Everyone has experienced the lack of motivation to do anything even related to what you can call productivity, and I've been through that period, and not once but many times where I would find myself just asking questions like "Is it really worth it?" or "Why is this taking so long?" and after being tired of trying to find an answer, I would just sit on my phone scrolling through social media procrastinating more and more until the night is coming and I would start to feel bad because I didn't worked as much as I would have wanted, didn't learned enough or practice as I wanted when I started it.
It was kinda exhausting as I would spend more time thinking about what am I doing and then procrastinating than actually doing something. The problem wasn't that I couldn't do what I wanted to achieve, I was perfectly capable of, but it wasn't that rewarding along the way, I was thinking just about the final scope and not the process, which is the one that should actually get all of the attention, you can't be good at something just by gathering knowledge, you have to practice it, and when you do your mind have to be concentrated on that thing only.
If you have to do something that you're not really into, or you just convince yourself you're not talented enough or smart enough or any other excuses that your brain might find just to avoid doing something that would not be rewarding, this is just you stopping from growing just because the process to the final goal is long or hard.
I've tried many methods to "find my motivation". Motivational wallpapers, motivational music, motivational speakers, planning my work, you name it, but after I worked for a while that motivation impulse that I would get after watching a great speech would vanish in less than than the length of the video. My problem wasn't that I couldn't find my motivation, cause I could work for hours at the same time on something else, that I was enjoying more, to give an example, I couldn't concentrate on some college class that I was failing for an hour, but I would have worked for entire hours on a game that I was trying to do at the time. Thinking about my problem was that I was making more excuses, find something new everyday to replace the time I should have been studying, or even when I would eventually get at it my mind was elsewhere.
Even the smallest step is better than no step at all
This is probably the best advice if you don't really enjoying what you have to do. If you have a hard time to concentrate on a certain task for a while, but it's still something you have to do, try to do it for a short time, but in that time really concentrate on it. Small but consistent portions are good enough, and much better than doing nothing at all. For example, you wanna learn how to draw, and you're not very good at it, you want to give up just because you think you don't have talent. Instead of that do a small exercise everyday, draw the same thing everyday for 2 weeks to a month, whatever you feel comfortable with, it doesn't have to be complicated, but you have to keep doing it. After those 2 weeks, look at you're progress, because that progress will be the think that will keep you going, will determine you to get better.
Treat your life as a video-game
You can make some kind of analogy of this can mean, but you also consider this a stupid advice, but it can work if you apply it correctly. If we look at video games beyond what you can see, a game has a goal and some steps that you will have to do in order to achieve it, like every thing in our life, so, why can't we see our life as a game, every task as a game challenge, find the fun where there is none. This is something that I learned from a youtube video entitled "The Super Mario Effect" that I recommand.
Don't be scared of failing
Be the same as a kid who is learning to walk, but might sound ridiculous, but if you think about it, a kid will never say "I've fall when I tried to walk, I will never try walking again.". He will try, maybe do some steps and fall, and try and fall again, until he will learn how to walk, because he only knows what he wants, and doesn't care about failure. Don't be more scared than a toddler.
Don't compare yourself with others
Every person has it's own path, it's own speed of learning and it's life experience. If someone is better than you, you will have to accept it, but this doesn't mean you can't try to compete with others. Just remember to enjoy it, it's your life, don't live it in someone else shadow.
This advice was recently reminded to me recently, and I'm really glad about it, I was doing this a lot and because of it I was asking questions about my value, doing nothing else than affecting me.
Remove distractions
If you want to concentrate this must be a critical step. This for me proved to be difficult, and that's only because I developed the worst habit of reading every single notification, not only from social media, every single email I receive. There are some add-ons on browsers that is blocking your access with a password, that unfortunately you have to provide, this can be very useful if you ask someone else to provide it for you. I get past it by silencing every notification my phone or PC could send to me, leaving only the most important ones if someone really needs me for something other than sending me memes.
Be serious about it
If you really wanna do something, you can't achieve that thing even if you follow every single point in this list if you can't show some self discipline. If you can control what are you doing, even with distractions, being scared of failing, encountering unexpected challenges along the way, you will get to your goal and much more if you can discipline yourself.
Being serious about what are you trying to do, it might be hard, the thought of giving up will cross your mind more than once, you can even ignore every single advice in this post and others, find your own path, fail, retry, and achieve that goal.
Info
You may have heard some of these advices and concepts before, but what's in this post are my thoughts, how I interpreted and apply them, my experience and what lessons I have learned from it.
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