A little motivation...

I seriously lack self-discipline. I have all these things I would love to do, but very rarely does anything get done because I never do them. I have a list of things I'd like to get accomplished every day, things I truly enjoy doing, but they rarely get done because I'm just too lazy to do them.

So, I decided to try an experiment on myself. Having seen that I need a break from my kids occasionally, I decided to motivate myself to get my list of "daily goals" accomplished by dangling the carrot of "time off" in front of my nose. How much "time off" I get is directly related to how well I do on meeting my "daily goals" each day throughout the month. If I meet all 8 daily goals each day throughout the month, I will end up with $30 to do as I please (get a sitter and have an afternoon off). If I only meet a portion of the goals, my reward is less, but as long as I meet at least 50% of my goal each week, I will end up with $8 at the end of the month to hire a sitter for a couple of hours.

So far, the money is the only thing working. I'm two days into the challenge/experiment and I've had to "fight" myself to get everything accomplished that I want to get accomplished. And nothing on my list is very time-consuming. I think the most time consuming thing is playing with the kids for at least a half hour.

My list is:
1. Get up by 7am. I love to have the time to myself in the mornings before the kids get up, but I struggle to do so simply because I enjoy it.
2. Do my devos. This is not so much an area of struggle as much as I'm trying to build the habit of DAILY devos back into my routine versus random devos throughout the week.
3. Bible memory. I joined a group of ladies online back at the end of last year who are working to memorize one Scripture a week. I was doing really well for the first 18 weeks or so, but have been hit and miss the last few weeks.
4. Run/walk for 20 minutes. I enjoy running/walking, but I "avoid" it as it seems to take too much effort - either getting my shoes on and setting the elliptical up or putting the kids in the wagon.
5. Do 20 double crunches. I want to get rid of my baby belly. It was disappearing for awhile, but then I stopped running/walking and doing ab workouts.
6. Take a shower. If you're a mom with little kids, you understand this one. Some days it just doesn't happen. But my hubbie likes a clean wife, so I want to make a better effort to shower daily.
7. Play with the kids at least 30 minutes. This might sound strange, but I find that I have a hard time just sitting down and playing with the kids. Even when I'm not "accomplishing" anything, I tend to feel more productive if I'm at the computer or counter. I need to enjoy the time I have with the kids while they're still little and want to play with Mommy.
8. Blog/write 20 minutes. If I want to be a writer someday (and I think I still do, even though I'm still not sure what I want to write), I need to be honing my writing skills. Plus, I find that when I take the time to sit down and write, my brain functions better and I'm less stressed.

Two days into my challenge, and so far I'm at 100% for the course. Our vacation later this week might through a few curve balls my way, but I'm going to do the best I can and take whatever I can get!

Q4U: What are the things you like to get accomplished on a daily basis? Do you need external motivation to get things done? What are some rewards you use to motivate yourself to accomplish different tasks? I can't wait to hear your responses!