Starting your own business or side hustle can be an exhilarating experience. In your mind, images of you growing a successful business with loyal employees cheering you on are playing. You’ve got a vision, and maybe you’ve already achieved it. Either way, a picture of you winning your next big career goal is giving you a boost of motivation. But that only lasted for a minute. Reality hits you, and you’re sitting in front of papers, deadlines, long nights, and lots of caffeine.
So, we’ve put together a few tips and tricks on how to stay motivated when you’re running your own business. With no higher figure telling you to be someplace at a certain time, it’s easy to let yourself relax into the constraint-free time and space. We’re here to give you some ideas on how to stay strapped down and be that goal-achieving-deadline-meeting-entrepreneur that you are.
1. Hitting a Wall? Change Locations.
Do you have a home office or a favorite cafe you work out of? Well if you’ve been sitting there too long, your mind can get fried. Soon your body will associate the fried mind with the space that you are in, and the frying gets triggered just by sitting in that same seat.
Take yourself out of the situation. Yes, physically get yourself up and sit in a new spot. Give your eyes a different setting to look at. It’ll give you a boost of fresh inspiration and momentum to continue work.
2. Take a Break and Go Outside
Do you ever feel like there just aren’t enough hours in the day to get your vision up and running? With so many things to get done, who has time for a break? Well, you do.
Time and time again, studies have proven that stepping away from your desk will actually improve productivity. Just make sure that the outdoors is somehow calculated into your break. Your mind needs that fresh oxygen. That’s the only way it can function properly – air! Breathe in the new sights around you, and during this time, completely forget about your business. Think about your dog, or listen in on your neighboring chatter. It doesn’t matter. Just open yourself up for new conversations, stimulations, and inspiration. You will more-than-likely discover that these times away from your desk are when you have your best ideas.
3. Schedule a Routine Check-in With Yourself
Take one day out of the week or month to realign your goals. What smaller scale achievements can you accomplish on a monthly basis that will ultimately lead you to your higher goal? When we get caught up in the day-to-day activities, we lose sight of the bigger picture.
Re-evaluate your performance and give yourself something to measure up against. This will serve as a routine reminder of your greater goal. While creating a full-service agency with 20 employees in 5 years sounds like a good goal, something this far away will not be a decent motivator to get you going. Set small goals that will help you achieve the bigger goal. If you need to put this time on your calendar to hold yourself accountable, do that.
4. Get Creative
Ah, the arts. Not everyone has this bone in their body. However, simply consuming some form of art can do incredible things for your brain. Enjoying art can be anything from reading a book, people watching, shopping, listening to music, or freewriting. This simply serves as a reminder that there are other stories out there aside from yours. The sheer amount of perspectives and opinions out there can inspire you to approach your work from a different angle.
5. Stick to a Schedule
Wake up at the same time every morning. Get dressed. Start your computer at the same time everyday. Take a lunch break at exactly 12:30. Just because you’re not clocking into an office, does not mean you shouldn’t be following a routine. Give yourself a strict schedule and make yourself an employee to that timeline. If you give yourself the power to decide every morning how and when you want to work, you will end up allowing yourself to be lazy when you should be working. Put a structure around your work schedule, and you will feel more productive overall.
Being an entrepreneur means you are taking a leadership role on your personal and work life. This means that the two can easily get intertwined and mixed up. Make sure you give yourself the space and time to both work and plug off. Feed both your personal and work needs separately, so that when one part has been satisfied, you can fully concentrate on the other and vice versa.
6. Tell Others About Your Goals
Tell a friend, a family member, or old coworker about your plans. Ask them to check up on you every once in a while. This will make you more likely to stick to those strategic steps you’ve set up for yourself. If you’ve reached that point in your business, hand off certain responsibilities to third parties. We know as an entrepreneur, you want to have your hands in all parts of the business. However, if you’ve reached a point where this is getting too much, it’s a good sign your business is doing well. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Someone else may be a better expert in a certain field and can get that thing done for you more efficiently. There are plenty of resources out there to hire a freelancer, a remote worker, or small service businesses. As always, we’re here to help on any digital marketing and social media needs! Feel free to contact us to see how we can help you grow!
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