innerPlace

The power of external motivation

I think I’ve always had a problem with discipline; I stick to the comfort zone if I can. In the same time I have high goals and expectations. Obviously this leads to conflicts, and I’ve come to realize that unless I have an external factor I will never fall though and get things done.

My car has had an electric problem all summer, when I press the left turn signal the brake light and the fog light also flashes. Next week is the annual check up so unless I fix the problem the car will fail the test. It turned out to be a grounding problem in a connector; I found the fault after 30 minutes. Point is that unless the car was scheduled for inspection I wouldn’t have fixed it.

The house needs new paint (now!) but it is so boring. But winter is coming so unless I get started I will not make it. Finally I got the front side painted, thanks to the approaching winter.

I have wanted to start writing and be more creative for a long time. I’ve read lots of books about the subject, but never actually got started. The fix was to start a blog because a blog needs to be updated regularly otherwise there is no point. So now I must write something several times per week - a huge step forward. If I stop writing the blog dies and the whole effort was for nothing - and that would be a painful failure.

So, I have come to believe that with lots of external motivation my getting-things-done-factor will greatly improve. Now I just need to find ways to apply this to more occasions…