look out the window or step outside.

If it's indoors, I force myself to look under the bed. If I find dust bunnies, I go outside.
Click to expand...
At least yours are bunnies, I have Dust Rhino's :p
 
I too am a list maker. That isn't necessarily a motivator for me though as much as a focus tool.
As far as motivation, I've recently discovered that I like watching/hearing how to clean mostly clean houses rather than those nasty hoarder style houses as motivation to clean. I must think my house isn't bad when watching the hoarder ones, but watching the clean and shiny houses makes me want my house that clean.
As far as motivation for other things, I will say it's more a case of inspiration - I see a neat garden feature and even if totally different might get busy in the garden. Or sometimes if my brain is going, I will pick a project and make myself stick to that one project so I don't get sidetracked (me sidetracked??? 🤪)
I do find that I need down time. Hubby is more like a little kid in that he goes until he crashes. I need a mental break periodically then do much better getting back at things. I don't necessarily reward myself.
Oh, those tasks that we like to avoid (yeah, I have them too) - I say eat dinner with them. What I do is set it at my place at the dinner table. Drives me bonkers until I deal with it - so it gets done.
 
Probably my biggest single chore around here is fence repairs in the spring. I usually start at the north west corner and work south, then east. I like to follow the snow line up hill as it melts. That way I can keep my drinks cold as I'm working. It usually takes me about 2 months to finish repairs. The snow, downed trees and the elk usually take out a lot of fence. Last fall the Forest Service controlled burn burned up a lot of fence posts on one section. So, my motivation is to get this done before I can go fishing.
 
I got this little one sitting on my lap right now that wants a bottle every 4 hours. And trust me, he already can tell time at maybe a week old now.
 

Attachments

  • IMG_0989.jpeg
    IMG_0989.jpeg
    1.1 MB · Views: 0
I have internal and external motivation sources.

Internal
If I find a project interesting, I am psyched to get it done. Particularly if it involves a new skill or ability.

External
Keeping the greenhouse going is an example. Gotta do it or things die. Keeping The Princess happy or I die ;) .

But having just recently retired, I am motivated to not be motivated as much as possible.:rolleyes:

Ben
 
Haertig said:
I am not motivated enough to even make a list of things I need to do, or tell others in this thread how I motivate myself to do them. True story!

I'm hoping others will give some good tips in this thread that I can use. Motivation is not my strong suit at the moment.
Click to expand...
Motivation comes from within or by the lash.

Ben
 
dademoss said:
At least yours are bunnies, I have Dust Rhino's :p
Click to expand...

I dusted once. It all came back. I'm not falling for that again.

I too make lists but mostly so I don't forget, not as a motivator. Money has always been a great motivator for me. If you want me to do something, pay me.

Another internal motivator for me was a quote from Abraham Lincoln: "If you are going to be something be a good one," That always rang true to me, so whatever I did or wherever I worked I was motivated to be a good one.
 
Neb said:
But having just recently retired, I am motivated to not be motivated as much as possible.:rolleyes:

Ben
Click to expand...
Ah, you are following in my footsteps! 😀
It takes a lot of 'not-work' to achieve my high level.🤪
The only thing I am motivated to do is, watch my investments.
Then when I ignored them for a week, I found they were still just fine without me:rolleyes:.
 
Last edited:
Finding the right motivation is key. After I first had to leave work, I lost everything, savings went to doctors, career out the window… had several really bad years on top of a debilitating illness, cfs. I moved into my grandfathers old house, the linoleum floor was old and in bad shape. No matter how bad my days I refused to lay in bed like most with cfs. But I sat in my chair almost every waking moment. My feet finally wore through the old linoleum to the concrete slab underneath.

My foot prints made me think, a realization slowly crept into my mind... If I stayed in this chair I was going to die here. And in the not to distant future either, it became very clear. I still didn’t know how to get out of my chair, just knew I had too, I had motivation!!!

For several more years I looked down at my foot prints each day. And each day I got up and did something, didn’t care how small, no matter how bad I felt. Even today I still have this illness but I’ve learned how to have some kind of life despite it. But I still need motivation at times…

I have new floors now, foot prints are long gone. But i had this picture of the floor in front of my old chair. It’s now a wallpaper on my desktop computer, one of dozens… but I still see this photo once or twice a week, a reminder...

Display set 01 ( 3)a.jpg
 
Last edited:
Wow! A lot of motivated people here? Shouldn't really come as a surprise, since the goal of "homestead" is a lofty one nowadays.

I've always been highly energetic and motivated. Maybe to a fault, like OCD? So when I went through a week long intensive training on "world class planning and scheduling" I was really hooked.

The class was put on by a real exceptional trainer. He was working as a consultant and got paid based on his resulting improvements to key performance indicators (KPI). His "silver bullet" was planning and scheduling. I feel so lucky to have partaking in that, and it is something that I have applied to my farm business that gives me a competitive advantage.

To pick out a key component of that system, is the idea that you can't manage what you don't measure. So often times, my motivation starts with thinking about what I would like to improve on and how can I measure it. Once I've figured out how to measure then it's a timeline of applying strategy and measuring results.

Note: this DIDN'T work when I was going through puberty! Every time I measured, it got smaller?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top