EDITOR’S NOTE:

When Apple designed the beautifully simple iPod, with its minimalist interface, they must have faced a conundrum: How do you keep things simple when there are always other important features you want to add, new buttons that add so much more functionality?

In the software world, this is known as “feature creep” — new features are added and added until things are no longer simple, but complex.

In the world of simplicity, things are never as simple as they seem. Things tend to grow more complex over time — simplicity takes hard work to maintain.

How does Apple keep its minimalist interface if it wants to keep adding new features? How does the designer of a simple WordPress theme keep things simple if he wants to add new features for his users?

How do you declutter a room and keep it from getting cluttered again? How do you simplify your work routine — and keep it simple?

The short answer is thoughtful reduction, and routine editing. The long answer is below, in six steps:

1. Be very clear about your mission. This is crucial — without it, simplicity for simplicity’s sake is worthless. What are you trying to deliver to the customer? What are you trying to accomplish for yourself? Apple could keep its interface simple because it knew what user experience it was trying to deliver: A simple way for people to listen to their music. Know your mission, and the rest is details.

2. Figure out what matters most. This is really the logical progression of Step 1 — what is most important to delivering on your mission? If your mission is to have a simple room for sleeping and dressing, what items do you need? A bed, a dresser, maybe a simple closet for hanging clothes, and perhaps a mirror. That’s all you need in a simple bedroom with those two purposes. Not tons of storage space or chairs or bookshelves or anything else.

3. Thoughtful reduction. This is taken from John Maeda’s Laws of Simplicity — after you’ve figured out what’s important, reduce the rest thoughtfully. It doesn’t really need more explanation than that.

4. Set limits. Once you’ve gotten down to simplicity, setting limits is a great way to force yourself to stay simple. Basically, you set limits on whatever you’re trying to keep simple: the number of buttons on a device, the number of features in a program, the number of pieces of furniture or clothing or emails you answer or tasks you set out to do each day. With a limit, you force yourself to choose, and force yourself to eliminate the non-essential rather than allowing things to grow more complex.

5. Organize. As Maeda said, “Organization makes a system of few appear simpler.” Group similar things together intelligently, and aim for a small number of groups. If you have 20 things, and you organize them well, you now might have only 4 groups — which makes things simpler. Be sure the grouping, however, doesn’t make things more complicated.

6. Edit routinely. Set a regular interval for what I call “editing” (I’m a writer — it’s how I see things). So if you want to keep your to-do list simple, you could set a reminder in your calendar to prune your to-do list down to 10 things (an example of a limit) each Monday (for example). If you want to keep a room decluttered, set a calendar reminder to declutter it every two months. If you’re designing software or a WordPress theme, edit before each release.

Read more about simplicity and productivity in Leo’s best-selling book, The Power of Less, or follow him on Twitter.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a guest post from Vincent of Hit Your Goals.

Tell Me How To Be Successful

I am always curious about which things people do that make them so successful, while others are dwindling around in mediocrity. In order to find the answer, I read a ton of books, listened to what the rich and powerful had to say, and scrutinized their actions and beliefs to find the secrets behind their success.

Successful people are always on television, describing what they are doing and how it got them where they are. Yet sometimes it seems as though the things they are doing are simple. This makes me wonder, what makes them so different?

Why are they are so successful?

Vision

Nearly all of successful people share one very important attribute – they have a vision of excelling in what they do, and have a ravenous hunger for success. The desire to become successful in life helps create distance from mediocrity.

It is this vision that makes it possible to succeed. This is the greatest asset you can have if you want to leave mediocrity for success. Without a goal, you cannot score.

Take The Plunge

It seems relatively simple to be successful but I can assure you it will not be easy. Human nature does not help because we always carry the tendency to seek the easier option.

People who have the tendency for an average life will always remain in the range of mediocrity. In order to excel, we must have the courage to take the plunge and do whatever we need to do in order for us to achieve the desired results.

Talent

There are people who think that talent plays a huge role in whether people will find successful, yet most successful people are not viewed as hugely talented in their younger days.

Do not let the thinking of your lack in talent stop you. Sometimes your talent needs to be first uncovered and then refined. Talent helps, but ambition takes you further.

Out Of Your Comfort Zone

In order to excel, you must aim for the sky, beyond what you are capable of. Do not even think about whether your current abilities support your aim. Choose things that you are not capable of and learn how to do them.

If you think you do not have the IT capability to start a blog, do it anyway. If you think you do not have the skills to start a company, do it anyway. If you think you are not able to become the best sales person in your company, do it anyway.

We learn far more when we do things we do not know and think we aren’t capable of. When we choose to do things we think we are not capable of doing, we are forcing ourselves to grow. That’s a good thing. Only by growing, can we first strive and then excel. Make it your vision to become what you want, not what you think you can be.

