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We’re approaching a time of the year where it’s very easy to fall into a slump. School breaks make the school year feel disjointed, and there are so many fun things to focus on outside of work and school, like family events, holiday parties, and other celebrations. Additionally, many of us deal with a lot of additional responsibilities during this time of the year such as organizing travel, planning gatherings, and buying gifts. All of these factors together can make it very difficult to be productive in work or school. In times such as these, tapping into both motivation and discipline is essential to push through a slump and ensure your success. This blog post outlines the difference between motivation and discipline and how to utilize both to maintain productivity when it’s most challenging.
Simply put, motivation is what gets you going and discipline is what keeps you going. Motivation is the thing that compels you to act, to start a task, and to want to do that task. Motivation comes from your desires and goals, and is generally a positive force centered around emotions and a will to complete the task. Discipline, on the other hand, is the thing that helps you finish a task, even when it’s boring or you don’t want to. Discipline can be harder to build and harder to tap into, but is essential in productivity, because it’s what allows you to complete undesirable tasks or focus on work when you’d rather be Christmas shopping.
Motivation is the force that can help you start tasks and be enthusiastic about these tasks. While you might find that occasionally motivation just strikes you without any effort, there are ways to cultivate motivation and tap into it in order to get yourself excited about (or at least willing to engage in) productivity.
A huge way to find motivation is by setting goals. In this context, both short-term and long-term goals can be helpful for cultivating motivation. A short-term goal of completing a specific task or finishing a to-do list before vacation is a great way to remind yourself what you need to do and why. Long term goals are equally important, reminding you of the larger picture of why a specific task is important. Explicitly stating these goals is a great start, and reminding yourself of these goals when you’re feeling unmotivated can help push your willingness in the right direction. The more frequently you remind yourself of your long-term goals, the more likely you are to connect these goals to your everyday actions.
Related to establishing your goals, doing some real work to determine your personal values and life purpose is an excellent way to help you tap into motivation. Motivation is very tied to the question, “What is it you want?” In order to fully be able to answer this question, it’s essential to know what you care about and what your purpose is. While most of us have vague ideas about these concepts, explicitly writing them down or saying them out loud and being able to refer back to them is hugely influential on motivation. When you’re feeling unmotivated, calling back to your values and purpose and asking yourself what will help you better align with them in the current moment will likely compel you to succeed in the task at hand.
Motivation and positivity are closely related. If you’re in a negative headspace or feeling negative about yourself, it will be very difficult to tap into motivation. For this reason, positive affirmations can be a great way to tap into motivation. There is a lot of research that shows that saying positive things about ourselves improves our mood and our self-image over time. Although it can feel awkward when you first start, remind yourself that it’s a low-risk strategy, and if it works, you’ll be grateful for it. You can start every day or every work session with a positive affirmation like “I am capable,” “I am hardworking,” or even something more pointed like “I can finish this worksheet.” Using positive affirmations is a great way to tap into your inner motivation and approach your work from a positive headspace.
Another really useful tool for tapping into motivation is to utilize visualization. This idea can look different for different people. For long term vision and goals, a vision board in which you can see your goals and the life you want to have can be incredibly motivating. You might also consider visualization exercises in which you imagine yourself successfully completing a task, then describe what it looks like in detail. Visual reminders of your goals can also be extremely useful, and you might consider sticky notes reminding you of your goals in places you see every day. In all of these cases, visualizing your goals and yourself being successful is a great way to tap into motivation in order to complete tasks.
Talking to another person who understands your goals and wants to support you in achieving them is a great strategy for tapping into motivation. Any time you're feeling discouraged or unmotivated, you can reach out to this person for support. They can remind you of goals you've shared with them and why it's important to keep going. In return, you can be that person for them, allowing them to better achieve their goals. Having an accountability partner not only gives you a person to turn to when you're feeling unmotivated, but also has the added benefit of supporting another person and watching them achieve their own goals which, in turn, will improve your own motivation.
Discipline is another essential skill for productivity, and building it is often a longer, more extensive process. However, there are also many strategies that can make an immediate impact on your discipline while building the skill over time.
One of the best ways to build discipline is to build consistent work habits. When an action becomes a habit, it’s no longer in our conscious mind. Instead, it is something we do instinctively, that we no longer consider a choice. Establishing consistent work habits such as planning out every work session, creating a list that always gets finished, or spending the same time every day engaging in focused work, can help productivity become a habit, rather than a choice, allowing you to successfully complete tasks regardless of your feelings about them. For tips on establishing consistent habits, check out this blog post.
A great way to tap into discipline and to build it over time is to build in reminders for yourself to complete and stick to tasks. This might look like setting an alarm on your phone, reminding you to start a task. It also includes visual reminders such as lists, a planner, or sticky notes, that remind you what needs to be done by when. The more you can frequently remind yourself of the tasks that need to be done, the more likely you will be to push through and complete them even when you don’t want to.
A timer is another great strategy to help cultivate discipline during a task. Time yourself when completing a task, and place the timer somewhere where you can see it while you are working. Awareness of the time you are spending on a task is a great way to shift your focus back to a task when you get distracted and to compel you to keep going and finish, especially when a task is taking longer than you want it to. The more awareness you have of the time you are spending on a task, the more you will feel pushed to complete it.
Having a well-organized workspace that is conducive to productivity is a great way to cultivate discipline. An organized workspace helps put your brain in a more productive mindset, making you more ready to work. A disorganized workspace is likely to be distracting, causing you to lose focus or the will to complete a task. When your environment is set up for success, you are much more likely to remain focused and in a mindset that is going to allow you to complete a task.
There are many different strategies out there to help people focus. Utilizing these strategies and figuring out which ones work for you is a great way to develop your ability to push through a task, even when it is challenging or uninteresting. Many people find controlling noise to be a great focus strategy, whether that means listening to instrumental music, having white noise in the background, or blocking out all noise with noise-canceling headphones. Other people find removing all distractions from a room, such as games, TVs, or distracting tabs on your computer to be a great strategy. This blog post includes a long list of strategies that can help improve focus. There is no one best strategy for improving focus, but trying different ones and figuring out what works best for you is a great way to develop your discipline and ability to push through tasks until completion.
While motivation and discipline are both useful tools, they are most powerful when you are able to use them together. Frequently reminding yourself of your goals and values and cultivating a positive mindset when diving into work are motivational tools that will compel you to start tasks when you don’t want to. Using the strategies outlined above and building consistent work habits will develop discipline, allowing you to complete every task you start, even when it’s boring, hard, or you’d prefer to do something else. When you master the ability to get yourself to start a task and to stick with it until it’s complete, your productivity and success will skyrocket.
Motivation and discipline are important, but they are difficult to fully develop. For teenagers, it can be even harder to develop these skills, especially when school doesn’t feel relevant to their life. Success coaching for teenagers can be immensely helpful in helping young adults develop motivation and discipline through exploring what is most important to them. Our approach is centered around the belief that every person has a unique set of factors that drives them and makes them who they are. Through success coaching, teenagers will learn to uncover these factors in themselves in order to use them to achieve their personal vision of success. Contact us today to learn more about how success coaching can help your teen thrive.
Having a conversation is the first step to helping your child realize their full potential and set them up for success!