Intrinsic motivation is a good start

Keeping steady progress is key to any long-term endeavor. Be it creative, professional, educative, training, or other. If you follow this blog, intrinsic motivation is what leads your way at the start. 

Intrinsic motivation comes from within, as opposed to extrinsic motivation coming from without. Any long-term process demands an intrinsic motivation at its basis. 

Beginnings are not the most difficult part

Starting a new project is easy enough, even though they say all beginnings are hard. In my view, when you have a new idea, you’re “moved” by the thrill of a new possibility, difficulties are not yet apparent, and enthusiasm is in the air. 

It’s the next phase and the next, and then moving forward that starts that grinding part of any project when you begin frotting with reality. When you get to what Scott Belsky calls The Messy middle.

Steady progress is the secret sauce for the long term

Frotting that way for a while needs a balance of some kind. Progress, however small, keeps that balance. This means that whatever project you’re getting into needs to have a constant element of progress within it. Steadily dripping into it and your mind.

That’s how you keep going.

How to keep steady progress?

It demands practice, a daily practice of attention to detail. Forget about the goals, short or long term. These are not the units to go by. Of course, your progress needs to be towards your project goals, but steady progress is otherwise measured. 

Daily. You have to make a point of making little, steady progress daily. 

Note that progress. 

Keep a log of it. 

Some days you may even celebrate your progress if it’s of significant value to the process. 

On other days you may fail. 

Then, it’s a chance to look at that day and see what you could have done otherwise. Learn from those days. That’s progress too. Keep your learning orientation alive.

When you progress, make a note of why you succeeded. When you fail to make progress, note why that happened. Honestly, from my experience, it’s tough to fail if you keep your attention on daily progress. Things that were not considered progress before suddenly get another importance. You start leveraging small things you might have overlooked if your mind was not fixed on Progress. 

Your mind is a progress-seeking machine

Your mind will be on the lookout for any progress you are making and will note it. The critical practice is to create a log of these small progress steps. This way, at various crucial points of your process, you can look at your log and assess your progress, enabling you to decide if it’s worthwhile continuing in the direction you took or if you need to change course. 

So, have a good look at what you are involved in now, what progress are you making? 

Let us know in the comments below.