keep on plodding

I spent my last weekend Sitting. I cleaned up my room, dusted off my chair and flopped onto it to watch movies and TV. It felt...too good. I wasn't sitting. I was just Dead. That's what happens when you travel too long without rest. Remember Pheidippides.

It’s unfortunate that when we pursue a goal, our natural inclination is to chase it, as though it were running away from us. And one would be correct; the only way to chase something is to run faster than it is. But our goal isn't moving, and it's probably very far away. We run too fast, tire ourselves out early, and possibly succumb to sour grapes.

This seems to happen all the time. People will suddenly acquire a huge bout of motivation, and create epic scale projects that have people gasping in awe at the scale. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. In fact, I recommend that everyone have an epic scale project. Cal Newport of Study hacks explains better than I can.

Unfortunately, people often assume they will maintain their strong motivation throughout the entire project, and plan it as such. That every day, they will jump out of bed, eat spinach, climb mount everest, defeat communism and invent the question mark. But, that's preposterous. Motivation is a limited resource.

There's some easy solutions.

1. Break the goal into smaller bits to hack away at. For instance, before you "Make a legendary computer game", ask for opinions on your idea. Before you "Build the kids a treehouse", go buy some hammers and nails.
2. Take baby steps. It's not moving, so if you're moving even a snail's pace, you will reach it. Wanna run a marathon, but can't run 100m? Well, run 50m for starters, then take baby steps. Slow and steady wins this race.
3. Make a habit. The body needs motivation to do things that are new. But it doesn't need motivation to do things out of habit. Use your initial motivation to addict yourself to taking those baby steps. You should feel sick if you go a day without taking them.
   

More on breaking the goal up, taking baby steps and addicting yourself to things in future posts.

Links:

• Too much to do, but need a rest? Rest for 6 seconds.