Nothing is impossible.

Adidas

Learn From Victoria Beckham

I believe most of you had heard about Victoria Beckham and she has a great story we can learn from. When Victoria Beckham was a teenager, she had a vision of becoming of becoming a world brand. She birthed a desire to achieve her dreams and didn’t compare herself to divas like Mariah Carey. Instead, she used the brand Persil Automatic as her yardstick.(Persil automatic is one of the UK’s leading detergents)

Look at where she is now? Her hunger, desire, and vision led her to where she is now.

The Secret?

Don’t live your life like a frightened rabbit. Go conquer those things you think you are not capable of, and always remember to maintain a vision of where you want to be. It does not matter how good you are now, what matters is how good you want to be.

Vincent writes about personal development @ Hit Your Goals. Check out his website and subscribe to his RSS feed. You won’t be disappointed!

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a guest post by Jeremy Day of Insight Writer.

Simplicity, a word I love and cherish. When life starts to pile on the difficulty, I turn to my friend simplicity to help take some of the burden away. I prefer to travel light in this world, and aim to keep it that way.

People are often the reason our lives are heavy, the root cause of our difficult lives, and the reason why many people such as Henry David Thoreau fled for wilderness.  To shake off every weight society tries to place on them.  Some never return, some come back with a deeper sense of self, respect for life, and increased capability to live by simpler means.

People have their opinions of course. They love to share what they think about your body, thoughts, choice of friends or spouse, your car, your job, the amount of money you make, products you use (or don’t). Or even what you should be doing with your life.

Stop listening!

That’s right, I said stop listening and caring what others think. People share truths, half-truths, white lies, outright lies, and irrelevance. This does not bode well for the truth we all crave or need to hear.

We all live in community, with friends, family, and people we respect. We all want to listen, interact, and use what we discuss to better our own lives. This is the reason I am writing this today.

Truth is hard to find, and many well meaning people set you down an improper path.  Not knowing the truth makes your life more complex. And knowing the truth is what will set you free.

Here are some ways to start living a simpler life:

1. Recognize an opinion when you see it. It doesn’t matter whether the opinion came from a scum bag marketeer or your best friend. Simply recognize it for what it is.

2. Ask yourself a few questions. Is this truth, a half-truth, a white lie, an outright lie, or totally irrelevant to my situation? I believe the scariest one in the mix is the half-truth because these are the ones that really have the potential to hide in your mind like a ticking time bomb and explode at the most inopportune time.

3. If this is anything but truth, consider your course. If it comes from someone you don’t respect the answer is easy. If it comes from a friend, not so much. In my book, truth outweighs feelings, but the other half of the population feels that feelings are more important. I don’t have the answer, except to say you should keep truth in the equation.

These are drastic changes for some, but everything can be taken in baby steps. Perhaps you can warn your friends that you plan on listening to everyone’s opinion less, though you still respect them. This shouldn’t be a hard communication to have.

With time and practice you will gain more clarity and insight, start to recognize the truth more and more, and your life won’t feel so heavy. Most importantly perhaps, you will accomplish your goal of having more simplicity in your life.

Jeremy Day writes about personal development, finance, and health @ Insight Writer. Check out his website and subscribe to his RSS feed. You won’t be disappointed!

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a guest post by Tess Marshall of The Bold Life.

What do a messy desk, an overcrowded inbox and a “know-it-all” friend have in common?

They are examples of tolerations or situations we put up with or don’t do anything about. Tolerations can be irritating things, minor inconveniences, our own behavior and the behavior of others. They deplete our energy, waste our time and dampen our spirits.

The following are examples and suggestions of tolerations and how to eliminate them.

People Tolerations

We all have one or two family members or friends who arrive late for appointments or cancel at the last minute. If this becomes a habit we can request timeliness rather than become irritated or complain to others.

My running partner Meg and I used to meet at the park every morning. She was always ten to fifteen minutes late. For six months my resentment grew and when I finally told her how I felt I overreacted.

It’s important that we communicate our needs with gentleness and compassion. Relationships are all about communication. I was right in requesting Meg to change her behavior. I was wrong to wait six months, build resentment and overreact.

In the past it has helped me to write down and practice what I want to communicate in difficult situations. Today I teach clients to do the same. It’s easier to remain focused and on track without allowing emotions to interfere.

Communication is more about listening than talking. When I put myself in another’s shoes I become more compassionate and understanding.

Health Tolerations

It’s easy to eat too much junk food, skip exercise and gain weight. This is one way we tolerate our own unhealthy behavior. With discipline, support and commitment we have the power to make healthy changes.

I quit smoking when I was twenty seven. I couldn’t tolerate being out of breath, the smell on my clothes or the taste in my mouth. I also didn’t want to be a bad example for my small daughters.

