So lets be honest, there is no magic elixir that will make you attack your unpleasant tasks with enthusiasm and vigor and suddenly decide you love them.

HOWEVER, there are definitely some tricks you can use to make doing them easier, require less sheer willpower and generally feel less like poking yourself in the eyes with a hot fork.

Get really in tune with your ‘why’

Whats the reason behind why you are working towards this goal or doing this task?

No, the real reason…?

When we are not being truly honest with our reasons, its really hard to harness the power of your why and use it to motivate yourself. You can tell yourself you are starting your business to help others or volunteering at your children’s school because you enjoy it, but if the real #1 reason is freedom from a work schedule or that you feel obligated to help out, you are going to find yourself dragging.

Really connecting with your why is also going to help you understand if this goal or task is aligned with your priorities and if its really worth your time.

Sometimes its a matter of just identifying your true why, and sometimes you will realize that you are not doing it for the right reasons and its time to move on.

Do them first

Brain Tracy, smart man that he his, teaches a concept he calls Eat That Frog. Basically it states that you should do the most important task (and often the one you least like doing) first. Get it done right away and you will feel much more motivated and energized the rest of the day.

It also ensures that you actually get it done. As the day goes on your self discipline fades and things come up that distract you or causes you to make excuses.

Get grateful

You know how the tiniest thing can piss you off when you are in a negative state of mind? Well the opposite works as well. When you are feeling blessed and grateful for what you already have in your life, you will find it easier to get the less then pleasant tasks done.

If practicing gratitude is completely new to you, start small with listing off 1-3 things you are grateful for each day. As time goes on, the effect compounds and you will be able to list more and more and you will also find yourself regularly noticing all the awesome things in your life and feeling all the feels of gratitude.

Build accountability into your plan

Whether the things you struggle to get yourself to do are part of your goal plan, or just every day obligations, make sure you have considered what you will do to hold yourself accountable before you start.

Waiting until you are in the moment and trying to convince yourself to do something is almost useless. When you create your goal plan or plan your week, decide what you are going to do to hold yourself accountable in advance. Multiple layers of accountability built in when you are still motivated is so much more powerful then just winging it.

So that may look like using a planner (check out this one that has a super effective accountability system build in), recruiting a friend you can call when your motivation flees you and having a gratitude or motivational playlist made and ready on your phone.

Reward yourself

Choosing a reward that aligns with your goal can be a super effective way to get you through the sticky moments. The more you want the reward the harder you will work to get it. Get yourself pumped up about it by creating a vision board or keeping pictures of it in places you look everyday, like your phone’s lock screen.

Just make sure the reward truly aligns with the goal, meaning, don’t use a box of donuts as a reward for loosing weight or buying an item you can’t afford as a reward for paying off debt.

If need be, put the control of getting this item into someone else’s hands so you are not tempted before you reach your goal or get your unpleasant tasks done.

Track your progress

Whats one of the most motivating things when you are trying to lose weight? Seeing how much you’ve lost, right?!

Find a simple way to track your progress so you can look back and see how far you have come. This is a great technique to use when you still have a long way to go to achieve the goal, project or task you are working on.

For example, if you have been working on your business on the side for 2 years now and still aren’t making regular income it can be super discouraging. So instead of looking at how far you have to go, keep a list of all the things you have done and all the ways you have grown or gotten better so far. Have you gone from being terrified of live video to hoping on anytime with barely an outline of what you are going to say? Have you learned how to collect e-mails, create funnels and attract people with freebies? Have you connected with a bunch of awesome entrepreneurs who are helping you through your struggles?

The key to getting yourself to do the hard or unpleasant stuff is basically 2 parts; 1 part motivation and 1 part automation. Find ways to keep yourself motivated, like playlists and looking at your progress or using vision boards and at the same time figure out how you can automate as much as possible so it takes the decision process out of it. When you leave room for a decision to be made (ie: will I do this or not) you up the chances of not getting it done. So create habits and build accountability within your goal plan or schedule that eliminate the option of deciding not to do it.

