The other day, I watched this video by Campbell Walker (also known as Struthless), where he talks about his goal of running a marathon.
He believes he can’t run a marathon RIGHT NOW, but then he asked himself:
“If I had a gun to my head, would I do it? Yeah”
and concluded that:
We are all capable of doing more than we think…provided there’s a gun to our heads.
If you’ve been following me for a while, you might know that at the very end of 2020, I started a BIG project of 100 album cover artworks, one a week, so it would be completed by the end of 2022… welp, is 2023 and I’m not done with it.
I’ve been considering giving up for a while but, after watching the Struthless video, the part where Aaron gives a motivational monologue, I realized that:
If I were to look back in time and see that the project ended with me giving up, I would feel like total garbage. Why? because it’s so fucking doable. I’m not looking to find the cure for cancer, I just have to sit down and make art inspired by music. It’s simple.
So I spent some days thinking,
“How can I put a gun to my head? What could I do to make it harder for me to procrastinate?”
and that’s when I sent this email to my newsletter subscribers:
I soon got a reply from a friend and now I’m bound to pay her if I fail to do my part.
I managed to deliver my first album cover art under the pact this morning, despite having an awful flu.
I was fueled by the thought “I DON’T WANT TO PAY HER” more than I was by the thought “This is such a cool project to work on”🤣. Focusing on what I don’t want to lose became a bigger motivator than focusing on what I have to win.
Different times require different tactics. Have you ever tried something like this to achieve a goal?