Night Time Motivation

We’ve probably all been there. As you are ending your day, ready to go to sleep, you resolve to be different. I’m going to wake up at 6am, jump right out of bed, meditate, journal, get a work out in and cook breakfast all before 8am. Then I’m going to do the 20 things I need to do for work, the 10 chores and errands around the house, and just do it all. Have you ever felt that? I call it night-time motivation. It’s way easier to say you’re going to do it than to actually do it isn’t it? 

Of course we know how this story ends - The alarm goes off and you’re feeling absolutely exhausted so you give yourself another 20 minutes of sleep. Then when you wake up the last thing you want to do is work out, and you’re already behind on your day, so you don’t deliver on your priorities like you intended to. You go about the things you need to do without any real organization or structure, you felt busy but not really productive, then you put your head down for bed and again resolve that tomorrow will be different.

I’m not here to just tell you that this happens, I want to share how you might be able to fix it. The intention is good, I’m a huge advocate for deciding what you want to do in advance to avoid emotional decision making, but you need more than an intention. You can use a commitment device - Threaten $20 of your own dollars if you don’t follow through, tell someone else what you’re going to do. You can make a plan detailing what specifically you’re going to do when, and for how long. Or you can tie a reward to a successful day that you can only access if you got it all done.

The important piece to highlight is you need to do something else, anything else that converts that intention into action. Nighttime motivation is useful in getting clear on what you want to do, but it’s bad at getting you to actually do it. So if you have a big day coming up make sure you put in the work and elements required to pull you through it, knowing that at times you’re not going to feel like it.

If you’re in the US or Canada, text me at 949-799-0788 and I’ll send you daily prompts that help you get to know yourself better and build a more meaningful life every day. 

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