When was the last time you knew the right thing to do, but struggled to find the motivation to do it? Although we may have times where we want to please and obey God wholeheartedly, there will be other times when we have no motivation to do the right thing and we want to be lazy. Maybe we need to do something we don’t feel like doing, or we know the task will be challenging and we procrastinate. The question is, how do we fuel our motivation to do the things we don’t want to do?
Define Your Why
I am currently enrolled in a Ph.D. program, focusing on how God’s love transforms entrepreneurship. This program has been a great place for me to explore the question of how to find motivation! There are two things that can be demotivating for me in this program:
- Sometimes I find my classes fascinating. But sometimes, I am unsure why I must take a particular class. The same holds true for the assigned readings. Not having a purpose in the class I’m taking is demotivating.
- I am not a detail-oriented person. The required formatting for academic papers in my field is called Turabian. Sometimes, I have gotten points off on assignment because of the minutiae of the Turabian rules. (To be clear, I’m not trying to use Turabian in these blog posts 🙂 ).
Our next class starts in eight weeks, so I am honing in on my motivational skills right now. In order to avoid frustration when I don’t have mastery in an area, I have to find a compelling reason for doing it. Getting a Ph.D. isn’t enough of a reason, I need to have a compelling “why”.
My compelling “why” has three parts:
- I want to produce scholarly work that doesn’t hinder professors and other academics from reading it.
- Following a system like Turabian well shows discipline.
- Using the correct formatting and structure accepted by my field will allow me to build relationships with scholars. These people can help me understand how to communicate the love of God.
I like those three reasons!
Chew on Your Why
Now that I have my “why”, I need to really internalize it. We do this through a process called chewing. When I chew, I think repeatedly about my “why” and ask myself questions about what good will come from doing the task at hand. For example, I might ask, “How is my life going to be different if I follow through on this task”? Here’s an example of how chewing sparked lasting motivation in me.
I started by chewing on why it was important for me to adhere to Turabian formatting. Here is some of my reasons:
Benefitting other scholars: Although I mostly want to write for a general audience, I like the idea of occasionally producing something that would benefit scholars, or lead scholars to add to my work so I can learn from them. I would love for these scholars to help make my work better.
More rigorous and credible work: Even though I have only taken a few classes, I find that academic writing that is incorrectly formatted feels less rigorous than other scholarly work, even though it may be just as good. It’s distracting when someone doesn’t follow Turabian.
Avoiding annoyances to my audience: The audience I am writing to is far more advanced than I am. It may feel like fingernails on a chalkboard to them when someone departs from the established Turabian formatting. There are probably good and great reasons for each Turabian rule I don’t know about. I don’t want my readers to be distracted because I am not respecting the system.
Showing respect for the people and the field: By learning to follow Turabian precisely, it signals to scholars that I am willing to work within an accepted system, respect the people and the system, and produce excellent work for the good of the field.
Following rules to reach a goal: Along with my choice to enter a Ph.D. program comes specific rules and boundaries that I must adhere to. One of these rules is using Turabian formatting in scholarly work. My goal is to see people transformed by understanding more of the depth, height, width, and breadth of God’s love. I needed help to reach my goal, so I chose this path. Now, living within these rules is part of what needs to happen to get there. I love following through on commitments.
Learning and practicing discipline: I greatly admire discipline. My daughter, Miriam, did gymnastics for a long time. She had a lot of room to do her flips and tricks on the floor and the vault. But what I really admired was when she was on the balance beam. Doing flips and twists on a floor or off a vault is one thing, but doing them and landing on a beam just four inches across is incredible. When I am following a detailed system like Turabian, I will remember that discipline is like Miriam doing flips and twists on the balance beam – accomplishing great things within strict limits. That changes how I see disciplining myself to follow Turabian formatting. That is cool!
Getting valuable feedback: Scholars will find my work easier and more enjoyable to read if they are not distracted by formatting errors. If they find my work easy to read, some of them might share invaluable feedback that will help me understand how God’s love transforms the way entrepreneurs do business. Some scholars may get ideas and produce papers to further the understanding and communication of God’s love, as well as the results of God’s love. When I read their papers, my understanding of God’s love will grow too.
Use the Five Minute Rule
Once I chewed on my “why,” I felt motivated to do my reading for the class. But if I had still felt unmotivated and needed to get going, I could have used the five-minute rule. The five minute rule means committing to do the thing I need to do (in my case, studying Turabian formatting) for just five minutes, and then if I want to stop, I can. However, following the five-minute rule usually leads me to want to continue the work. Often we just need to start, and then we keep going because we develop inertia and see that the task was not as bad as we thought.
Create an Incentive
Atomic Habits is an audible book I must have listened to at least four times. One of the tips the author James Clear gives is to create a small but meaningful incentive for completing a task or a portion of a task. Let me show you how I applied this to my study of Turabian.
I love Carlos Alcaraz, the tennis professional. I hope he wins the 2025 Australian Open and becomes the youngest player to ever win all four Grand Slams! Over the next two weeks, wife will become a “tennis widow” as I hope to be glued to the matches, especially his.
My incentive for completing my reading of the Turabian book in the next 48 hours is getting to watch the matches that start on Sunday. If I do not complete this, my accountability partners will know that I cannot watch the matches. If I do complete the book, I get to enjoy the match!
Wrap-up
I hope this overview of finding motivation to do a difficult task has been helpful! You can start by defining your “why” and intentionally chewing on it. If you are still struggling with motivation after that, commit for doing the task for just five minutes and see what happens. While you are at it, give yourself an incentive to complete the task so that you enjoy knocking it out!
Chew On This:
What’s your compelling “why” for doing what you have to do?
