One of the great subtopics within the broader one of “How to be productive” is Motivation. The greater the act ― more involved, complex, difficult ― the more we must sustain our motivation to achieve it. It’s an immense topic that well deserves the volumes that address it. How do the most productive people generate and sustain the motivation they need? How do you?
Recently, I completed a book-length manuscript. It took ten years, while I was also working on many other things. And though I am not the best example of productiveness I could cite, by using my own experience, I can at least analyze one that I know well.
The writer Isak Dinesen once advised to “Write a little every day, without hope, without despair.” To help complete my own work, I used that thought as inspiration. It meant to me, Focus your attention less on the end result, what you’re trying to accomplish, how you’ll feel when it’s all done, what achieving it might do for you ― and more on what you can complete that day. The old Chinese proverb is, A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Dinesen reminds us that the journey also comprises many, many steps, and that attending to each one separately, rather than to all of them at once, helps to keep us going.
After all, to not keep going is to never get there.
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