I’m very passionate about personal development, I’m always working through a new course of trying to do something new – sometimes for work, sometimes just for fun.
Sometimes things start to pile up
Over the past 6 weeks or so, I’ve found myself with less time to dedicate to these activites, and even less motivation.
I have various other responsibilites outside of work, and beyond myself, but I know that I start to get more stressed when I’m not able to do all of these things.
I tend to limit learning when I get tired, physically but more so mentally.
The work that I do as a UX Designer demands much more cognitive effort than physical and it’s noticeable to me when I’m just too tired.
Things take longer to do.
Ideas don’t form as quickly.
It’s harder to join the dots.
Pushing ahead regardless
I tired this. It didn’t work.
Forcing myself into the same routines as before had the potential to work, but I just didn’t have the energy anymore.
This left me feeling all the more deflated – more so when I stopped working out after work, then I dropped my lunchtime ROMWOD sessions.
Always moving forwards
I had a rare 15/20 minutes of focused relaxtion last Thursday afternoon.
I lay back on the sofa, upright – but only just, I closed my eyes and just breathed. I don’t remember trying to focus on my breathing, I could’ve turned to Headspace, but I just… stopped.
I stopped trying to do anything other than just lying there on the sofa.
After a few minutes I must’ve relaxed, because I started having ideas!
I came to some conclusions about how to expand this site and FrontendFolio. Both are just blogs right now, and are acting as a form of journal for my UX & Development efforts – but I’ve got some ideas for how to make them a bit more… useful to others.
Break shit down!
Just like any of the massive User Stories I’ve seen in the past, the method I’ve started to apply for getting back to making progress is to break things down into smaller, tiny pieces!
The ideas that formed in my sofa session have started to highlight an approach that is applicable here and on FrontendFolio, and they’ve even made me consdier starting a third blog to take the same approach to tracking my fitness efforts once again.
In all 3 areas, I have grand ideas/goals.
In all 3 areas things have slowed down and/or stagnated.
My main aim is for consistency – that always makes the most sense in physical training, so I reckon it makes sense to apply it to my digital training/learning too.
I may need to spend some time with a coffee, some good music and a few Trello boards to get things worked out and ready to get stuck into.
Back to work
Needless to say, the motivation is back.
A big part of my outlook is to find the ways to try and keep it there, or at least to make it just as ‘easy’ to resurect it when it tapers off again in the future.
I know that everyone feels like this at some point, and I hope to be able to share some ideas that can help others rekindle their motivation too.