What do you do to keep yourself motivated?
Hello everyone,
I have been working as a solo entrepreneur from home for nearly 2 years now.
At the beginning being motivated was not hard, but after 2 years it started to be quite difficult to be efficient, productive and motivated every day.
Here are the things that I have done / doing / will do to stay focused and motivated:
Done: Found a co-founder that works remotely with me everyday, one of his main qualities is that he is always full of energy and excited. This is for me very important as it pushes me when I am tired or depressed.
Doing: Using a morning routine, to set up goals to achieve on a daily basis gives me a sort of rigor that keeps me focused. And I am also really happy when I have finished it. My morning routine consist in :
- drinking a coffee
- checking my social medias
- checking my email
- checking my calendar
- setting my status to available on hubspot
- start a call with my associate.
Doing: Exit the city during the weekend and try to go to the countryside, this helps me a lot to get some fresh air and energy.
Will do: I have stopped doing sport this last few months and I feel I should start again. So I have decided to start running again.
What do you do to stay motivated ?
I think we can share some great ideas and tools.
I switch between technical challenges and design UX challenges, this helps to make the work stay interesting.
I really need to get back to running as well, when I don’t I tend to get pessimistic and feel less happy.
It's totaly how I am feeling right now....
Bought my pair of shoes today ! I am going for a run this evening.
We are lucky also to be able to chose on what we want work or not. This allow us not to have a redundant life which is a chance I guess.
It truly is amazing to have that flexibility. Have a good run! 😊👍
The most important thing to stay productivity to reserve a slot of time in the morning and switch off email/phone/social media. You can check email in afternoon after you have got important stuff done. The below book is very helpful
https://www.amazon.com/Manage-Your-Day-Day-Creative/dp/1477800670/ref=bseries_primary_1_1477800670
Thank you I am gonna definitely read this !
Put on your running shoes and listen to David Goggins
Thank you ! I just came back from running actually next time I will listen to him !
I find really good people to work with me on the project, and focus on culture. More than failing myself, I'm motivated to not fail them and to sustain and grow the great culture we're creating. Build something worth being motivated for. Write down what that looks like (values, etc) and pin it to your wall, and live it every day.
Also, start sport again. Physical activity is crucial to managing stress. I have not been in the gym for months, and cannot for a couple more (medical reasons) and I feel the difference.
You are I should definitely start doing sport again, just bought new pair of shoes today gonna start running !
Writing down your motivation is a great idea ! I really like that I am going to do that and add that step to my morning routine. Thanks !
Being motivate is a bit overrated to me, if you like doing something you don't really need motivation to do it. And if you get to the point where you no longer enjoy doing that thing and feel 'unmotivated', just stop doing it for couple of days. After that if you miss doing it you will feel 'motivated' to go back to it, if not - maybe it's time for something new.
P.S. fav word of the day - doing
Hey ! That's great taking some time off sometimes helps ! I agree.
But sometimes you have to do things that your were not supposed to do if you were not an entrepreneur. In my case I was a web dev and then I am starting to do some marketing you kinda go out of your main motivational work I would say.
P.S doing is a great word, better than inactivity ^^
I keep reminding myself that I love quality products. I remind myself that I want to build one of those quality products. I want to make something that is way better than anything else that's on the market and I know this requires work, this is what motivates me to keep working.
I honestly think I can do it. I might not achieve my goal, but at least I know I tried.
As a note, this motivation comes easier when I actually use those quality products, which can be anything: a really good movie, a really sharp knife, the build quality of a smartphone, etc.
Whenever you touch something of quality it instantly reminds you how much work is behind that product.
I would say that :
"It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed" Theodore Roosevelt
What are you currently building ?
I am currently working on a self-hosted analytics script (userTrack). I am close to release, but I want to add one more core feature before starting to market it.
Sounds really interesting ! Tracking what you are doing on you pc ? is that right ?
No, it is for websites. It's similar to other services like Hotjar or MouseFlow, only that it's self-hosted and it will be a more generic analytics platform, so you won't need to rely on Google Analytics or any other 3rd party analytics. Just install userTrack on a server and you can track all your websites without paying any monthly fees or sharing your data with other companies.
Sounds great ! Would it be completely free ?
It's not free, it will have a one-time $99 fee for a lifetime personal license with unlimited updates.
With a trial period ?
There is no trial period available (being a product, once you get it you have it forever). But it is possible to request a refund if the script does not work as expected in your case or you are not happy with it.
Do you have any hypotheses on why you feel lack of motivation? I think you should try to figure that out and go from there.
I guess for me, it's because I have some period where I stay to much at home working alone.
Like when there is a feature to develop or something like that.
