I like the long road metaphor. During my journey, I like to reach my apprenticeship goals, it’s the way I feel I progress. But, I have got full-time work, a family and a life to attend.

This post is not about selling you anything, neither about the absolute truth. It is about notes, based on my own experience.
This post is not about answers, it is about questions.

Motivation Boost: Objetives

How can I reach these goals?

Short response:

Making changes in your life, and some sacrifices.

Less short response:

Let me first define this:

var firstRule = "Reach goals"

Ok, first of all, let’s start at the beginning… Who are you? What do you do? And what do you want to reach? Respond to this three questions and continue reading when you get it.

Hi again! do you have it? Sure. So I will make you a little spoiler: You have no idea about who you are, neither of what you are doing. But it seems that at least you know what do you want. So why do you do not reach it? Maybe, because you don’t even know who you are, and maybe you are not aware of what you are doing.

Here is the first lesson I learned:

Know yourself

It seems easy, or not? You can just look into the mirror and say, mmm yeah this is me. But not. This is not about that kind of recognition. Knowing yourself means: What are your passions? What are your fears? What makes you happy? What makes you unhappy? What makes you fail? What makes you not fail? What do you want to leave behind? What do you want to keep with you? Uh, many questions. To answer some of these questions, you can meditate. This can be very helpful. But you can fall in the trap of lying yourself.

One thing that worked for me here is to make an study about myself. In the beginning, I started with analyzing my day. Thinking about all the interactions I get during the day. How many times do I speak with others? How many times do I open the fridge? How many times did I check my smartphone? How many time do I spend arriving and leaving my work? 

You have to make the effort, to be honest with yourself. Do not get much in deep with this, or you will get crazy. Nobody cares about the times you breathe, neither you. Remember what is the purpose of this study: firstRule.

After that, I started asking my self two questions:

• Have you been happy today?
• Have you learned something new today?

That’s. Simple. Every day, once a day, two questions. And I optionaly added a why text field.

This gives me detailed information about my happiness, and my progression. The most important lesson I found here is that its easy to lie at a precise moment. But, it is more difficult to lie yourself every day.

In order to facilitate my commitment with this study, I decided to automatize the generation of this survey by sending myself an email with a Google form using Google Script.

With all the results of these processes, I could fix the most notable wastes of times, in order to create more useful time. At this point, I found that reducing interruptions and wastes are important, but it’s equal or more important to have distractions and invest time in my own happiness.

The happier I had felt, the more goals I had reached. Data do not lie. So, in my case, it is not only important to create time for my apprenticeship. I need to be mentally and physically aligned.

Tips to study:

• Analyse your interactions with your environment and your day. Are all necessary? Do you miss anything? Do you miss anyone?
• Analyse your interruptions and interactions. which ones are positive? which ones are negative?
• Analyse the order of your daily life/work. What happens if you change it?

Change habits

If you want to follow for the firstRule, once you had analyzed yourself. You will have to take action, and rethink some things.

Do you really want to live like that? How do you see yourself in 5 years? and 10? How much time do you waste daily? How much time do you deserve to conciliate with your partner, your family, and yourself? Do you go to sleep/ wake up at the time you want? Do you make sport? Do you have a healthy diet?

If you want to adjust these things and others you will have to renounce to other ones, and no one wants to renounce to nothing. In my experience, there are things that are unnecessary: the vices and the wastes of time.

There are many bad habits that you cannot explain why you do it. Why do you stay three hours playing? Why do you watch an entire Netflix series in a weekend? etc. This is the most difficult thing to adapt to. Basically because, no one it’s going to stop doing these things, but for me the important here is to reduce the duration and the frequency.

The excess of these bad habits drains your energy and your time. These kind of things are necessary too because they are part of us and our freedom. Your creativity and energy are conditioned to this kind of vices too. But, have you ever thought why you do it?

I think, that in many cases you do it to get disconected, to get distracted or to get evade. But there are other ways to do this. In my case making exercise, practiced regularly, gives me a lot of freedom and distraction.

The same happens with the music and the social interactions that you can have to disconnect. They are very important. And is best to use them as a help to your goals than an obstacle.

If you do not want to ruin your life, do not forget the people who It’s around you. But If you do not want to block your goals, do not forget your apprenticeship.

Try to find a balance. When you get distracted and refreshed try to work on your goals. And when you are too tired of working in your goals, try to disconnect.

Do not be dogmatic, but neither an anarchist. Some discipline is necessary in order to fulfill the firstRule.

Remember that your time worth more and more because you have less and less. Do not waste it, and if you are going to make sacrifices, make it worthwhile.

So, you have to balance your rest, you have even less time in your day. What can you do to increase the frequency and the intensity of the firstRule ? In my case: Boost my Motivation.

Second lesson:

Motivation should drive your apprenticeship

Do what motivates you. As simple as that. Do not include anything for the firstRule, that does not motivate you. What for? Do not try to reach anything that does not motivate you, in general, you should use the short time you have to do things in which you are motivated. Do you want to return to the education system, to the university? or what? So do not add rocks to your path.

Remember that we live in the information era. It is very easy not knowing what you want. You need to differentiate between be contagied by the motivation of someone and get influenced by someone. It’s not the same to study something only because you do not want to stay behind, so, do it because it really motivates you.

Select with care your next goals, and prepare everything you need to take full advantage of your motivation next peak. Yes, motivation is not linear, some days you are fully motivated, and other days not. If you can prepare the ground for when you are really motivated, you can go far and faster in your goals.

These peaks of motivations and the ideas I have are some of the most valuable treasures of my apprenticeship. So I decided to store all these crazy ideas, and motivation interests. This has become very useful for me because when I decide to define new goals for the firstRule, I have a very interesting set of suggestions stored by myself with high potential to be a motivational boost.

I’m motivated but I do not have time

Maybe you can think, everything should be easier if you had a part-time job. Because you would have more time to reach your goals. The reality is that if you are an ambitious person, this is not going to happen. You will not be really more productive during this new time, and you will want to advance more and more. It will never be enough time.

The best you can do is to understand that if you want to advance in your goals, you need to learn how to set, prioritize, and combine with your life and obligations.

Have you thought about what are the best hours to read during the day? Do you imagine starting your day doing what you most like? Do you have goals that can progress at work?

I’m motivated but I have not energy

In this case, your problem is another. You have to measure your energy. When do you have more? When do you rest? Do you work too much? Do you make exercise? What do you eat? Are you addicted to coffee? Do you try to dedicate too much time to your objetives? Are you taking it seriously? Will you go to work without sleep or without eating? so why do you not take the same level of commitment to your objectives?

Answering this kind of questions helped me a lot. I was able to take some actions to change my habits and increase my energy, rest, and food. This affected directly to my happiness.

If you are interested in some practices that worked for me preparing myself for my motivation peaks, you can read my next post about motivation