Question: How do YOU get motivated?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

If I'm procrastinating, I go outside. 20 minutes of brisk walking or biking, and I come back ready to get some shit DONE.

[Shibboleet The Annihilator]

I've been having trouble motivating myself lately, and I'm just wondering, how you guys help to motivate yourselves.
Do you have any tricks or advice? Or should I just suck it up and stop being a lazy bitch?

Basically, I suck it up and stop being a lazy bitch.

Alternatively, you can give yourself two options (I use this for cleaning because I hate it):
1) The thing that you are supposed to do (vacuum).
2) Something you have even less motivation to do that needs to be done (dishes).
3) Move 2 to 1 and replace with something shittier. When you no can no longer do this, you should set whatever it is that you're supposed to do and set it on fire.

Is there something specifically that you're trying to accomplish or is this just in general?

[Rumckle]

Thanks

-Get uni work done with time to spare

Sit at the front of the class.  Write down everything the prof says.  I'm serious.  Write it all down.  90% of the time, everything you need to know for your assignments will be covered.  Congrats, you've just cut down your uni work by half.

ATM I write down abbreviated notes, which usually works, esp. because full notes are available online.

Also, currently I'm taking my philosophy subjects, which require writing essays before we cover the topic in class. 

Is there something specifically that you're trying to accomplish or is this just in general?

A few things:
-To get fit again, I'm not overweight, but I recently learnt that my lungs are not at all what they used to be, same with my muscles.
-Write more/learn more
-Get uni work done with time to spare

[NotPublished]

Motivation comes and goes, but once your stuck in a Routine its hard to fall out of (But sometimes also takes time to get  back into it once you do fall out)

So echoing whats been said; get into the habbit of following a routine based on time.

But how do you get into one? Thats where you have to stop being lazy, so if you say your going to be up by 7am everyday then you gotta do it (Even if its cold; just don't go all commando if your sick) - though it just takes time getting into it, but you gotta make an effort all the time

Though, I would suggest that you have should also use a small amount of your routine time to just relax ... Once you start get into the habbit of having a routine relax, you will find that you won't over extend the time; you don't want to burn yourself out you know?

[Juana]

For writing and creative stuff, I leave a section of my day open, right before bed, and I sit down then and write or whatever else, come hell or high water. I also read a lot and take wiki walks, more than I probably should. Material to write about and learning, see?

For school work, etc. you might want to figure out what your most productive hours are. Mine are in the morning, when I can do my homework with less urge to do other things instead.

[Shibboleet The Annihilator]

Thanks

-Get uni work done with time to spare

Sit at the front of the class.  Write down everything the prof says.  I'm serious.  Write it all down.  90% of the time, everything you need to know for your assignments will be covered.  Congrats, you've just cut down your uni work by half.

ATM I write down abbreviated notes, which usually works, esp. because full notes are available online.

Also, currently I'm taking my philosophy subjects, which require writing essays before we cover the topic in class.  

Is there something specifically that you're trying to accomplish or is this just in general?

A few things:
-To get fit again, I'm not overweight, but I recently learnt that my lungs are not at all what they used to be, same with my muscles.
-Write more/learn more
-Get uni work done with time to spare

Ah, thank you for allowing me to not actually read the thread. I hate doing that.

-Getting fit is kind of a self-rewarding thing. Do it every other morning, ease into it. It will suck at first but it will become something you look forward to. Push yourself, but don't push yourself too hard. If you can, get a friend to exercise with you. Cardio can make you feel amazing and will get your lungs back into shape. Try to get your heart rate at around 150-155bpm. Weight training isn't bad either.
-Find a subject you're interested in, get a hobby if you don't have one.
-Make sure you're majoring in something you're actually interested in, if you hate your major, consider switching. Schedule your study times into your phone's calendar. When it's time to study get rid of all distractions and study in a place that you feel you can study in. For some people it's a study hall in their dorm or a library, for others it's their office or a park bench. It should be done in a place where you're in the mindset of, "All I can do here is study."

Also,
-If you drink a lot of alcohol or soda, or smoke a lot of pot. Stop or cut back drastically, this shit can kill your motivation and ability to get shit done and retain knowledge. It's a waste of time and bad for your health if it's not done in moderation anyhow. If you smoke cigarettes, quit entirely. They're fucking worthless and have no redeeming qualities. They will kill your lung capacity. If you smoke pot, consider quitting or using it in food instead if you won't stop.
-Diet can also play a big role in both physical and mental ability. Obey the food pyramid. THE FOOD PYRAMID DEMANDS OBEDIENCE! Try to have meals with lots of different kinds of foods, 3 full meals a day and 2 snacks a day. Don't eat refined shit or junk food.
-Make a schedule and adhere to it, get into a routine.
-Have a daily to-do list. Reward yourself for completing the list.
-Don't indulge in any vices until you've accomplished what you set out to accomplish that day.
-Have a checklist of goals, vary them: Some should be big distant goals with steps towards achieving them listed (graduation, perhaps), others should be more immediate and attainable (get your mile-run down to 6 or 7 minutes or whatever is shorter than what you can run now). Check them off as you accomplish them, this will motivate you to accomplish more.
-If you have a friend, room mate or girlfriend/boyfriend, try to convince them to help motivate and encourage you to accomplish your goals. Be willing to return this favor. This is especially useful for training and studying.