I am really much a "people" person I mean that I like to talk and meet people, this part I miss it a lot.
Myabe I should find a co working place but it's kinda expansive here in Paris.
What do you think ?
I think you should try things out and see what works – which it looks like you're already doing. I tried the coworking thing a couple years ago, I rented a desk for $500/month in an artist studio with 3 other people (two artists and one indiehacker) – turned out to be too distracting for me.
I also tried joining an in-person mastermind group which met weekly. That was great, but the problem was the group I found met too far away (it was an hour's drive to get there).
So then I tried a virtual mastermind group where we met weekly on skype. That was good too for a while (in-person was better) but the group eventually fell apart because the other members couldn't get their businesses off the ground and eventually went back to their regular jobs.
I've also tried going to various technology/startup meetups in San Francisco but I find that I'm not interested in superficial conversations and interactions, I prefer one-on-one or small group discussions with people I know well.
These days, I get my social fix in a few ways: 1) by doing a video conference call a few times per week with a couple of friends from college who are also indiehackers, 2) I play pickup football (aka soccer as we call it in the US) once a week, and 3) spending time with my family.
Ideally, if I could find the right group of indiehackers to meet up in-person locally once per week as a mastermind group, that would be nice. There's probably a way to arrange this and I'll look into it when I have a bit more time.
Also, I've also dealt with mild depression and lack of energy in the past and I find that the best way to keep my energy up is making sure I get a consistent 8 hours of sleep, exercise at least every other day, and have my morning coffee ☕.
Good luck to you!
Actually renting a desk could be a good idea. Just need to make some money out of my current business ^^
I have tried going to some meet up but like you said sometimes it feels juste like a lost of time. It's hard to find the right one.
And right now with that virus thing going on every meet-up are canceled. I had a look today on some meet-up I could go, it's also really interesting to meet future clients.
I am gonna look for a indiehacker group in Paris. I have already been to a Producthunt meet-up last week. That was interesting but the beer moment at the end was a bit short ^^
In all the comment you are the only who spoke about sleep. That's really interesting because I think also that it is really important. If you don't sleep you are tired and then if you are tired you are not efficient !
What project are you working on right now ?
I'm working on a project/task/time-tracking app. I know everyone says not to do that, but I've tried every product under the sun and haven't found one that works for me. So even if it fails, it'll always have at least one customer (me). Plus I think I have a lot of good ideas on how my app will be better than existing solutions, and also how to market it differently. But whether that's really true only time will tell.
Great let me know when it's available I would like to try it !
Sounds good, thanks!
I like to think about my macro goal: generational wealth.
And I ask myself, "What's the alternative?"
What do you mean by generational wealth ?
having the money & resources to do what I want when I want.
doesn't have to be billions, just "enough".
owning more money than I burn.
plus wealth that can be passed onto my kids.
hope that makes sense.
Yeah totaly we have the same goal !
I am so badly relate to this. When I started Willeder, fresh after graduating from uni, I was so motivated that even without knowing how to code a website, I learned it from scratch from Youtube. But as time passed, my motivation took a hit and it hurt.
Recently, I have been recording my journey. I record about what I learn - from reading a book, interesting and engaging conversations, things I learn while working on the startup. Recording has helped me bounce back a lot as it tends to help me recollect how far I have come and helps remind me what got me going.
https://www.willeder.us/u/pritesh/
This is where I record and share my profile with people who are going through a similar journey so I can either subscribe to them and know that I am not alone on this road :)
Willeder looks very interesting ! I will have a look thank you
How do you record your day ? video ?
Nah! So whenever I learn something or experience something that might be helpful to me or anyone else who might be in a similar space as me, I just micro-blog it on Willeder.
I used to write on my notes app or write blogs but the updates on the notes app were just too fragmented and it was hard to collective them and read them. On the other hand, blogs just took too long to write. So yeah my profile is basically my journey.
Ok great I should do the same but it takes a lot of time to write something.
It has to become an automatism.
A few months ago I was in a similar spot where, to improve my mood/motivation “I needed to do certain things” rather than “me choosing to do them.” Our language and behavior towards our thoughts make a great difference.
The book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” taught me a lot about how many things are under our control rather than relying on an external situation/stimulus to change our mood for us. I would suggest you check that book out! I would rate it a 5/5
Second book in the comment today ! I will be busy for a couple of days :D Thanks !
This point of view is really interesting, the fact that we are in control of our mood and that even if we create some external stimulus this will not be as effective as if we chose to more motivated. Definitely a great point here to improve.
I look at the free traffic my platform https://stimufy.com is generating for projects submitted there and it makes me happy and motivated to keep increasing it !
Looks great I should post my project to stimufy
You are welcome to do so ^^ It's made for that