“I am going to go home and make a list of things to do tomorrow!” my client exclaimed as we neared the end of our session.
Something in our talk sparked a vision for their coming week and motivation to make it happen. The story they told me revealed that later in the day they felt more clarity and motivation, while first thing in the day they did not. This was the afternoon, and their more-motivated self had landed on the idea of making a simple to-do list.
Since finding direction and motivation was a primary challenge this person wanted to work through with me, I suggested that they add a second column to the list, where after each idea of something to do, they would also briefly describe the reason why that idea was important. This would provide them with the opportunity to reflect on the nature of the motivation behind it. Therefore, when they woke up the next morning and saw the list, they could be reminded of the reasons why these things were important in the mind of that more motivated self. In other words, this person’s more-motivated Afternoon Self could meet the less-motivated Morning Self to coach and encourage them to get going.
Our co-creativity did not stop there. We reviewed our discussion topics so far and found a way to arrange the list so that they could prioritize those tasks according to the needs that were important to them at this time.
This next version of the list included consideration for the specific goals they had identified for the near future and also separated the tasks they felt they wanted to do from those they felt they had to do – intrinsically motivated tasks from extrinsically motivated ones.
I explained that while we often have many things we feel obligated (externally motivated) to do in our days, we do well to have a balance between things we feel we have to do and those we are deeply drawn to do (internally motivated). And, when we have a good amount of want-to activity in our day, it may improve our motivation for the have-to activities.
Being a caring person, a lot of their ideas centered around doing things for others. Yet, taking care of self was one of their specifically chosen goals for us to work on together. So we developed a third version of this list to include caring and motivation.
My final recommendation was to list as many ideas as came to mind, even gathering some from people they trust. Having too many ideas on the list would be easier to work with than too few. Those ideas could then be sorted into these quadrants and then, if time or energy were short, it would be easier to deliberately choose tasks that were more important to their goals, and therefore more satisfying to accomplish.
Then we ended with an agreement that I would offer support this week by sending an occasional text message to check in with how the list forming and following was working out during the week.
© 2024, Mathew Hudson. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Mediterra International, LLC and Mediterraconsulting.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.