How to sustain motivation on your business over the long-haul with the progress journal framework
Hello,
Welcome to this week's edition of Course Builder's Corner.
I have two things to share with you this week.
I. Article: How to sustain motivation on your business over the long-haul with the progress journal framework
II. Two ways I can help you
I. Article: How to sustain motivation on your business over the long-haul with the progress journal framework
How do you stay motivated despite many setbacks?
Teresa Amabile, studied work journals of hundreds of workers and discovered a profound insight. The most motivating thing about work is a sense of progress. But feeling like your progress has been halted has the opposite effect, making you want to give up.
That's why feeling a sense of progress is essential to your success in growing a business.
But noticing progress is sometimes hard especially when we experience any of the following:
Setbacks
Confusion
Drops in motivation
Fortunately, there's a single practice that can overcome all of these barriers to long-term success. It's called the Progress Journal.
How do you create a Progress Journal?
First, you create a document that you'll open ever time you work on a specific project. Each day you work on the project you'll add to this document.
Second, you write today's date at the top, then the words Do, Reflect and Next under each other like so:
Do
Reflect
Next
Finally, after a work period, you write down what you did under Do, a few thoughts about your work under Reflect and what you'll do next under Next.
Example:
One of my projects is to find a well-defined audience that I want to serve. I'm using Arvid Kahl's approach outlined in his book the Embedded Entrepreneur. Below is my progress journal entry for February 27th.
The entry above took just 3 minutes to write up and lets me know exactly what I've done, what I've learned and what I'll do next. There won't be any time wasted trying to figure out what to do when I get back to this. I can hit the ground running.
The progress journal is effective for three reasons:
Reduces forgetting: Writing down what you did ensures you remember the many things you did to move your project forward. These strategies may be useful in future projects.
Appreciate your progress: As I mentioned earlier, progress is highly motivating. Reviewing your progress each day will help you stay in the game.
Improves problem-solving: It's normal to work on a project and reach an impasse. In the Reflect step you notice these challenges and in the Next step you'll often list useful actions to overcome them.
Encourages restarting: There are times when I have to stop working on a given project for days or weeks. It's so hard to get started again if my first step is to figure out where I left off and what I intended to do next. But with a progress note, when I get back to work, I can get started almost immediately.
Next step
Look at the projects you are working on. Decide which one you'll try the project journal approach with first. Then create a your first entry. And let me know how this works for you.
I thank you for getting this far. 🙏🏽
II. Two ways I can help you
The Atomic Course Blueprint- Want to create a course without the usual overwhelm? Try creating a tiny course. Find out more here.
iPARA: How to organize your digital life for action- Is digital disorganization keeping you from reaching your goals? What if just four folders could let you not just stay organized but actually get things done. See for yourself here.