BLT (2-Apr) Motivation: How to keep yourself ‘up’

It’s Week 2 of Quarantine!

Is it just us, or does it feel life after the initial ‘rush’ of adjusting to full-time home-working with all of its hardware & software set-up issues, the creation of new chat groups, the incessant flow of jokes…well, it’s all started to go a little bit flat?

Motivation was the theme for the day at our weekly BLT Virtual Networking event:  

Q. How to keep yourself ‘up’?

Ten Tips for Motivating Yourself at Home

I’ve adapted these tips from a Forbes article by Paul Tassi, de-Americanised them, reorganised them, added a few of our own BLT tips, and then put everything back together in what I hope is a coherent order.

1. Have a schedule

• Organise your day as if you have to get up to go to work
• Adapt your schedule to how you perform best (morning/evening) and around your clients (when they need stuff)

2. Get dressed

“When we put on an item of clothing it is common for the wearer to adopt the characteristics associated with that garment. A lot of clothing has symbolic meaning for us, whether it’s ‘professional work attire’ or ‘relaxing weekend wear,’ so when we put it on we prime the brain to behave in ways consistent with that meaning.”

• Karen Pine, professor of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire

3. Don’t work where you sleep

• If you can help it.
• It helps with a delineation between work and play

4. Exercise

• Being sedentary isn’t just harmful for your health, it’s terrible for your motivation and discipline; exercise gives you a boost of energy that’s incredibly helpful for productivity
• This can be done inside or outside (see BLT Thoughts below)

5. Earn Rewards

• Rather than binge-watching box sets and putting off any work until the evening, use tv as a reward
• For smaller blocks of time, use micro-rewards; e.g. an hour of work = 10 minutes on a video game
• You have to balance downtime with actual productivity and discipline

6. Mute social media

• That little “bong” message noise will instantly jolt you out of thinking about whatever you’re supposed to be working on.
• Either hide your phone or mute it

7. Get Outside

• When working from home, your house or apartment can become your bunker; it’s a safe spot that has everything you need, so why should you ever bother leaving?
• Your body needs sunlight (easier said than done in the UK much of the year…) and getting outside (for your scheduled 1-hour per day) will help your mental sanity

8. Talk to other Human Beings

• Make up for the lack of actual human contact where you can – adapt, improvise, do anything that forces you to have a conversation or engage with another human
• For example, the Art Class that both Sue Granshaw and I both attend (Mon & Thu) is now setting a drawing task, uploading the images to Instagram and discussing the results (#drawinginquarantine and #harrisartgroup)

9. Declare war on Distracting Sites 

• At home, you’re guaranteed not to have any sort of filter to restrict your browsing, and so you might find yourself distracted by videos of grumpy cats instead of doing your actual work.
• Delete those sort of sites from your favourite bar

10. Have a side project to fill the dead space

• A lot of time ‘at work’ is spent faffing around, or pretending that you’re working…when in reality you’re not.
• Working from home cuts through all that faff, so if you follow the 1-9 steps above diligently, a 9-5 job might turn into a 9-2 job, simply by trimming the fat from your workday.
• However, rather than binge-watch box sets, take up a hobby or a side project – it could be a hobby such as drawing (see 8. Above), or starting that book you’d meant to write, or…whatever.

Feedback from the Virtual BLT room (Business & Social)

Common thoughts (yes, we do sometimes think alike!)

• Try to only watch the news once a day – it can get depressing otherwise, and the same theme is usually repeated throughout.
• Virtual workouts – Aim for 30 mins per day, be it with Joe Wicks, Diana Moran (The Green Goddess to those of us old enough) and (if you’re ready for it) from Mr Motivator!
• Tax – a moral conundrum? Do you hoard cash (as per David’s accountant’s view) or do you take the moral standpoint that it’s not really your money and the government needs it urgently right now?

Specific member thoughts  

“1^st-class post isn’t very first class any more…and 2^nd-class post seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth!”

David Banes

• David Banes, Bean & Grain

  • Bean & Grain innovations: slabs of special chocolate to melt in your drink for hot chocolate / gift cards redeemable against food gift boxes to send as presents, or just pick me ups to a friend.
  • Conversation with accountant – advising clients to hoard cash and not pay VAT/tax..etc, even if they have the money put aside for it.

• Bruce Bradley, One Can Charity

  • One Can Volunteer Registration Cards – these had to be produced as people were starting to walk into supermarkets, pick up the trolleys/boxes saying they were official collectors, and then trying to walk off with them.

• Mark Harris, Enterprise Doctor

  • Weekly podcast (think it was the M&M Show?) coming soon since some shows were cut from Marlow FM during the quarantine; i.e. Mark’s weekly business slot is no longer being broadcast on air…but will soon be available digitally.
  • Private GP in Marlow – offering Coronavirus testing for £85 a pop; enterprising or morally reprehensible?

• Eva Rickett, Henley Scan

  • Video books – Eva is sending these out to clients complete with individual hand sanitiser wipes (for hygiene rather than drinking purposes!)
  • Spend money with local businesses – these have been hit hard and if we all try to spend some money with a local business, it will hopefully still be there when the virus passes

• Sue Copiae

  • The National Theatre is starting to stream its plays every Thursday at 7pm; tonight’s offering is One Man, Two Guvnors.
  • Sign up to their Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUDq1XzCY0NIOYVJvEMQjqw

• Matt Wright, Nobleword

  • Podcasts – even though I’d often hear of interesting topics, I’d never bothered setting them up on my devices…until now.
  • Tim Harford 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy – my favourite economics author and absolutely fascinating. For example:
    • GPS is a proprietorial system owned by the US government (the European version is called Galileo).
    • Albert Einstein never won the Nobel Prize for his Theory of Relativity – he won the 1921 Physics Prize for his explanation of the photovoltaic effect (i.e. the technology behind Solar PV panels).
    • In 1953, Coca Cola tried very hard (but unsuccessfully) to persuade President Eisenhower to introduce a 7.5 cent coin based on the nickel (5 cents). This was because all Coca Cola’s vending machines (over 400,000 of them in the USA) had only accepted nickels for years and it was prohibitively expensive to change them all.