wrb developer

How I Motivate Myself

posted by Michael Olafusi , on 7:58:00 AM , No Comments

People ask me a lot about how I get to squeeze out so much from each single day and I'm constantly having something interesting to do. In short, how do I motivate myself to do so much?

First, I think part of it is genetic for me. We are workaholics in my family -- my dad, my mum and my siblings. I guess even if you had me locked up in an empty room I would still manage to get extremely busy.

The other part is the one I can explain and hope it be of benefit to someone.

I don't spread myself too thin. To help make what I am saying clear I'll give you a contrast. I know people who are active and leaders in different units/departments at church, then hold positions in their community/estate association, also active members of two or more social communities (Rotaract, this club, that club). Plus they have families too. I sometimes envy them because I consider them superhuman. The only issue is that we all have same 24 hours a day. And because I don't have any superhuman duty to do and I am hidden in my geeky corner pouring myself into the few things I have committed myself to, I get to crank out more creative work. That's how I can write daily. Develop myself to have the skills I need to kickstart my enterprise software business. Write and publish books. Learn new interesting things. Engage in IoT projects.

I am excellent at filtering out distractions. Sometimes, it amazes people how easily I switch off. You can be talking to me now and I am off, already in another realm in my mind. This happens a lot when I am having a mentally challenging project I am working on. Even in my sleep, I dream about it. Every idle moment I get, my mind drifts of itself into auto-mode to pick up from wherever I stopped with project. It makes me a terrible conservationist. Imagine talking to someone who's suddenly turned to a statue and not hearing all you are saying. But the advantage is that it keeps me engaged longer than most people in whatever task I have given myself. I am also able to work on it both in my conscious moments and sub-conscious moments, and get more/faster results than someone else who works on it in his conscious moments. Perhaps, the biggest advantage of this is that I don't experience the mental fatigue that comes from going back to a difficult task after some time off. Switching cost; the mental work of getting yourself back into the high performance mode to tackle the difficult work. Why? I am constantly in that high performance mode. I don't ever switch off from the task at hand. I can hibernate or sleep, but the moment I wake it's instant pick up from where I stopped.

I am terrible at giving up. Its both a good thing and a bad thing. People try to take advantage of it in me. Just hand the stuff over to Michael and you can go sleep/party. So I, in turn, avoid those people. But the good side is that it helps me see things/projects through. I am able to execute all my major ideas. And as they say -- success begets success. Little successes motivate you to more successes and form the foundation of bigger successes.

Finally, I don't complain or worry about what people think/say. Maybe, I am too egocentric or individualistic. But I it helps me avoid negative emotion and thoughts.