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Sometimes I joke I am solar powered. Cold or warm weather doesn’t really matter much, I just want sunshine! But it’s been cloudy here lately. By lately, I mean the last 4 months. I’ve just been feeling…I don’t know…blah. This certain kind of blah is something that has been an ongoing part of my life for as long as I can remember. I’ve tried dozens of different ways to mitigate it. At the end of the day, I’ve created systems so even when I lack energy, I can still make progress.

How do we keeping making progress

when we just want a nap or take out for dinner?

I think there are points when we are really stoked. Stoked about saving, investing, karate chopping out expenses. Stoked about creating, building, growing things. But we all face times when our enthusiasm is less like surprise party and more like a shoulder shrug.

Here are the tools I recommend to make progress when you aren’t super jazzed about progress.

1. Automate

I make as many good things in my life automatic as possible. That way I don’t have to decide if I “feel” like doing that good thing or not each and every time. It just happens. Maybe while I am laying down. For years we automated our investing. We automate our bill pay. We automate our giving. For years we kept a multitude of checking accounts as our budgeting system. 100% automated.

2. Habits

We track all our spending. It’s just a habit at this point. It was really hard to remember at first, but after a while it just comes naturally. Make a purchase, input the expense.

We have found LOTS of fun and low cost hobbies. Now it’s just our habit to go out and do those. They are an easy fall back when I don’t feel up for trying new things. We have a long list of tried and true free activities we enjoy. So the free/affordable choice is the easy choice because it’s our habit. It would be more work and effort to go out and find some new, expensive thing to do.

3. Optimize

When I’m feeling up for the hassle of certain things, I find ways to reduce our fixed monthly expenses. It might be testing life without a cell phone, shopping life insurance, or learning new low cost food recipes. When I feel up to it, I dive in. All those things just keep paying off even when the blah is strong enough for me to not care. I don’t have to care about my car insurance cost each month, I just needed to care about it once, 2 years ago. Now it serves me well each and every month.

The reality is that we aren’t robots with exactly the same amount of energy, enthusiasm, and focus every single day or month. When we are bursting with excitement and energy we can channel that energy into getting our money in order. Finding affordable meals. Mastering free hobbies. Getting quotes to reduce our fixed expenses. Then at those times we are struck down by the flu, or the sunshine has gone MIA for months… we can sip some coco and know that we are still making progress on our biggest goals.

For conversation:

Anything you do to keep making progress when you lack hustle?

Is it Spring yet???

Any tips on things that have worked for you?