EDIT:
A couple of other things you can do that cost money:
-Join a gym, if you go to a university they may offer free access to a gym.
-Hire a good trainer to get you started. They can be kind of expensive, but they can also be well worth it if you don't have any friends who are in good shape to show you proper form and all that.
-Invest in a compression suit or two to cut down on how long it takes your muscles to recover from each workout (Under Armour is the popular brand, seems to work pretty well)

[Rumckle]

Useful information ITT, thanks guys.

[Faust]

I've been having trouble motivating myself lately, and I'm just wondering, how you guys help to motivate yourselves.
Do you have any tricks or advice? Or should I just suck it up and stop being a lazy bitch?

I cut things out of my life, computer games films and tv and internet for about three days. I eat well and sleep well for those and after that I have energy for a couple of weeks.

Also whenever I need to do important boring stuff I start the day by cleaning up for an hour.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

I find it helpful to think about how I'll feel after I accomplish it and visualize what the accomplishment is likely to change in my life. It's kind of like dangling a carrot in front of your minds eye.

Sometimes that's all I need to get started, other times it helps to work backwards from that point. I sequence things I needed to do to get there—if any one of those chunks seemed too big I break it into smaller pieces.

If that doesn't work, I add aversive stimuli. I think about the future if I just continue on without the changes I want to make.

Also, there are a lot of great ideas in this thread, one that especially sticks out is recruiting the people around you to help you stay on track, or that are already in the groove you want to be in.

[Telarus]

Because getting Motivated is just one of the steps.....

8 Things Everybody Ought to Know About Concentrating
http://howtogetfocused.com/chapters/8-things-everybody-ought-to-know-about-concentrating/

I found some really interesting info in this article, and I'd like to break it down a bit. Firstly, because the author seems to have used some very simplistic memes/metaphors in order to sell certain concepts and I think the PD crowd can do better if we convert some of this stuff to our jargon. Secondly, because this is one of the key areas of my behavior that I'm working on reformatting at the moment (heh, well for the last 10 years since I seriously took up meditative practice). I want models that help me achieve and maintain the new desirable behaviors, and I tend to favor models that speeds up (as Antero Alli puts it) the reception, integration, and expression of these new traits.

Exercise for the crowd: You can directly map the first four 'Circuits' of the RAW-Leary 8C model to the four Ninja Turtles. I have my own preferred mapping (hints: Casey Jones/April represents 5th circuit blissrage, and Splinter represents 6th circuit metaprogramming), what can you come up with? Gives your reasons. Did the 'meanings' you discovered exists before you put these symbols together in your head?

Now, the article:

"Music helps me concentrate," Mike said to me glancing briefly over his shoulder.

Mike was in his room writing a paper for his U.S. History class. On his desk next to his computer sat crunched Red Bulls, empty Gatorade bottles, some extra pocket change and scattered pieces of paper. In the pocket of his sweat pants rested a blaring iPod with a chord that dangled near the floor, almost touching against his Adidas sandals. On his computer sat even more stray objects than his surrounding environment. There must have been twenty browser tabs open. The tabs included political blog news, random Wikipedia entries, Facebook profiles and a Myspace page blasting more music at him. Two notifications with sound popped-up simultaneously in the top-right corner of his screen. One was an email; the other was a tweet. Behind his dozens of browser windows sat a pending music download and a handful of blinking IM's.

Mike made a shift about every thirty seconds between all of the above. He'd write a little bit for his history paper, check his pending download, reply to his IM's, and then start all over.

Do you know a person like this? I do. Those were my concentration habits at one point in my life. Yet, I made a series of decisions that resulted in a 180 degree turn. This book is about how to make that 180 degree turn. And this chapter centers on understanding a core component for getting focused: short-term focus (or concentration). We'll first outline what science teaches us about concentration, and then we'll dive into how you can concentrate when you feel overwhelmed through 8 steps.

Pretty good intro outlining what we're going to be reading about. The key term here (which I bolded), is short-term focus, or concentration. What we have in the above is a situation of overwhelming external Disorder which is enforcing an internal Order in Mike's body/mind (the neuron firing pattern of "I get distracted every 30 seconds") which leads Mike to have a computer environment that also has overwhelming Disorder.

