Stay Motivated - Working your Business One Day at a Time

Effective self-motivation is one of the main obstacles that really prevents people from taking their network marketing business to the next level. Being your own boss can be great! …But sometimes it sucks not having someone breathing down your neck telling you what you have to accomplish each day. How many times have you found yourself procrastinating and telling yourself that you will do something another day? How many times have you given yourself a reason why today is not the best day to complete a task?

In this blog, I will be looking at 5 strategies that you can use to keep yourself motivated and make sure that you show up today to work your business. 

#1: Set Goals

When you give yourself a goal, you are giving yourself something to work towards. Make sure that your goal is specific. What sales target do you want to achieve? How many new customers do you want to get this month? How many of a certain product do you want to sell? Abstract ambitions like I’m going to do my best this month aren’t effective. You want something measurable and concrete that you can work towards. 

Is your goal a big one? - Break it down into smaller parts. It’s so satisfying when you have a goal that you want to accomplish and you actually achieve it. Why wouldn’t you make sure that this is something that is happening as often as possible? Set yourself up for success by setting smaller goals along the way and then celebrating when you achieve them!  

Make sure to write your goals down and have them displayed somewhere easy to see and refer back to. On those days when you really aren’t feeling motivated to do something, having your goals right there in front of you is a reminder of why you are putting in the work today!

# 2: Make Yourself a Schedule

Now that you have your goals ready, you need to plan out how you are going to achieve them. This means making yourself a schedule! Treat your network marketing business like what it is - a job. What do you do with a job? You show up when you are scheduled and you work. The same goes for your online business. You aren’t going to get anywhere if you don’t put the work into it. How much time can you dedicate each week to your online business? Crave out your working hours and schedule them. Be strategic when you are scheduling yourself to work. Make sure you are picking times when you can be productive and that you have scheduled tasks that are realistic for that timeframe. 

Just like when you broke your big goal into smaller goals, you are going to do the same with your schedule. Break your schedule down to what you will be doing in smaller blocks of time to make it more manageable. 

#3: Conquer Something

You have set your goals, you have scheduled your time to accomplish them, and now it is time to sit down and do the work! Once you have given yourself a task for the day, you need to hold yourself accountable to that task and actually do it! You aren’t looking for perfection at this point, you are looking for completion. You can always go back and improve on something if you are not happy with the end result. What you can’t do is improve on nothing. 

Make sure you are limiting distractions and interruptions. Most online businesses are run through social media and it is so easy to get distracted scrolling through people’s posts and chatting with friends. Studies have shown that people who work a business from home take 20% longer to complete a task. Why? There is no one looking over your shoulder keeping you on track and there are an endless amount of distractions. This means it feels like you are working longer hours, which can be stressful and decrease productivity. This is why focusing on and sticking to the task on your schedule is so important. 

Chances are, circumstances are never going to be perfect, so do what you can one step at a time. When you tell yourself that you will do something later or that you will do something when you are feeling more up to it, you give yourself an excuse not to show up. Make sure that you are showing up and working your business today! 

#4: Do What you Enjoy 

You more than likely started your online business because you wanted to make some extra income. But there is a reason that you chose that specific business. There was something about the company, the product, or the people that appealed to you. What are the elements of your work that you find most enjoyable? Write them down! Seriously, stop and do it right now!  Any time that you come across a task that is unappealing, try to link it back to an area of your work that you find enjoyable. 

Any task that you give yourself that you don’t want to do, you are most likely going to do the bare minimum to complete it, that’s just human nature. If you can focus on the elements of your work that you find most enjoyable, you are going to succeed more because you are doing something that you actually want to do. 

#5: Reward Yourself 

Rewards give you a reason to continue and help you to feel proud of your accomplishments. By rewarding yourself, your brain links your effort to that positive reward. This leads to increased pleasure when accomplishing a task or objective. 

Rewards don’t have to be anything super expensive or fancy. Something as simple as watching an episode of your favorite TV show, or spending 30 minutes in a bathtub reading your favorite book can be an amazing incentive for showing up and completing a task. 

Rewarding yourself also helps with procrastination, as you are giving yourself a reason to complete your task. Your thinking will become more deliberate and focused because you are aiming for that reward. Over time, your motivation will become more intrinsic and completing the task will be its own reward.

Experiment with Different Strategies 

I hope this was helpful in learning strategies for self-motivation and working your online business one day at a time. My final piece of advice is to remember that everyone is different. What works for one person, is not necessarily going to work for someone else. There is no cookie-cutter method for staying motivated, but if you take these 5 strategies and adapt them to work for you, you will be one step closer to taking your business to the next level. 

Written By: 

Jennifer Gillap