Take smaller bites?
This is a method I use to tackle difficult or undesirable tasks. Face it, if it's something you love doing then it's not hard to start it or stick with it. It's the stuff you don't like doing that takes a little 'self-motivating'. Some tasks however are simply not what you want to do,...BUT they need to get done so what do you do? Take smaller bites.
So what does that mean?
Well, say you need to clean out your garage, or mow the grass, or paint the shed, or get that report done or even just clean your room. Depending on the state of whatever it is you need to address, the task may seem daunting at first glance. It may BE daunting, at ANY glance. How do you get motivated?
Forget motivation. Make it easy on yourself. Break it up into small manageable chunks. For example, say you need to clean out the pantry. You walk over to the pantry, open the doors and a pile of junk falls out on your head. After you regain consciousness you look an discover that there is no rhyme or reason to the arrangement of any of it. Furthermore about half the stuff in there is a science project and a veritable haven for fruit-flies. It starts to dawn on you that to really do an effective job on this what you really need to do is just clear everything out and start with a blank pantry, slowly going through all the material, deciding what should go, what should stay and how to organize it in there. This is gonna take all freakin' day!
Normally this is when you either make a half-hearted effort, which will result in the problem being back where it is now in a very short amount of time, or just bagging the whole idea altogether. Close the door and hope it will go away.
It won't, so here's what you do.
Break it down into smaller parts and pick one. Like maybe for starters just throw out all the rancid, rotting, stale, etc. material that really needs to go. And that's it. Stop. Come back a few hours later or even in the next day or two and then clear out two shelves. Just two. Delegate one for something and put there, all the contents from the two shelves that belongs. Put everything else on the other shelf. Come back a few hours later or the next day or so and clear two more shelves. Rinse and repeat.
Now you may say "That will take forever!". Well in the first place it won't take forever, but I grant you, it will take longer than doing it all in one shot, BUT, isn't that the problem in the first place? That's it's going to take a long time doing it all in one shot? That and the fact that you really don't want to do it all? This is just a method for dealing with things you'd rather not be doing, in a way that makes them less daunting.
Ask yourself this. How fast is it getting done now? Isn't slower better than never? Slower may be slower but don't forget, the tortoise did actually win that race. And after all, that really is the whole point. Getting it done.
There are very few tasks that can't be broken down into smaller parts. Most of the ones that can't, can't because they don't take that long to begin with.
Another thing that will occur is that after you have achieved ANY degree of progress, you will feel better about the project because 1) You have actually started it and something has been accomplished that moves it closer to it's completion. 2) There is less to complete now.
Another unforeseen phenomenon is likely to occur by the way. As you start your "smaller bite" many times you will find that now that you are actually engaged in the process of working on the project you don't mind it as much and will often go beyond your pre-established "bite size". No, this doesn't always occur but I have found in my in personal experience it happens more than it doesn't.
What I take from that is that basically, the real problem is simply getting yourself motivated enough to start. The "smaller bite" approach may simply be a way of fooling yourself into working on something you don't want to but if it works,.. well then it works.
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