It’s Sunday morning, it’s raining outside, I’m really tired, and the consensus around the house is to lay about, read books and watch television.
But not me … I have things that “have” to be done … or do I? Do these things really have to get done?
My motivation is low … I want to lay about and do nothing. As I dragged myself out of bed and pulled out my laptop, I mentally started going down my “to-do” list and after a while, I just stopped. There’s too much to do and it seems that the more I have to do, the less likely I am to want to do “it”. That is what got me thinking about the subject of today’s post – Motivation.
Do you have it? If you don’t, how do you get it? Is your motivation triggered by a sense of obligation, some sort of personal code of ethics? What about the stuff you don’t have to do but things you think you should do? Should I:
Work on my charity playhouse design?
Work on the missing design pieces for my new office?
Start laying out my new kitchen drawings?
Prepare some material for the three events AIA events I am hosting?
Write a Life of an Architect post?
All of these activities are creative endeavors and technically speaking, I don’t have to do any of them. I can ignore every single one of them and settle down into a comfortable chair and do nothing ~ but ….
What is it that gets some people up and moving when they don’t have to get up at all? Motivation is the ingredient that defines the difference between desire and will in the process of setting and attaining goals … “Motivation” initiates, guides and maintains goal-oriented behaviors.
Do you have goal-oriented behaviors? I’d like to think I do, it’s what (on most days) convinces me to push through the malaise and get something done. I am frequently asked to tell the story behind how this blog got started and why I continue to write. This is post number 600 that I’ve written in the last 4 years. I look back and wonder “How did I do that? … 600 blog posts?!?” I would venture a guess that 400 of those post were hard for me to write … I would bet that there was something else that I’d rather be doing.
Motivation is the thing that drives you to achieve success, to reach your goal, to better yourself. Anything that’s worth doing is hard and there will be times when you really don’t want to make the necessary sacrifices. I can tell you that regardless of your own goals, it’s going to require you to actually do something, so, in that spirit, I leave you with something to think about:
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, Dream, Discover.
Mark Twain
Make something happen today,
