Motivation. It’s probably one of the most written-about topics in my corner of the blogosphere, and I’ve definitely contributed my share of posts on it.

Like so many good things in modern life, motivation is often seen as a quick-fix. You read an article or a book, or listen to a podcast, and you feel that rush of energy which encourages you to go and take action towards your goals. But it doesn’t always last long.

We’re motivated by rewards, whether it’s getting a qualification, making money, or simply being praised for our work. With a lot of goals, though, rewards are distant and aren’t closely linked to a particular day’s effort.

How do you stay motivated on a degree course when what you’re studying might not even be on the final exam?

How do you stay motivated to stick to your diet when the scales still haven’t budged?

How do you stay motivated to budget and save when it seems like you’ll never reach your target?

Enjoying the Moment?

In some cases, you don’t just need to focus on the end result, you can think about enjoying the actual process. Go for this as much as possible – but recognise that it won’t always be enough to get you through the sticky patches.

Sure, you might enjoy preparing healthy, energy-giving meals for yourself when you’re dieting, but that may not be much help when you’re staring down a chocolate bar. If you’re writing a novel, you’re hopefully doing it because you love writing and because you’ve got a story to tell … but trust me, there’ll be moments where you question whether it’s really worth the effort.

Some personal development gurus suggest that you should just battle on through and get more determined. Others believe it’s not even worth setting a goal if you don’t love every minute of the journey:

When you set a goal that improves your present reality, what does it matter how long it takes to achieve the final outcome? Whether it takes one week or five years is irrelevant. The whole path is fun and enjoyable. More importantly, you feel happy and fulfilled at this very moment.

(Steve Pavlina, Personal Development for Smart People, p54)

I fall somewhere in the middle ground here. I certainly agree you shouldn’t let your goals be dictated by other people, but I also believe that worthwhile goals are going to involve some tough patches.

When you’re shooting for longer-term goals, pick ones where you’re going to enjoy most of the journey. I imagine that’s pretty much common sense, but I know how easy it is to get sidetracked by what you believe you “should” do rather than what you actually “want” to do.

Uncertain of Success

With some goals, you can be pretty sure of success. Maybe you’re taking a particular qualification, and so your route is clear: do the assigned work, study for your exams, and you’ll achieve that goal.

With quite a lot of goals, though, you might be pretty unsure about how likely you are to succeed. Maybe you’ve had past failures at a similar goal: you’ve tried to lose weight before and failed, or you’ve started a business which never got off the ground. Or maybe you’ve just got nothing to compare this attempt to: it’s the first novel you’ve tried writing, or the first blog you’ve started.

It’s tough to stay motivated when you don’t know whether you’ll get the success you’re working for. You might never make money. You might not get published. You might fail.

How do you cope with that?

Look to Others for an Example

Whatever your goal, there’s a pretty good chance that someone else has done it before you. Look for success stories: see what they did, and, particularly, how long it took to see results. When I started my first blog The Office Diet, I read a lot of advice which warned that many people start a blog and don’t see results within a few months, so they give up. The “success stories” often had the exact same few months (without many readers and often no money) – the difference was, they kept going. I promised myself I’d stick with The Office Diet for at least a year.

This was a good call: I had a guest post up on the blog Entrepreneurs’ Journey a few days ago, where I explained that it took me almost a year to make any money from that blog. If I’d ditched it after three months, I’d have lost the work I’d put in, and I wouldn’t be making monthly advertising revenue from that site today.

When I’m discouraged with my fiction, I think of the teenage Stephen King sending out story after story and getting rejected (he writes about this in On Writing – see my review at the bottom of this page), or JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books being turned down by some publishers who must still be kicking themselves…

Focus on Learning

I’ve written short stories which were so flawed I never even bothered submitting them to competitions. I’ve written dozens of others which came back with a form letter attached. I’ve tried mini sites and blogs that just never worked, for whatever reason.

Through all of that, I’ve been learning. The process wasn’t end-to-end fun, and the direct results were non-existent – but what I’ve learned has helped me in future projects.

I believe that there’s real value in just seeing something through, even if the results are pretty dismal. The experience of writing a novel for NaNoWriMo probably isn’t going to get you a brilliant publishable piece of fiction at the end of the month … but it is going to help you learn about the writing process (plotting, developing characters, writing dialogue) and it may well help you to establish the writing discipline that you need to carry on developing.

I did NaNoWriMo in 2007, and wrote 50,000 words of a novel. I decided it wasn’t even worth working on again after that … but that time wasn’t wasted. I learnt that I could get up and write before going to my day job: and a few months later, that was how I managed to build up a fledgling freelance career on the side.

You Can be Certain of Failure

Even if success is uncertain and hard to quantify, you can be certain about failure.

If you give up, you’ve failed. You’re not going to have any chance of writing a publishable novel if you ditch it three chapters in. You’re not going to lose weight if you give up the diet as soon as you have one bad day. You won’t ever have a business if you’re too scared to contact that first client.

Sometimes, calling it a day is a good idea: perhaps you genuinely realise that you’ve gone down the wrong path for you. But often, we get discouraged too soon, and we give up on goals that – given a bit more time, a bit more patience – we’d have been able to reach.

Don’t give up because your goal will take a long time: that time will pass anyway.

Don’t give up because other people just don’t get it: it’s your life, not theirs.

Don’t give up because you have a bad day, or a bad week. Pick yourself up, and carry on – and enlist help if you need it.

If you enjoyed this piece, why not grab the RSS feed or get my twice-weekly posts by email? (It’s totally free!) Just click here for the RSS feed or pop in your email address in the box below: