Several people managed to get the right answer to my question yesterday about the factor that caused me to lose my motivation for two of my major daily tasks. The answer was that I had stopped using a “no-list” method while I experimented with a couple of ways of finding an improved “catch-all” system. As soon as I went back to a “no-list” method my motivation came back.
This raises some interesting questions for me. First of all, the no-list method I have come back to isn’t the same as the one that I was using before. So it seems to be the concept of “no-list” that provides motivation rather than any one specific method. I’ve already remarked several times that “no-list” methods seem to be interchangeable. If you use one method one day and a different one the next it doesn’t seem to really matter. Just pick the one that suits you best that day.
But the really important question is “Why does a no-list method provide motivation”? I think there are two reasons:
First, a no-list method forces you to keep asking “What should I be doing next?” and then makes you commit to doing it immediately. You have no list to guide you so you have to rely on the resources of your own mind. Using questioning as a method of accessing your inner resources is very powerful.
Second, this questioning also results in the building up of routines that work. Neural pathways are being laid down in your mind which make it easy for you to find your way in most situations.
If you look at these two reasons you can see that motivation is largely a matter of habit. Once you have laid down a habit then it becomes easier to carry out that habit than not to.
I was exercising every day because I’d got into the habit of doing that. But it’s important to realise that the habit includes a lot more than just running or going to the gym. It’s a whole sequence of actions, which starts from the time I go to bed the night before, what I do when I get up, what activities I do before exercising and what I do when I’ve finished. If any one part of that sequence is disrupted then it’s easy to go off in the wrong direction.
The same applies to writing a daily blog post. It’s not just a matter of writing. There’s collecting ideas for future subjects, researching, writing successive drafts, adding links and tags, and starting the sequence for the next day’s blog post.
No-list suits this because your mind is free to run in the well-established pattern.
But throw in a “catch-all” list and suddenly one is back to a more or less random sequence. That’s what happened to me. The habits I’d built up collapsed and my motivation disappeared.