How to fake motivation until you feel it

Motivation is a slippery thing. You have it…or you don’t. If you’re anything like me, you’ll find you have the motivation to do non-essential, but enjoyable, things, and no motivation to do things that are fundamentally necessary, but probably not particularly fun. If you find yourself in this boat, what can you do about it?

You might not want to fake motivation, but it’s a funny old thing. Once you gain momentum, even if you’ve just been pretending, you generate the motivation to continue!

Here are four ways to fake motivation until it appears on its own!

1 – And snap! The job’s a game!

Mary Poppins was onto something with this one. How can you turn the task you need to do into something you want to do? I particularly use this with writing. If I have chapters I need to edit, then these become levels – I can’t progress in ‘the game’ until I’ve successfully completed them.

The mindset of ‘necessary evil’ is a difficult one to break, and sometimes you can think your way around it by telling yourself it’ll be worth it when it’s done and out of the way. If that isn’t working, turn the chore into your Big Boss and go Chun Li on its ass.

2 – Treat yourself.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with incentivising yourself to complete a task. I’m certainly far more likely to do something if there’s cake at the end. Be strict with yourself – only ‘accept’ the reward if you actually did the work, and make sure the reward is appropriate to the task.

I find it difficult to work up the motivation to exercise, but promising myself cake for every successful Pilates workout is counterproductive at best. So if I won’t let myself buy new makeup until I’ve done a month’s worth of workouts, and I’ll only let myself buy new books when I’ve written so many chapters of my own work!

3 – Make a To Do list that’s actually achievable.

A lot of bloggers advocate the To Do list, and they also advocate that you do the smallest jobs first. It makes sense – the more you cross off the list, the more likely you are to keep going! It also gives you a greater sense of productivity if you can see what you’ve actually achieved so far, which is why I combine a To Do list with an I Did list, so I can see what I’ve done, particularly if I come across something that wasn’t on the To Do list but needed to be finished anyway.

Incidentally, I keep my To Do lists in Evernote so I can access them on every device.

But there’s no point in making a To Do list that you can’t finish. “Do housework” or “Complete research” are so vague, and sprawling, that you could argue they’ll never ultimately be finished. So focus on setting smaller targets that you can actually measure. “Do housework” might become four separate items, like “Sweep floors”, “Put clean laundry away”, “Dust living room” and “Clean kitchen”. That might make your list look longer but it makes it easier to tell when you’ve actually done those things.

You won’t need to fake motivation once you start seeing things being crossed off.

4 – Tell yourself you need to be motivated!

This one sounds hokey but it works, I promise! Simply tell yourself that you need to be motivated to complete the task. I often have work I don’t want to do because I’m not in the mood, or I have other things that also need to be doing, but I’ll just make myself sit down and do whatever it is that I’m putting off.

It’s the ultimate way to fake motivation.

I set aside a time limit, close Google Chrome (unless I’m doing internet-based research, in which case it’s quite handy) and get to work. You can combine this with incentives (“I’ll give myself twenty minutes to get started and then I can check Facebook for five minutes”) but whatever you do, just tell yourself that you need to be motivated, and focus.

Now pick something on your To Do List – or actually write one – and get cracking! Let me know how you get on in the comments below.