So while there is no magic self discipline pill, there are plenty of ways to get yourself to do the un-fun stuff without relying on pure willpower!

Jennifer

Need some extra help or motivation to achieve your goals? Join my Facebook group Goals for Greatness where you will find a ton of free tips and tricks to help you reach your goals, as well as an awesome group of ambitious, like minded people just like you there to support you along the way.

Staying power.

One of the things we struggle with the most. Setting the goal is the easy part. Even getting started is a breeze, with your new found motivation.

But when that initial motivation fades, what keeps you going?

Start with a plan

Trying to figure out each day what you need to be doing to make progress on your goals is a surefire way to get overwhelmed and discouraged. Its so much more work and the lack of planning and organization means that the actions you do end up taking are going to be random and not necessarily the right ones.

Make sure you have a detailed plan (at least for 90 days at a time) that is broken down into small doable tasks that you can schedule into your calendar. Knowing exactly what you need to do each day in advance makes it much easier to keep doing it as time goes on. Having a good plan also ensures that you make visible progress which is going to encourage you to keep at it.

Hold your horses

Remember the last time you started that intense workout program that had you working out 2 hours a day, 6 days a week? How long did you stick with it?

Racing out of the gate at break neck speed and letting the momentum build quickly so you reach the finish line faster is great in theory. In a perfect world, it would work because the faster you make progress initially, the more momentum you have to carry you to the end. The problem is that with all the responsibilities and such we have in our lives, its almost impossible to maintain that kind of pace.

Working towards your goals is going to take some hard work and discipline no doubt, but piling too much on your plate at once is going to make being consistent long term, really difficult.

Keep your goals close

When I was learning all I could about goal planning, one of the things I heard the most was that really successful people said they looked at their goals every single day. Doing this keeps your goals forefront in your mind and after a while, seeing them and working towards them becomes a regular part of your life.

So when something is an everyday part of your life, it requires less effort to do it consistently. This works even better if it becomes a true habit, because then it requires virtually no effort.

Make it a habit to read your goals every day. You can take a few minutes each morning to read your goal plans wherever you write them down (I highly recommend doing this in your day planner, as it is somewhere you look every day already – to find out more about the one I use click here) or write them out and post them in visible places around your home or work place.

Do one thing every day

One of the most effective things I have ever done to reach my goals is to do at least one small thing every day to make progress. Make that a goal in itself or just make it the way you work. When you plan out your goals, make sure you’ve broken down your goal tasks small enough so that they are small doable action steps, things are are easy to schedule into your day. That way its easier to schedule in at least one task each day, and on days when you have more time you can do several.

Whenever you don’t even have time for a planned task, ask yourself what you can do in the time you have. That may be only 30 seconds, but chances are, there is something that can be done that will move the needle. This may be as simple as visualizing reaching your goal, taking 3o seconds to look at analytics or research a book for a topic you want to learn about.

Build in accountability

This has got to be one of the BIGGEST things I see people struggle with when it comes to doing anything we want to, whether it is a goal or is simple something on our to-do lists. Heck, even things that we want to do for joy or because its our passion can be hard to make ourselves do sometimes.

Case in point:

Its currently winter as I write this and I really enjoy snowshoeing. We’ve had a winter with lots of snow but I’ve only been out once. Yes, I’m busy, I’ve got a lot of responsibilities and projects on my plate at the moment but just like with anything, the reasons we don’t do things we truly want to, are just excuses. We let ourselves make them because we leave room for them by not building in accountability.

When you create your plan for your goal, include ways to hold yourself accountable so that you don’t have to rely solely on will power to try to come up with things in the moment. Personally, I add my goal related tasks to my monthly and weekly to-do lists and I schedule them into my planner like appointments that I can’t skip. I also make it a rule that I have to complete these tasks before moving onto things I enjoy more or are easier to accomplish. Another super effective trick that I use is to assign due dates to specific tasks or groups of tasks, like a teacher would.

Whatever you use for accountability, just make sure its something that truly works for you and that you put it in place as you map out your goals.

