We are human. It’s natural to feel lazy and burdened at the same time. It’s natural to lose motivation after having tons of it just 5 minutes ago. All of those are understandable, but it might not be acceptable if you lose yourself in an unmotivated life with thousands of visions and dreams ahead of you.
We can all learn to manage and tackle that issue so that we can continue our work or tasks every day with a more powerful mindset. I am a startup owner of Kerjatify and have used these methods in everyday life. So, I think it’s best to learn from someone’s experiences.
How It All Begins?
One day, I stopped at a red traffic light. Waiting for it to be green, some people in need approached each vehicle, asking for money. Some of them also sold food and drink to the passengers. I took time and saw those people, I felt heartbroken seeing them in such a state, especially to people who tried to sell those unsold things, which will end up being avoided by people. Besides some people on the street, I thought about the millions of unemployed people struggling to find work. Then I thought, “How could I help them?” and that’s where the ideas of my business came. I wanted to make a website that helps connect workers and consumers. This experience gave me insight into my business idea and motivated me to do the business not only for financial burden reasons.
I’ve decided everything before the initial plan date to launch the website to the public, such as niche, Industry, and goal it will be. After May 5th, my website, which focused on professional services, was published.
Unfortunately, the feeling of loss and laziness crawled up, now what? I don’t know what to do, that’s why I abandoned the website for a month as I started to feel both lost and laziness came.
It feels like all of my motivation starts to turn to dust, what should I do now?
1. Remind Me Why Did I Start
But then, I came back.
I came back for many reasons that scream for me to get back. I won’t lie, these reasons stab me in every inch of my head, especially when I’m in my leisure time. Think about it, I’ve been putting myself at a huge risk by buying both themes and WordPress hosting with my own pocket. I’ve also set myself a goal to reach a significant point on my website so I’m able to go to Los Angeles and join Star Wars’s new movie night premiere.
These significant goals not only provide me with some of the most thrilling moments but also imply to me that I’m able to be in the same place as famous celebrities because of blood sweat, and tears. Those feelings make it worth it for me to fight. In the end, those reasons put me up back again and have me working more on my job, which ended up increasing my productivity.
I want to stay, I’ve devoted myself to. That’s why I need fuel to keep the engine going. I exhaled and began to open my laptop again and started to delve my brain into countless things to answer one question. What is the fuel?
That question I made months ago, and now I’ve begun to find the answers that seem to increase each time.
2. Prepare Your Routine
To keep myself from lunging back again to bed, I try to set up an everyday routine. It doesn’t have to be specific, I just have to set the best time for certain activities. For example, if I have to go to class from 8 A.M. to 12. 50 P.M. and study from 14.00 to 17.30, I will set my working time at night time, making sure that I have a long break to ease my mind and prepare both my mind and physique for the next activity.
In the end, the structure of managing your time is based on your capability, it’s in your hands whether you want to have a rest between activities or not. I recommend you try each type of schedule, such as a 3-hour break, a 1-hour break, a 30-minute break, a 10-minute break, or no breaks until finishing. Although it’s in your hands, I recommend you to not do or try to not have rest between. It’s best for you to have a break so you can heal and fuel yourself up before using the energy again for the next activities.
3. Setting Up Several Achievable Goals
From the day I got back again, I’ knew that the problem that I have to solve is my management time issue. To manage my time on keeping my website, I always made a regular routine. Each day, I set 4-5 goals that I need to do that day. For example, promote my business on Facebook and X, find ideas for articles, check my email, engage myself to sourcebottle and HARO, etc.
To this day, this method eases my on-demand productivity burden and helps me maintain leisure time so that I’m not too overboard or too little on working my business. I also make sure that the routine should be everything that I’m able to do in a day. Make sure to not overdo and underdo my routine each day!
4. SMART Goals
To make it easier for me to set a goal, I also use SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time) goals as a way to rephrase my sentence on targeting certain aims. For instance, instead of using the sentence “I want to increase my views”, I use “I want to increase the flow of my website to 5k visitors in 6 months by pursuing backlinks and advertising”.
We can see that I use a Specific sentence. I use Measurable, proven by specific criteria that I used to measure the target. I also set a goal that is neither too hard nor too easy, it means that it is Achievable. As I want to increase my volume, set the target as I wrote identically to the volume sentence, meaning that it is Relevant. If it’s relevant, it has to be correlated with other targets. And Time means that we have to input a duration or a deadline for our goal, this helps us to plan for the next plan and also keeps us from procrastinating.
