8 Ways to Get an Instant Motivational Boost, Take Action, and Achieve Your Goals (Finally)

At the beginning of every year, we promise ourselves we’ll become healthier, happier, and more successful. But the motivation doesn’t last forever and instead of achieving our goals, we focus on restoring our motivation.

We at Bright Side totally understand how hard it can be to make changes and hence we have prepared some advice that will help you to maintain your motivation.

1. Prioritize your tasks

Sometimes we spend a lot of time on things that are not that important but that consume a lot of time and at the end of finishing them, you have no energy left to work on your other projects. So prioritizing what is important at the moment may help you to achieve your goals faster. While creating a to-do list, divide your tasks into 4 sections: urgent and important, important but not urgent, urgent but not important, not important, and not urgent. When you learn to work on the major things at the beginning of your work you will feel more productive.

2. Visualize your goals

Of course, it is important to have to-do lists and note your goals and dreams, but visualizing them is a more exciting and creative way to have all your goals in one place. Visualization is one of the most powerful exercises for your mind. You can create a vision board where you can collect photos or images of things you want to have in your life. For example, you may take a clean poster and put pics of the house of your dreams, things you want to buy, and countries you want to visit. Hang the board in a visible place so it will serve as a reminder of why you should work hard.

3. Write a letter to your future self

Imagine what kind of person you want to become after a while. Do you want to become rich or build your own family or travel through a list of countries around the world? Now you have a creative opportunity to track your success by composing a letter to your future self.
By doing this you can set your goals and see whether you have achieved them after a certain period of time. Currently, you may find different available services on the internet that allow you to send a ’future’ letter — you can choose whether you want to get it in one year, 3 years, or even 10 years.

4. Create your own dream team.

While pursuing your goals it is important to have motivated people around you. Share your plans and goals with your people so they can also monitor them and so they won’t allow you to stray from your focus. Having friends who believe in you and who may push and motivate you when it is necessary may be a crucial point on your way to achieving success.

5. Motivate yourself with small rewards at each step

Motivation gurus always say that you should divide your plan to achieve something into small steps. Of course, we cannot argue with that but we are afraid that it is not enough. Try to also think of small rewards you will get by achieving little steps. The rewards shouldn’t be huge or expensive, it can be a visit to your favorite restaurant or going to a movie. By achieving them, it will be easier for you to create new habits and you will be more motivated to work harder.

6. Note every progress you make to track your success

Studies show that it is important not only to note the final result you get but also to constantly monitor your progress. Moreover, by doing this, you may succeed with your goals because the feeling of making progress is powerful and inspiring. It motivates you to move further and not stop when you think that you won’t be able to make it.

7. Furnish your working space correctly

While studying or working at home it is important to organize a separate workspace for various activities. You should separate the work and leisure atmosphere so that the brain can navigate easier and faster: if there is a laptop and a black mug of coffee in the space, this is working. If you have a phone/TV/tablet, then you can watch videos with cats on YouTube.

8. Use a “Pomodoro technique”

If you have a problem focusing use the Pomodoro technique. This time management method has been named after the Pomodoro kitchen timer.
All you need to do is set a timer for 25 minutes while working on some task and take short breaks for 5-10 minutes after it rings. Repeat that three times and after the third ’pomodoro’ (time interval) make a longer break — 20 minutes. Now you shouldn’t buy the actual timer to try it, the internet is full of analogue apps with which you may focus on important tasks.

What other advice would you suggest to others to help them achieve their goals?