Perhaps one of the most rampant current societal myths is that “Motivation precedes action”. This could not be farther from the truth. And yet, many of us lay in bed, scroll on our phones, and procrastinate, waiting around for that golden dove of ambition to bestow motivation and energy upon us.
Sadly, more often than not, this golden dove doesn’t appear and we end up slacking on tasks, goals, and to-dos until the very last minute, making ourselves slaves to deadlines and disappointment. Our lack of goals and ambition leads us to have even fewer goals and even less ambition, and of course, less and less energy.
How can you get out of this toxic cycle?
Well it might help to just get started doing things! Afterall, the truth is that “Action precedes motivation”.
A to-do list app that helps you keep track of good habits and goals is one of the best ways to get going. Not only will it help you hold yourself accountable and get your schedule and your life organized, but it will train you to take back your control and learn to personally motivate yourself. You will quickly find that as you get moving and achieving things you’ll have more of the energy you crave.
Ready to get started? Today we’ll be talking about our free app, Todo Cloud. We’ve invented some pretty neat features to help people get moving in the right direction and have more success and fulfillment in life, and we think you’ll really appreciate some of our tools. Here are the top three features that people enjoy for setting good goals, obtaining more personal motivation, and increasing daily energy levels.
#1: Use the Recurring Tasks Feature to Lock in Good Habits and Build Energy
An article from The Entrepreneur says it best, “it is easy to get motivated, but it is hard to stay disciplined.” Developing discipline requires understanding the brain’s habit cycle. Your lack of motivation and ambition comes from feedback cycles of bad habits that cause other bad habits.
Any of these sound like you?
- You slog through each day and put off important work and self-care routines.
- You eat food that saps energy rather than giving you health and vitality.
- You stay up really late which causes you to wake up late and lapse on your good morning habits, thus restarting the negative cycle.
If any of these hit a little too close to home, you are probably looking for a way to get to a more empowered, happy place in life.
Thankfully, these habits can be broken. The first step to breaking this cycle is recognizing that your lack of motivation and ambition comes from bad habits.
It’s time to redirect your habits for good. With Todo Cloud, you can use the recurring tasks feature to automatically remind you each day, week, month, or whatever you set it as to “drink water” or “go to the gym.” These reminders will encourage you to keep on top of your goals each day and set you on the path to accomplishing them. Science has confirmed that an alarming amount of anxiety, depression, and general lack of motivation in the world can be traced back to lacking simple, key life ingredients, such as lack of sunlight, lack of exercise, and lack of healthy relationships and socialization.
Wouldn’t it be powerful if you made the commitment to give a phone call to a friend or family member every Tuesday or other day of the week? With Todo Cloud you can automate this to-do task to pop up and remind you on that day every week. Same with getting sunlight or eating healthy, you can make a rule for yourself that everyday you need to complete a recurring task at 11:00am to go outside for a few minutes or pound some veggies. This is an easy way to naturally produce more dopamine and serotonin in your brain which will make you feel better and give you more energy in all venues of life.
Todo Cloud’s CEO says, “A few years ago when I just started to use the app, I would set up recurring tasks to remind me to work out, and do other self-care things. Todo Cloud helped me maintain and develop my self-care and health routines.”
#2: Hold Yourself Accountable With “Task Completion Score”
Ever noticed how much better you perform when you hold yourself accountable to others? It takes time and effort to learn to be accountable to yourself. As soon as you can master the art of holding yourself accountable, you will be unstoppable. You’ll have increased ambition to get more things done and knock out those to-dos.
Todo Cloud has a great feature that shows your “task completion score.” With this feature you can select a date range and instantly look at what percent of the goals and tasks you set for yourself in that date range were completed. This gives you another delicious hit of energy, fulfillment, and achievement if you kept up with your health goals, and if you missed a big percentage of your goals, it will prick you to do better on the next go around.
Here are some other tips for mastering your accountability and actually completing your goals:
- Understand your “why.” If you know what your end goal is, you will be more motivated to accomplish the smaller steps to get there.
- Set long-term goals. Decide where you want to be in the long-term and set your sights on the prize.
- Set short-term goals. Create goals and tasks that you can complete each day or week to get closer to your long-term goals.
- Set a timeline. Create a plan to reach your goals. Remember that a goal without a plan is merely a dream.
- Track your progress. If you build good goals and routines into your schedule that make you healthy, energized, and motivated and you check them off you’ll be able to see your progress day by day.
Tiny changes everyday will lead to remarkable results. Cut out the distractions and make the steps toward becoming better, bit by bit.
#3: Create Dedicated Lists to Areas of Your Life You Want to Improve in
Unlike many other to-do list apps like Todoist that organize tasks on the to-do list by “projects,” Todo Cloud allows you to name and create lists at free will. This means that you can create different lists around all the different areas of your life. This will help you keep on top of your different ambitions and boost your energy to set good goals. Organization is key to getting stuff done!
For example, you may choose to have a list for “Social” with goals about going out at a certain number of times per week with friends or family, or goals for calling up or textings people that you want to develop your relationship with. Happy, strong relationships with lots of people will do a lot for your mental health and make you want to grow more as a person. You may also choose to create an “Exercise,” “Education,” or “Sleep” list that likewise helps you organize your goals.
As you organize your goals, the lists will appear less daunting. A to-do list that is too long will only overwhelm you, so be sure to make your list manageable. If you have multiple lists with 2-3 goals and tasks it will become much more realistic to complete.
We hope that these app features and some of the tips in this article will help you on your journey towards getting more of out of your life so that you can have more energy and fulfillment! Download our app here if you would like to get started. Thoughts, questions or concerns? Please leave us a comment below!