The Science Behind Concentration

In the above account, Mike's obviously stuck in a routine that many of us may have found ourselves in, yet in the moment we feel it's almost an impossible routine to get out of. Many fall into this pattern because constantly shifting attention and multitasking eases the pain of doing something you hate in the first place. We mitigate essays and projects with blasts of dopamine delivered through tweets, music and gossip.What science tells us, though, is that not only does multitasking make our work 50% less valuable; it takes 50% longer to finish. Plus, it's physiologically impossible for the brain to multitask.

When we constantly multitask to get things done, we're not multitasking, we're rapidly shifting our attention. And this rapid shifting kills the mind, it waters its effectiveness down significantly. When we follow Mike's pattern above, the mind shifts through three phases:

Phase 1: Blood Rush Alert

When Mike decides to start writing his History essay, blood rushes to his anterior prefrontal cortex. Within this part of the brain, sits a neurological switchboard. The switchboard alerts the brain that it's about to shift concentration.

Phase 2: Find and Execute

The alert carries an electrical charge that's composed of two parts: first, a search query (which is needed to find the correct neurons for executing the task of writing), and second, a command (which tells the appropriate neuron what to do). This process propels Mike into a mental state of writing for his History essay. Your mind literally puts a writing cap on.

Phase 3: Disengagement

While in this state, Mike then hears an email notification. His mind rapidly disengages his current writing state, and then sends blood-flow back to Phase 1, which then leads him to phase 2, and then when he gets distracted again, he'll find himself at phase 3.

The process repeats itself sequentially. It doesn't work simultaneously (i.e. multitasking). The mind shifts rapidly through this phase at a rate of one-tenth of a second. This tells us two important things: it reinforces the case that we must only focus on one thing at a time, and second, it's critical to master selective attention, which we'll explore below.

Concentration drives intelligence

Research surfaced recently that revealed the true drivers of intelligence. They asked, "Is intelligence simply the ability to assimilate information and recall upon it whenever needed?" Is intelligence really a measure of memory? If not, than what makes a person intelligent? Amazingly, they found that intelligence is not founded on one's memory. Instead, intelligence emanates from one's ability to control their selective attention. It's their ability to control the three phases above, and where they route their blood-flow to within the prefrontal cortex.

As you improve in the ability to strategically allocate your attention, your brain also improves. In fact, it rewires itself. As you exercise concentration and selective attention, your mind rewires itself to support your new habits. You get better and better at concentrating when you concentrate. That's the good news. The bad news is that as you age, your mind's flexibility slows down slightly. Meaning, you can't rapidly jump out of habits and processes as well as you could in your earlier days. Yet, by practicing the small steps and exercises today within your mind, you can establish solid mental faculties for your older years. By practicing brain exercises through mental games you can significantly sharpen your mind. For brain exercises, I highly recommend Lumosity's brain training games. They're fun, effective and you can sign up for free. Click here and sign up for a free account. (free brain game training)

Now that you know a bit about the science and background of your mind, we'll explore 8 things that will help you build short-term focus (concentration).

8 Things Everybody Ought to Know About Concentrating
^ The rest of the article is under the Link.

Lets bring things that jump out at you back to the thread. Mine come from the closing of the article:

What's Next

[Source: Nathaniel Broughton]

As we covered, the key to proper concentration is creating your own purpose-driven habits that enable you to step into "flow."

It's my thesis that "flow" is the mastery of both short-term focus and long-term focus. In this chapter, we've outlined the science behind short-term focus, and the 8 actions you can do to improve concentration.

Remember – intelligence comes from focused concentration. Beware of the distractions around you. We're all human and prone to laziness or becoming an inefficient work-a-holic, but we can choose to be strategically lazy, and thus, becoming effective.

Sounds like Slack to me. Now I have to go do 5 other things that I slacked off on to write this post, because you're all crazy spags and worth the time.

Namaste

[Jasper]

My trick?  Start talking to myself.  

"So, you're going to sit here and cruise the web looking for cheap laughs?  Oh, ok.  No, that's cool."

"Um, well, that is what I was doing, J.  Maybe you should consider not being a stuck up bitch all the time."

"What?  Fuck you, get off your ass.  The motherfucking sun is out.  The gravity powered FUSION BOMB in the SKY?"

"I know what the sun is."

"Just go outside or get your shit done"

"Okay."

[Doktor Howl]

The motherfucking sun is out.  The gravity powered FUSION BOMB in the SKY?"

Fucking win.

[Jasper]

I'm like Carl Sagan, but all fucked up on caffeine and horrormirth.

[Kai]

Good comments all around.

I especially like your post, Tel. Strategic laziness is a useful tool, as is understanding that multitasking results in low quality work for greater amounts of time.

I'm not sure strategic laziness is the same as slack though.

Gravity Powered Fusion Bomb In The Sky (GPFBITS) shall be my new name for Sol. 

[Doktor Howl]

I get motivated by tales of endurance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HofoK_QQxGc