How to Motivate Yourself, Even when It's Something You Don't Want to Do

It is easy to do something when you are really passionate about it. The key is to be able to do things you don't want to do with an equal amount of passion, zeal, and competence.

If you learn how to do this, you will be virtually unstoppable-enjoying levels of efficiency at work and at home that most people can only dream of.

The key to motivation is to set effective benchmarks, and to provide yourself with adequate rewards when you reach a certain benchmark.

Let's say, for the purposes of this article, that you hate paying bills more than anything else in your monthly routine. You put off paying bills day after day, until you risk being late on your payments if you don't do something.

Finally, you approach the stack of bills, take a deep breath, and dig in. After ten minutes, you want to quit-go to the gym, watch TV, call a friend back, do anything at all aside from this tedious task of paying bills, licking envelopes, and balancing your checkbook.

Start by partitioning your work into smaller, more manageable groups-say that you will pay ten bills and then take a five minute break in which you can do thirty push-ups or eat a small piece of Hershey's chocolate (if you aren't inclined to consider athletic activity a "reward").

Now do fifteen bills before treating yourself to another standardized reward. Then do twenty bills before treating yourself to the same reward.

As the task becomes easier to accomplish, you will do more in less time.

For larger tasks, such as a project at work or school, also establish a visual reinforcement such as reminders in red marker drawn onto your kitchen calendar, or Post-it notes at your desk or on your office door.

Motivation comes down to sheer persistence. If you remind yourself in enough formats to do something on time, and if you are providing adequate rewards for yourself at each step of the way, know that you will accomplish your task.

You can also enlist the help of friends by telling them about your task. This essentially "guilts" you into accomplishing the task; if you fail to do so, your friends will consider you a slacker and your coworkers may look down upon you.

So tell many people before you engage in a particularly difficult or long task. Make it difficult for you to back out of the project or procrastinate by having others count on you.