Procrastination, what happened to my motivation?
My last blog post was almost a year ago. I had been blogging at random intervals, based on inspiration, and then I started reading about best practices in marketing. The shoulds piled up and inspiration dried up. Add to this some complicated external factors like a tornado and a big move and writing a blog post became easy to avoid.
But the question remained, even if the procrastination process was easy to participate in, where did my motivation go? I wrote plenty of papers for my master’s degree even when I didn’t want to, even when difficult things were happening outside of myself. Big, world rocking things that were on par with tornadoes for disruption. A strong motivation kept me going, kept me focused on school, on my desire to become an Equine Therapist. Now that I’m “here” with a license and horses in my backyard, I don’t want to write a blog post? Something isn’t adding up.
Motivation is quite a complicated thing. Typed into Google there are over two billion hits for the word. Two billion! There is educational motivation, and motivational speakers, and blog posts with 10 things to get you motivated. I’ve worked with clients where the problem wasn’t not knowing what to do, it was knowing but not doing it. Yep, that’s me right now. I knew how to blog to get my info out there, to let potential future clients know that I exist, and yet I kept not doing it. What was up?
I see motivation and procrastination as a pull/push type thing. They are two opposing forces, and often we have both going at once but to different degrees. Did I procrastinate on my school papers, sure, for a week or something, but because they had a due date that had a significant impact on my life the pull to complete them was strong. In this case I put off blogging for a year, and the impact isn’t as clear, except that I’m not hearing much from potential clients.
Motivation is energy with direction. It pulls on me in a way that has some certainty in it. Recently I’ve been clearing brush off the fence. It is a dirty, physically difficult job. And yet it is so satisfying to look back on my progress and see those fence wires. Procrastination is more rudderless and a push away from something. Sometimes I’m not even aware of what I’m pushing away from. I might set a goal to work on my website, and then at the end of the week I realize I never did any work on it. I had time, I was playing video games on my phone or reading a book, or even doing some other work related task such as watching training videos. Those are the most devious procrastinations of all, the ones that are similar to the goal, but still take you away from it.
What does this have to do with being Gifted?
One of the experiences of being Gifted is an increase of intensity to everything that is happening. One of the hallmarks of the gifted brain is having more connections. So while what many people see when they look at Gifted people is enhanced motivation and drive, what they might miss is the additional presence of deeper wells of procrastination too. Because I can imagine so much, there are many more things to be afraid of, I’m not just afraid of failure, but I’m also afraid of success, and maybe even afraid of mediocrity. There are so many more things to be distracted by, multipotentiality means I have many skills I have developed over the years that I can use as those sideways tracks that pull me away from my goal. There are so many choices when it comes to what I can do to procrastinate! I can’t just work on my website, I need to learn all about SEO... and accessibility… It can go on and on.
The complexity of being gifted makes lack of motivation and procrastination much more complex than it already is. Multipotentiality also means there can be competing goals that distract from each other. So while I am on track with my fence clearing project, the blogging suffers. Add on the sense that I feel each post needs a meaningful illustration, which I have to do myself, and there is an extra task associated with each blog post. And another spot to get bogged down.
How do you get out of the procrastination cycle and become motivated?
This question has many answers and is also very personal. However there are some things you can try.
Acceptance
Fear and shame can certainly get in the way of feeling motivated. Often a fear of some sort starts the cycle. It might be fear of failure and the logic goes “if I don’t start then I can’t fail.” But it can just as easily be any sort of fear, fear of judgement, fear of being overwhelmed by success, fear that others will let you down. Once the procrastination cycle set in, then shame of not doing the thing gets added as well.
Sometimes in order to get out of being stuck, we have to slow down and admit that we are stuck. Remember all those similar goals we can be distracted by? And then there are distractions whose point is to just distract, which can be food, video games, substances, etc. Often we engage in these distractions to avoid the feelings of shame or fear. There are many ways to get to acceptance too: but the first step is always the awareness that there is some sort of motivation problem.
Addressing needs.
Once we have the emotional part settled down there may still be some other things getting in the way. These might be more pressing or competing needs. In my case part of my year was spent in the process of moving, adjusting to being in a new place, and dealing with the aftermath of a tornado. There were many things that needed to get done before I could sit down and write a blog post. Scott Barry Kaufman has a different model for Maslow’s set of needs. He sees the needs as a sailboat. There are basic needs that create stability: safety, connection, self esteem. These represent the hull of the boat. They can also be described as the energy I mentioned that is needed for motivation. The sail represents exploration, love, and purpose as what create direction, much like the sail of a sailboat moves the boat. Identifying which of these needs is either lacking or is the priority at the moment can help us figure out where our motivation needs to be moving, or where it is already going—and therefore maybe not available for the current project. If this is the case we then have to return to acceptance.
Building momentum
Once the emotions have been addressed and the needs are clear, motivation still might not be quite solid. This is typically the area where tips and tricks to motive yourself become useful. This is also very personal. What kind of support do you need to help you build momentum? Do you need social support in terms of accountability? Do you need time management support? Like so many things this process isn’t a linear one. As you can see building momentum take us back to another layer of identifying needs. Or as you get started more emotions might show up and have to be dealt with.
So the next time a well meaning friend says “why don’t you just do the thing?” know that it isn’t that simple. I will have to wait and see if getting this blog post out is part of my momentum building, or if I have to revisit acceptance or needs.
I guess it worked this time, I'm hitting the "publish" button!
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