So you’re well into your web working career (hopefully thanks, in part, to the posts featured in our just-released free “Web Work 101″ e-book), and you’ve gotten off to a great start, but after a certain amount of time (it will differ from person to person), things start to lose their zest. The honeymoon is over, so to speak, and it’s time to dig in and build a solid foundation upon which a long lasting career can be built. Read the rest of this entry »
When a friend of mine heard that I was teleworking, she said “I can’t imagine doing my work without my boss watching my back. What motivates you to get anything done?”
I paused for a second, then replied, “I love doing it.”
Fast forward to a few hours later — one of my hosting accounts crashed, a delinquent client’s bill was two weeks overdue, and I received a long line of harsh comments on one of my blog posts post. Remembering what I said about loving my work, I felt tempted to take it back.
How do we stay motivated when crises come to us in groups? Or, to address a broader issue, how do we find the motivation to get things done when we’re feeling stuck? Read the rest of this entry »
Time-tracking and productivity app Slife (previously covered on WebWorkerDaily) has just launched a new feature called Slife Rewards that lets you reward yourself for meeting various productivity targets. Set some monthly productivity goals for yourself, like “spend no more than 30 minutes on email each day” or “work on project X for at least two hours per day.” Track yourself using Slife, and if you meet your targets, you can reward yourself with either a gift from your Amazon wishlist or a charitable donation to a cause.
Slife Rewards require a Slife Web account to use. Additionally, each time you qualify for a reward, a $2 processing fee is charged. This processing fee seems a little strange to me; even though it is small, I think it would act as a disincentive for reaching your goals.
We’ve previously looked at many approaches for improving motivation, involving everything from using public accountability to setting time limits for completing tasks. In the short term, Slife Rewards could probably help curb some compulsive Internet fiddling and might help you break some bad habits, but I’m not sure that programs like this will keep you motivated in the longer term. Arbitrarily limiting YouTube usage, for example, is probably not going to affect your productivity that greatly, because if you’re suffering from a lack of motivation and looking for distractions, you’ll just find them elsewhere.
Would Slife Rewards help to keep you on target?
I read about a study over the weekend that suggests the number of competitors can impact our motivation to compete. The researchers found that with a small number of competitors, people had increased motivation to compete, but even with equal chances of success, our motivation can drop when we are faced with large numbers of competitors.
“The simple act of comparing yourself against someone else can stoke the fires of competition. When there are just a few competitors around, making such comparisons is easy but they become more difficult when challengers are plentiful. As a result, the presence of extra contenders, far from spurring us on by adding extra challenge, can actually have the opposite effect. Garcia and Avishalom call this the “N-effect” and they demonstrated it through a number of experiments.” – Ed Yong
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Nothing will motivate you to achieve your goals like making other people aware of the specifics of what you’re aiming to accomplish. At least for me, the threat of public shame is a great tool you can use to prevent yourself from giving up on your dreams. Making others aware of your plans also has the added benefit of potentially providing you with great feedback about how you might best go about carrying through with them, too. The web is a great place to publicize your professional goals, especially if that’s where you do the bulk of your work. But just tweeting your aim doesn’t mean it’ll come through. As with most things, a plan will help increase your chances of success.
Step 1: Alert the People You Trust
If you’re worried about the feasibility of your goals, bouncing them off of your closest friends and relatives is a sure way of getting some invaluable early feedback. You probably have some good friends who aren’t afraid to make you look foolish (and, in fact, might relish the opportunity), so you don’t have to worry that they’ll pull punches to spare your feelings. Conversely, if you have a good idea, they won’t summarily cut you down, like some of your more trollish online contacts might. Read the rest of this entry »
Writer’s block. Creative constipation. Mental block. These phrases are just fancy ways of saying something simple: you’re stuck.
There’s nothing wrong with being stuck, since it happens to the best of us. But there are several reasons to get yourself moving again, especially if it’s unreasonable to do the usual routine of going for a long walk or bringing your laptop to the coffee shop. There are deadlines, paychecks, impatient clients, and, more importantly, the simple internal drive to do the work.
But how can you do it if you can’t get started?
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Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
