100 Ways To Motivate Yourself, Third Edition

15. Light your lazy dynamite

Henry Ford used to point out to his colleagues that there wasn’t any job that couldn’t be handled if they were willing to break it down into little pieces. When you’ve broken a job down, remember to allow yourself some slow motion in beginning the first piece. Just take it slow and easy. It isn’t important how fast you are doing it. What’s important is that you are doing it.

Most of our hardest jobs never seem to get done. The mere thought of doing the whole job, at a high energy level, is frequently too off-putting to allow motivation to occur. A good way to ease yourself into that motivation is to act as if you were the laziest person on the planet. (It wasn’t much of an act for me!) By accepting that you’re going ...