Sometimes "finding your motivation" means pretending you're neighbors with Lizzie Bennett and Jane Eyre. I'm on my own this week while my roommates are on vacation, and I woke up this dreary Monday morning with little inclination to get out of bed. I had plenty of things on my to-do list, including doing laundry, cooking dinner, cleaning dishes, and client work, so what's a body to do except pull on an apron, roll up my sleeves, and instantly transform into a ruddy-faced washerwoman scrubbing stains out of a Regency era child's underthings?
In all seriousness though, one of my rare but effective coping mechanisms when I feel like this is to turn my life into a film or novel. I've been doing it as long as I can remember, from cleaning the microwave in my childhood kitchen as a put-upon Cinderella to Alice exploring Wonderland when I was ushered outside with my siblings for mandatory outdoor recreation time.
So today I pulled on a long dress and a bib apron (with pockets!) that I bought a few years ago at a huge discount off a Facebook ad. I dabbed a little perfume on my wrists (Innocence by Poesie, a dusty peach, coconut, and skin musk scent that's a little old lady in the nicest way), brushed my hair out, and set the laundry basket on my hip to go get the washer running. I loaded the dishwasher and started it, and then set myself up a little workstation at the dining table to get some design work done, complete with flickering candles.
While I was checking email and LinkedIn notifications, I realized something was missing, so I went on Youtube and opened two videos in new tabs. One was a three hour 'manor ambience' video, complete with soft rain, occasional thunder, and crackling fireplace sounds. The other was a two hour compilation of solo piano by Yiruma.
Although this particular method of motivation and productivity may make some people laugh, I was done with all my client work by 3:30, the absolute earliest I've ever been done on a full day of work. Not only that, but by the end of day I had washed, folded, and put away two loads of laundry, cooked enough soup to have quick and easy nutritious food for the next several days, taken the dog for a walk, and done the dishes.
Remember folks - it's not silly if it works.
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