“Just do it.” -Nike Slogan
Two questions I get asked often are: How do you get and stay motivated? How do you find time to do everything you do?
Marathon training is a perfect case study when it comes to motivation and time management! I spent over 75 hours of training for this marathon, while I was helping lead a youth ministry and plant a church, played hockey, got engaged, and worked a full-time job.
To make this happen took a lot of motivation and time management. Motivation and time management are two critical ingredients to success, not only in marathon training, but in life.I thought I’d share what I learned about both throughout my time training:
Motivation – They key to getting and staying motivated is vision. If I wouldn’t have had a vision of crossing the finish line this weekend 6 months ago, I would have quit, but every day I work up, I would remind myself that in 6 months I’d be running the marathon and that I had to train if I wanted to achieve my goal.
Vision will get a keep you motivated over the long haul. However, action will get you and keep you motivated in the short-term. A lot of days, I don’t want to wake up and go outside in the cold and in the dark and run for an hour. The only thing that gets me motivated on those mornings is action. Lacing up my shoes, putting in my earphones, turning on my Garmin watch, pushing play on my iPhone, and start running. Once I start running, the motivation comes almost instantly.
Whatever your goal is, most likely the best thing you can do to get and stay motivated on a daily basis is to, as Nike says, “Just do it.”
Time Management – How do you make time to train in the midst of a crazy schedule?
You have to schedule it! I try to schedule everything I do, including sleep. Most of my workouts and runs occur every day between 6 a.m. – 7:30 a.m. It’s an appointment on my calendar. More often than not, if I don’t schedule it, it doesn’t happen.
Whether your building a marriage, trying to grow personally, build a career, grow spiritually, lose weight, make money, etc., you will always need to be motivated and you’ll always need to manage your time wisely.
What keeps you motivated? How do you manage your time?
Thoughts?