5. A Productive Morning
Besides setting a goal, I think setting up a productive morning is also crucial for starting a productive day. For example, I generally wake up at [4:30], [5:00], or [6:00]. After a couple of minutes, I go outside to take some jogs, trying to reach 5k-7k steps for an hour. Next, I go back to my housing. I clean myself up and begin to have some breakfast. After all of those, I generally still have some 1 to 2 hours before my class starts. So I allow myself to watch just one video from my favorite YouTuber, generally scaling to 15-20 minutes duration.
Lastly, I usually walk to my campus 30 minutes before the class starts. In my opinion, morning is the perfect time to set up your brain on what you have to do that day. If you start it by scrolling your phone for 30 minutes, you will find yourself stuck on the bed for the next 3 hours.
6. Eat the Frog
As I always set goals each day, it might not be surprising if I have a ton of tasks filled with both hard and easy targets. These situations push me back to bed and just reduce my overall motivation to start. To address this, I tackle the most challenging tasks either in the morning or after my studies, which means that I still have both energy and motivation. The good thing is, when you’ve done the hardest, your overall mood for doing the everyday tasks changes slightly. As you have done the hardest, you have the feeling of ease that now you only have to do the rest, which is easier.
7. One Work First, then Another
Maybe multitasking would be a choice for some people, but multitasking reduces efficiency and productivity as your mind has to split for each assignment. In fact, doing multitask for a long period of time could deteriorate your brain. Why? because human isn’t designed to multitask in the first place. Therefore, increasing your productivity could be achieved by doing the tasks one by one. Finishing your first task would increase your dopamine level, which means your happiness will effectively increase as you manage to finish a task. As the increase of dopamine lifts your spirit up, you will get more motivation to finish other tasks, which is why completing one task before moving on to the next increases overall productivity.
8. Power Hour Sprint
When doing my job, sometimes I’ve always come to be lazy as I feel that I should get rest after a productive morning. To tackle that feeling, I use the “power hour sprint” method, which is managing 10-15 minutes for a break. Make sure to set an alert 5 minutes earlier before you have to go back again, so you already have prepared mentally.
And always remember to focus on the job. Besides that, as I always set an everyday routine for my website, I couldn’t afford to waste a single time if any of my tasks were not done yet. This mindset of not wanting to put any time in vain pushes me to have everything done. Some of the inner self that screams in my mind would be something like “If I (probably) will have leisure time later, why be lazy now if you can do it later?” this thinking contributes a lot every day to my productivity issue. Therefore, making your inner self set a hard work demand for you will push you to get back to your job.
Additionally, you could hear some blaring or nerve-wracking songs or audio to keep yourself up. Some of the music genres I recommend would be pop-rock, anthem, and even movie soundtracks.
9. Who Made You Here?
Next, I want you to think about this. Getting you to school, giving you food, giving you a place to live? giving you pocket money? basically giving you everything that is needed, who would that be? Of course, my parents, who wouldn’t want to give something in return? My parents also have been one of the few people who motivate me to continue. We never talk about it, by only seeing them happy is enough to know the purpose of my business. I want to give something to them in return.
That’s why I circle my parents’ birthday on my calendar, so every time I see the calendar, I think about my business. Then my inner-self whispers to me “One day the circle of their month will be seen as you flip the next page, your business is the key”, this is one of the methods that I used that absolutely burned my fire.
10. Keep Your “Purpose” Dangling on the Table
And, the last method is… my business. Yes, my business is one of the ways to stay motivated. Just by seeing the logo, I know that I have a purpose, goals, and aims for years later that I’ve set. That’s why, I print my logo, laminate it, and pin it with tape on my table wall, letting me stare at it when I study. The logo serves as a visual cue to focus and get into the “work zone.” Every time you look at it, it can remind you to stay on track with your business purposes.
The visual of your business logo also potentially boosts your motivation. Your logo symbolizes the hard work and dreams you’ve invested in your business. Having it visible can reignite your motivation during challenging moments, reminding you of the bigger picture. Therefore, a feeling of guilt will crawl into you when you aren’t working while your business depends on you. Remember, your business needs you to grow.
In the end, productivity isn’t just about doing more; it’s about finding your “why” and fueling it daily. We all have those moments when laziness kicks in or when we feel lost, but that’s exactly when you need to remind yourself why you started. Whether it’s the vision of your business, your goals, or the people who support you, these are the real engines that keep you moving forward. And trust me, it’s okay to feel stuck sometimes—that’s part of the journey. Just make sure you have your reasons, routines, and those small visual reminders to help you snap back into focus. All the best for you! God knows what you are doing!
