Productivity: how to motivate yourself

Hey pixels!! Working at home as a freelance it’s great in so many ways: you work at home or at your favourite café, you don’t have a boss or that annoying workmate near you…. But sometimes you just don’t feel motivated to work. Don’t worry about this: it happens to the best of us…

Specially when you work at home. Because if you have to leave your home daily it’s easier to get up and to stay motivated: you have to arrive on time to your office and you can’t spend all day looking at Facebook because you don’t work alone. So, you have to get up and work. But sometimes it’s a bit harder when you’re the boss but you feel lazy…

For this reason, today we’ll make a list of tips you can use to motivate yourself. Because you know, my happy pixels, motivation is not always easy. Just read and try your favourite ones!! Keep trying until you find the ones that work better for you!!

 

How to motivate yourself

Don’t think about it as a hard work. You’re doing what you love, not a boring office job. Remember you’ve chosen this work, it’s what you want to do. Probably if you compare it with a job that you really hate it will work. Or just thinking about your freedom: you’re in charge now. That means lots of obligations, I know, but you chose your schedule, where you work, how do you work… That’s the best, at least for me!!

Divide every task: create small, manageable tasks and goals. A big task can be terrifying, but if you divide it into small baby steps it gets easier. For example, writing a post can be divided: looking for ideas, write the text, make the recipe, take and edit the pictures… This sounds better!! And don’t worry, you don’t have to finish a big task in one day. You can look for the recipe and make it the next day, for example.

Listen to some good music while working. This is a good one for me, music motivates me. I think it’s a great advantage of working at home: no one is going to complain about the music you love.

Set a working schedule: a time to start and a time to quit. Let your collaborators know this schedule. Don’t work or answer work mails out of your work time. If you don’t do this, you’ll be working or thinking about work all day, every day. This is not healthy, my happy pixels, trust me.

Set break times. I rest about 10′ after 50′ work, but you can adjust this as you want. But it should be a real break: don’t look at your social media. Get up and walk a bit, if it’s a good day you can even go to the street and have a little walk. No one is going to judge you!! Actually almost anything will work. Some yoga poses, knitting…. just stop looking at your computer and thinking about the next awesome post you’re going to write or about your next awesome drawing…

Do it today. Because this boring task will still be that boring tomorrow, and you’re going to do it soon or later. Not everything is funny when you work at home. You still have to pay taxes, bills…. Horrible but necessary things. Do them now and you’ll be able to do something better after that.

Do some exercise. Sleep 7-8 hours every night. Eat healthy (I can help with that, just have a look around here, my friends). Having a healthy daily routine will help. Take care of yourself. And don’t be afraid of taking a free day if you don’t feel well. Working when you’re ill is never a good idea.

Read a bit every night. Reading is the best: it calms you down, it helps with lack of inspiration… The reading pros are endless. I can’t live without reading. Have you started our happy reading challenge? It’s not too late…

Give yourself some rewards. Not just for reaching your goals, but just for your hard work. I divide this rewards into: daily, weekly, monthly and yearly. You can enjoy your daily reward after finishing your daily tasks, for example. I don’t know if I’m explaining this thing right, so I’ll let you know my own rewards.

• Daily: now I go to the beach that’s at the end of my street. On Winter it can be having a conversation with a friend.
• Weekly: going to the cinema or to an art exhibition.
• Monthly: a Sunday brunch or a shopping morning.
• Yearly: a Summer trip (next month!!!)

Do you have any motivation tips to share with us, my happy pixels? How do stay motivated while blogging? Please, let me know in the comments below.

Photos source: Unsplash