Supercharge Your Growth – 5 Everyday Motivation Helpers

Supercharge Your Growth – 5 Everyday Motivation Helpers

Here’s the thing with motivation: It’s hard.

And the problem for creatives and freelancers is that it’s double hard.

Why? Because you have to learn to be self-motivated just to survive.

And yet in 2019, in an era where there are so many choices, and it’s so easy to take a misstep, finding the motivation to keep going, to keep pushing is increasingly difficult.

For every opportunity, there’s a challenge and risk of failure.

Why try so hard when a client might go dark on you, you might not get paid, or there seem to be no clients left?

Why try so hard when you could – you know – crawl back to a ‘proper’ job, working the 9-5 grind for someone else but with the bonus of financial security?

The answer is simple: Because being a creative and a freelancer is fantastic when you get it right.

So join us as we take a look at how to supercharge your growth with these five everyday motivational helpers.

Set The Right Goals

Set Goals

One of the reasons creatives find it hard to stay motivated is because they set the wrong goals.

‘Wrong’ is a bit relative, of course. However, the point is that, if your goal is too average, it will be hard to stay motivated.

Here’s a question for you: Is it easier to make $100,000 a year or $20,000 a year?

Many people would answer that it’s easier to make $20,000 a year. But they’d be wrong.

Why? Because making $20,000 is too small of a goal.

It doesn’t have enough meaning. If you aim to make ‘just enough to survive,’ you’ll find it really difficult to stay motivated.

On the other hand, if your goal is 10X your original average one, you’ll be a lot more motivated.

Your goal has to inspire you.

So start by setting one colossal goal you want to move towards.

You might not reach it, but even if you fall short, you’ll still be pretty damn satisfied.

Then, set a series of weekly and daily goals that you know will make you feel awesome when you reach them.

For example, a weekly goal might be to write 10,000 words if you’re a freelance writer, while a daily goal might be to write 2,000 words.

Next week, you can raise the bar slightly and notch things up to 10,500 words and 2,200 words.

Make sure that every goal you set is something that’s going to motivate you to keep pushing harder and doing what you need to do to survive and thrive.

A goal has to mean something to you, and it has to push you further so that you keep improving each day and each week.

It could even be that your daily goal is to cold email five prospective clients.

Remember that improvement is what creates meaning in our lives.

Once you start to make improvements, and once you start noticing these improvements and changes, motivation will come because you’ll see that what you’re doing is working.

No one who improves is ever depressed or upset.

Instead, they’re happy, and they’re ready to move onto the next challenge.

Understand And Remember Your Why Each Day

Goals And Plans

A goal isn’t the same thing as your Why, which is your reason for doing something.

A goal, for example, can be financial.

Perhaps my aim this year as a freelancer is to make $40,000, which – hypothetically – is $10,000 more than last year.

Alternatively, maybe my goal is to find four retainer clients over the course of a year.

My Why, on the other hand, is a bit more personal and it underpins my goals.

For example, my Why might be my family.

In other words, I do what I do so that my family has the best life possible.

I must succeed because if I don’t, my family will lose out.

And because they are my Why, they keep me motivated.

Or perhaps my Why is freedom.

I do what I do because I don’t want to be constrained by an office job.

So each day I wake up, remind myself of my Why – and I keep growing and improving.

Finding your Why will be the difference maker between lazying around and being unproductive, and busting a gut so that you make things happen.

Your Why is your purpose; it’s why you do what you do.

It could even be that your Why is to change lives and make the world a better place.

Whatever it is, it has to mean something to you, it has to be personal, and it has to be profound.

Each day when you wake up, remind yourself of your Why. Pin it to your wall.

Have The Right Tools

Custom Writing Tools

I can’t stress how important it is that remote workers have the right tools by their side.

Imagine if you were – for example – a freelance writer who didn’t use Google Docs.

Instead, you were still sending drafts over to your editor via MS Word for them to check.

They’d make some notes and send them back to you.

You’d take another look, make a few more changes and send them back. The process is time-consuming and awkward.

Google Docs, on the other hand, is a cloud-based software that makes collaboration so much easier between client, editor and writer.

It speeds everything up and allows everyone involved in a project to work on a document at the same time.

Alternatively, imagine graphic designers who didn’t save their work on an external hard drive.

If something goes wrong on their laptop and they lose all their work, they’re screwed because they haven’t backed it up.

Moreover, with the excellent discount codes now available, there are no excuses for not thinking about the safety of your work.

Having the right tools will boost your motivation simply because they’ll make your life so much easier, and they will supercharge your growth by allowing you to work faster and more efficiently.

Whatever you are, be it a writer, a designer, an illustrator or so on, make sure to take advantage of the many tools on offer to you.

Some will be completely free; others will charge a fee.

However, have a browse on Google to find the best tools for your vocation and make sure to work with the ones that you know will improve the way you work.

Moreover, don’t forget to check out our top 10 productivity tools for digital designers.

Create a Daily Routine

Routine For Increasing Productivity

One of the reasons some people prefer to stay in a 9-5 job is because ‘regular’ posts offer them structure.

They know they must set off to work at a particular time, arrive at a specific time, start work at a specific time, and finish at a specific time.

It’s this structure that they enjoy, along with the structure at work – meetings, lunch breaks, and so on.

Freelancers and creatives, on the other hand, have no set routine, and this can cause anxiety and a loss of direction, productivity – and motivation.

It’s a good idea to create a daily routine that makes sense to you, and which is practical.

If you work better at night – as many creatives do – create a routine that ensures you’re able to work at night.

Perhaps you’ll need to wake up later, nap at a specific time and so on.

Either way, it’s imperative that you create structure in your day so that you’re not having lunch at, say, noon one day and then at two another day.

This is erratic and can cause a loss of focus.

Take a look at these apps that will help you create and manage your own daily routine.

Make Time For Personal Projects

Get A Job Freelancer

As a creative, you’ll know how important it is that you get to work on your projects.

Otherwise, how are you even creative?

If you’re always working for other people all the time, your creative energies might get sapped out of you, and you might start to feel worn down.

As clients tell you to ‘do this’ and ‘do that’ you might start to question why you even became your own boss in the first place.

To stay motivated, then, make sure to set some time aside for your own personal projects.

For example, you could dedicate 5-6 hours per day to your client work, and then another hour (or more) to your own personal project.

This way, you get to earn money, but you also get the reward of tackling something that means something to you.

You can call it a side hustle, a personal project – whatever you want.

The main thing is that you keep your own projects on the go so that you stay motivated each day, knowing that once your client work is out of the way, you’re ready to make a go of your own thing.

Not just that, but personal projects will also give you the chance to recharge and refresh so that you’re ready to tackle your client work with renewed vigour.

Thus, your client work will benefit, and you’ll be in a position to supercharge your growth.


Hopefully, these five everyday motivation helpers will boost your creativity, your productivity and your ability to complete your work to a high standard.

The best thing is that, once you start growing and seeing results, motivation will become ingrained in you.

It’s the realisation that you’re improving that is often the most prominent motivation there is.

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