7 Ways To Stay Motivated Through The Cold Months

Winter is easily my favorite time of the year for many reasons. For example, I love snuggling up in my room when it’s cold outside, drinking warm beverages while watching festive movies and going to sleep with 1,000 pillows and blankets.

In short,

I love lazing around everyday with the excuse of winter festivities or staying warm.

This is great and all but as a writer, winter is my busiest time due to all the festivities and bored people. It’s also extremely busy for students, workers, and nearly everybody else. Because of this, lazing around is not an option and that is why I thought of 7 ways to stay motivated through the cold months.

1. Keep A Planner

Have you ever sat around because you “don’t have anything else to do”?

You and I both know that you’ve got a ton of things you could be doing! To stop this comment from clouding your head with anti-productive things to do . . . keep a planner! This way you know exactly what you need to be doing and when you need to do it. This is essential to keep you motivated

I actually have fallen in love with keeping a planner. I really enjoy building a planner into my own masterpiece. Use sticky notes, colors, stickers, and anything else that interests you! It’s so much fun.

Another key is to keep your planner extremely specific. Schedule in mandatory study times, every possible deadline, meetings, events and more. This way you can always stay on top of things and know when you actually have time to be lazy. It will also help you stay motivated when you cross things off a list!

2. Plan Group Work Sessions

Speaking of a planner, work towards planning group work sessions! Whenever I feel lazy, I call and ask my friends if they want to dress cute and go to a little cafe. While there, we take pictures, get the daily tea, and get stuff done! Seeing your friends working hard towards a goal will keep you motivated to work towards your own goals.

Make sure to ask your friends how their goals are going and why they are doing what they’re doing. Feed off their passion and energy. You will feel like you’re at the top of your game and so will your friends. It’s a win-win!

3. Make A Playlist

You know how in “Legally Blonde”, Elle goes through a life change and decided to study her heart out in order to get an internship? Doing that part of the movie they showed her studying with upbeat music in the background.

I want you to feel as motivated as Elle was alongside a fire playlist.

Having a good playlist can really uplift your mood throughout the day and keep you smiling! This is honestly my favorite tip on this list. It was extremely helpful to my motivational levels. If you don’t have time to make one you can follow me on Apple Music for some – @purecynicism

4. Meditate Every Morning

While you are slaving yourself away, it’s really easy to forget why you’re doing what you’re doing. This can be detrimental to keeping you motivated. If you do something without a vision . . . you will not last long. For this reason, meditating on my future goals and my vision has helped me stay on track.

It’s also vital to do your meditation in the morning. Doing so will keep the fire and passion in you throughout the day while you’re chipping away at minuscule tasks. I can’t stress how important this is.

If you don’t believe me, just try it for a week. You will see the noticeable difference in your motivational levels. Trust me!!!

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5. Schedule In “You” Time

I was going to put this under the “planner”category but I thought it was too important to not have its own category. Having a planned time/day to just sit around or hang out with friends is essential to not experience bad burnout.

You need time to just relax and enjoy yourself. There is no point in having goals if you have to unhappily slave away 24/7 to achieve them. So make sure you take a day to binge watch that show on Netflix, eat at that one fancy restaurant, hangout with the person you like. Do the things you wanna do! You earned these kind of days, enjoy them!

6. Celebrate Little Victories

I want you to be extremely happy about the smallest of victories. For example, one of my goals is to achieve fluency in Japanese. Whenever I learn how to successfully integrate a word into a sentence, I brag to my friends while saying the sentences.

When I say brag . . . I mean I BRAG.

Doing this helps my pride levels go up 10-fold which directly translates to where my motivational levels are. If bragging isn’t really your thing, then reward yourself with things like a manicure, food, shopping, or more. Just don’t get carried away. Remember that there is always room for improvement and you therefore always have more to do.

7. Stop Multitasking

This point brings me back to high school physics. One day my teacher was explaining to us that you can’t actual multitask.

Let me explain,

Your brain can never split your focus 50/50 between two things. Therefore, you can never truly give your full focus to 2 things. This is why multitasking is anti-productive and it wastes mad time. So instead of trying to do two things at once, set aside time to fully focus on one thing and you’ll finish it faster and more productively!

Staying motivated through the cold months is something most people struggle with. Don’t feel bad and think you’re the only one. Most people are like this and that’s okay. You just need to figure out how you can peel yourself away from the bed and into the office. I hope these tips help you do that!

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