Mastering Your Time: 4 Ways To Make Progress When Motivation Is Running Low

You have a free day.

You have your to-do list in hand.

What could go wrong?

I've spent so many hours at my desk, watching time fly by, completely amazed at how little I am getting done.

What's more, I would feel disappointed that I couldn't persuade myself to just get it done. I was convinced that the solution to an unproductive day was just more will-power - If it's hard, just tell your mind to get on with it! While this may work for some people some of the time, I prefer not to rely just on will-power.

After years of research coupled with trial and error I now bring to you my 4 favourite systems for getting a win when the game already seems lost:

1. Start the day before 📓

As soon as you sit down in the morning and start deliberating what to do with your day, you are immediately challenging your resolve, and if you are having a bad morning this is all to easy to decide that today is not the day for being productive.

In "Atomic Habits", James Clear drills down the importance of reducing friction for your actions. Try and prepare as much as you can in advanced so you will have less excuse to bail at the first hurdle. This can be as simple as setting up your desk with your computer the night before, but by making conscious decisions in advance you don't have to introduce that element of choice early on in your day.

To take this one stage further, before you go to bed, write down your main goals for tomorrow and then choose a daily highlight. This is a concept coined in the book "Make Time" that aims at ensuring progres sin the things that matter most to you. Just ask yourself “What would your future self want you to work on today?” and make this your daily highlight. This is a commitment that, no matter what, you will complete. Next, make an active decision the this will be the first thing you do when you sit down to work - no reviewing your list, no emails, no distractions. You will find that as soon as you move the point of decision to the day before, you are far more likely to get going first thing without procrastinating.

2. Turn your list into appointments 🗓️

You might be surprised to find out that just because you can fit your entire to-do list on to one page, it doesn't mean it is all doable in one day.

One way to help remedy this over-ambition, is to give each task an appointment on our calendar. By assigning an estimated time-slot for each item and populating them in your daily schedule, we will be able to visualise a far more realistic estimate of how much we can actually get done. This has the added advantage of pre-determining the order that we work through the list - one less distraction to deal with!

3. Pomodoro: Tomato-Powered Productivity 🍅

Sometimes a task can seem so large that you are put off before even starting.

When I have this feeling of overwhelm, I change my aim from task-based to time-based. The pomodoro technique is based on the idea of short periods of uninterrupted work, interspersed with obligatory breaks. The name comes from the Italian for tomato, because the inventor Francesco Cirillo used a tomato shaped timer when designing it. Using any timer, or the online version, set the timer for manageable periods of time (I use 25 minutes) with 5 minute breaks between sessions, and a longer 20 minute break every 4 sessions. Remember, this works best when you completely remove all distractions for during your 'on' periods.

I find the main advantage of this, is that you even in a situation when it's hard to measure your progress within a mammoth task, you can get that sense of achievement as you power through each time-block.

4. The 2 Minute Rule 🚀

We often underestimate the power of a rule.

Rules help up save time by deferring the decision-making to an earlier stage when we presumably had more time to establish this as a worthwhile principle. The 2-minute rule is one of my favourites.

This simple, yet powerful trick to make big progress with the little things. When daunted by your long to-do list, 'The small things often get neglected and putting them off can often have disproportionate consequences compared to the effort it would have taken to complete it - e.g. paying your electricity bill, shooting off an email to set a meeting... It also gives you that boost of making progress by letting you put that oh-so-satisfying tick next to all those items on your list (one of my guilty pleasures).

Let's be honest, there will always be days that are a 'write-off' and it's best you just accept this as a day 'off'. But many days, there is still hope, and the right technique is all that's needed.

These tools are there to help you get moving on those slower mornings.

Finding a way to way to make some progress when you can't be bothered can be the difference between building a habit of consistent progress, versus building a habit of giving up. To reference Atomic Habits again - "Every action you take is a vote for the person you want to become"