Staying consistent doesn’t require a huge herculean effort everyday or a crazy level of self-discipline, rather its a combination of the little things that will have the greatest impact. Certainly effort and self-discipline are going to be necessary at times but so often, the extra time you take to build a plan and set up a system will make achieving your goals much easier and more likely to happen.

So concentrate on the little things and while you are planning, consider what you can do to help keep yourself accountable, before you even start actually working on your goals.

And before you know it, you’ll be as consistent as the sun.

Or almost. You are human after all and perfection isn’t the goal;)

Jennifer

Need some extra help or motivation to achieve your goals? Join my Facebook group Goals for Greatness where you will find a ton of free tips and tricks to help you reach your goals, as well as an awesome group of ambitious, like minded people just like you there to support you along the way.

Most of us probably know that we can’t get much done when we are distracted, but sometimes the reasons we are unproductive are a little harder to pinpoint because they are not directly related to what you are doing.

So what could be holding you back?

You don’t plan first

Making a plan before you start your day or a big task is key to making sure you are prepared for what you are going to do and it also helps you to identify in advance what road blocks might pop so that you can avoid them.

When we don’t plan in advance we get held up by these obstacles because we have to deal with them as they come up and it takes up precious time and energy.

Not only will planning make you more productive but using a planner to organize your life and map out your goals is essential for your success. Don’t have a planner? Find out more about the one I use here.

You don’t prioritize your health

This is one a lot of people don’t think about but makes so much sense once they realize just how much their health affects their productivity.

Its no wonder we struggle to get things done when our energy is low. Our mental and physical health has a huge impact on our energy levels and that is going greatly affect how much you get done.

Feeling tired, depressed or sick makes it (understandably) really hard to focus and get stuff done.

So take a look at your health; Do you get enough quality sleep?Are you eating mostly healthy foods and drinking enough water? Are you getting enough exercise? How is your mental health?

You are distracted

There are a million and one things that can distract us and while most of us are aware of the more obvious ones, there are some sneaky distractions you may not be considering.

Aside from your phone, noise and people, here are some things like your environment or something thats bothering you could be stealing your focus.

You have a few choices here, depending on the culprit: You can remove the distraction, remove yourself or just accept that there is not much you can do and show yourself some grace.

You have time blindess

So my husband is TERRIBLE at estimating how much time it will take him to do something. If he says 15 minutes, it usually takes about 45. And the crazier part? Once he is done, he still thinks it took 15-20 minutes, until he looks at a clock.

I recently heard that people who are chronically late actually have a difference in their brains that prevent them from estimating time properly. One study had a group of on-time people indicate when a minute had gone by and another group of chronically late people do the same. The on-time people clocked in around 97 seconds while the others at 1 minute 17 seconds. That may not sound like much but add that up over a day and it makes a huge difference.

So not only are chronically late people bad at estimating how much time it takes to do tasks, they don’t realize how quickly time is passing as well.

Which is why my husband is forever frustrated with how much he gets done at the end of each day.

So if you often find yourself taking way longer to do tasks then you think it should, this might be your problem. Start by timing yourself on tasks you do repeatedly and use those times when making your schedule so that you don’t overestimate what you can get done in a day.

Also, make sure to wear a watch or keep a clock or timer close by and make a habit of checking it every 30 minutes or so, so you don’t lose track of time.

You have unrealistic expectations

And sometimes the problem is that we just think we can get more done in a day because we think that if we concentrate hard enough that we can eliminate the distractions that routinely pop up in our lives, like kids and little emergencies.

That would be me. *sigh*

Which is why I have started implementing this rule: Pick no more then 3 tasks that MUST get done and put them on your to-do list for the day. (so this is not possible everyday, but most days)

Keep your to-do lists short and it will keep your productivity high because stressing about how little you are getting done, gets in the way of getting things done.

Jennifer

Need some extra help or motivation to achieve your goals? Join my Facebook group Organized for Success where you will find a ton of free tips and tricks to help you get your todo list done, find time for yourself and reach your goals, as well as an awesome group of ambitious, like minded people just like you there to support you along the way.