I try to create an internal monologue that praises me for the things I *have* done and *have* taken care of, to balance out the auto-generated internal monologue that notices all the things that need to be done. Often these are pretty basic things ("You got to work on time! And you made your packed lunch yesterday, so it was right there and ready to take to work! Good job!").
It's not a strategy which solves everything (it's not like I magically have super-motivation to do everything because of it) but I think it's helped me quite a bit. It also gives me a way to admit to myself/notice when things are harder than average ("You got up on time even though you're feeling ill and headachey, that was a good move."). Without that kind of mechanism I tend to always expect myself to operate at peak efficiency, which is really unrealistic and unhelpful.
I'm also trying to train myself into thinking that there *are* some categories of task where it's much better to do a half-assed job than to do nothing at all (mostly I try not to start something unless I think I can finish it properly, but this isn't always helpful). E.g. a partly-cleaned kitchen is better than a completely-messy kitchen, even if it's not as good as a totally-clean kitchen. And it makes it easier to get to a totally-clean kitchen sometime in the future.
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Date: 2013-04-07 03:44 pm (UTC)It's not a strategy which solves everything (it's not like I magically have super-motivation to do everything because of it) but I think it's helped me quite a bit. It also gives me a way to admit to myself/notice when things are harder than average ("You got up on time even though you're feeling ill and headachey, that was a good move."). Without that kind of mechanism I tend to always expect myself to operate at peak efficiency, which is really unrealistic and unhelpful.
I'm also trying to train myself into thinking that there *are* some categories of task where it's much better to do a half-assed job than to do nothing at all (mostly I try not to start something unless I think I can finish it properly, but this isn't always helpful). E.g. a partly-cleaned kitchen is better than a completely-messy kitchen, even if it's not as good as a totally-clean kitchen. And it makes it easier to get to a totally-clean kitchen sometime in the future.