I began running on an inside track at the university nearby. For six months I ran daily adding another lap weekly. I finally entered my first 10K and finished dead last. However my husband and girls cheered as if I won first place. Because I take 100% responsibility for my health, today remain at my high school weight.

The Economy

The American Psychological Association’s 2007, “Stress in America” survey reports money and work are two of the biggest sources of stress for almost 75% of Americans.

In 2008 our economic times have only gotten worse. We don’t have to dwell on the constant negativity of the media. Instead we can focus on what is right with our lives and maintain positive attitudes.

When my neighbor Bill lost his job and home, depression and anxiety overwhelmed him. His girlfriend convinced him to seek out professional help. Bill currently has a plan for finding new employment and managing his stress.

Everyone needs help some time, when life becomes unmanageable ask for support from your friends, family or a professional. There’s no need to tolerate intense emotional pain.

It’s important to remember we are not alone; everyone is experiencing the same anxieties around economic issues. It’s important for all of us to manage our income and take care of our physical and mental health.

Work Tolerations

I find it expensive to build an online business due to how quickly technology changes and my need to keep up. I recently switched to a less expensive shopping cart and also canceled a membership site I was involved in.

I could have taken this step sooner however I procrastinated and continued to pay the monthly bills. My self talk went something like this, “I need to cancel this, I keep forgetting, I’ll do it tomorrow.”

Ask yourself what expenses you can eliminate in your business. Do we really need one more set of DVDs, a workshop or teleseminar? Reflect on your business expenses. Refuse to be taken in by the next biggest secret or get rich quick scheme.

Another toleration I have is my messy and unorganized office. My self talk goes something like this, “I’ve always been this way, creative people are unorganized or if I straighten up it just happens again.”

It keeps my business from progressing. It’s also self sabotage. My plan is to take a before and after picture of it and post it on my blog. A public commitment is about the only thing I haven’t tried.

It is also important to create a list of priorities in order to avoid wasting time on unimportant tasks. As you finish, cross each task off the list and add what’s left to tomorrow’s list. It’s a discipline that will eliminate procrastination and lead to success.

Other work tolerations can be distractions such as obsessively checking emails, playing solitaire, too much time on Twitter or Facebook. When we become aware of work habits that don’t serve us well and make the necessary changes our profits will increase.

Personal Tolerations

In the dessert of Arizona my car easily becomes dusty. I have regular time and date to maintain it. Doing this allows my environment to be energy giving vs. energy draining.

Because I was one of ten children growing up I had one pair of shoes and hand me down clothes. Today I have more clothes and shoes than I need.

I recently decided I wouldn’t purchase new clothes for a year and would then reevaluate.

I’m determined to wear my clothes until they wear out rather than when I tire of them. It has been three months and I have no desire to go shopping. My new motto is “less is more.”

Home Tolerations

Our fast paced world leaves little time for home projects and repairs. Drawers or doors that stick, leaky pipes or faucets and piles of mail, magazines and papers deplete time and energy if not addressed.

We recently finished cleaning our closets and garage. As we simplify the contents in our home it becomes easier to maintain. Living with less allows us more energy for hobbies, fun and play.

Empower yourself  by taking a personal inventory, creating a list of your tolerations to clean out, weed out or replace in every area of your life: home, personal, friends, family, work and money.

Eliminate them one at a time. You don’t have to eliminate everything at once. You may want to delegate or hire help for bigger projects. The goal is to have a clean and organized home and office space, good relationships with family, co-workers and friends and little or no debt.

Some tolerations will be easy to eliminate. For example, schedule a day to take care of your recycling. Get in the habit of immediately putting away what you use in the kitchen. Clean your desk at the end of every workday.

Other tolerations will be long-term projects. If you have a bad back you may need regular appointments with a chiropractor. If you choose to leave a relationship you may need the support of a therapist or life coach. The gift of letting go of a person who no longer fits our life style is that we make room for someone new.

There are three basic steps: awareness, commitment and action. The benefits of hitting the delete button on tolerances are many. You’ll raise your standard of living and become more effective, focused and balanced.

Life is good when we keep it simple. Life is good when we surround ourselves with people who support us. Life is good when we live and work in a tolerance free living space.

If you enjoyed this post, you can find more great insight by Tess at her blog The Bold Life.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a guest post by Ali Hale of The Office Diet and Alpha Student.

When undertaking a big project – losing weight, starting a new business, writing a novel – you probably draw motivation from your expected end result. Perhaps you cut out a picture from a magazine to represent an ideal weight, imagine your bank balance increasing month-on-month with your business running well, or picture that book with your name on the spine.

This sort of visualization is definitely a boost to motivation, and gives you the push you need to get started on the path to your goal. If your enthusiasm seems to occasionally wane along the way, though, you’ll want to look for some lower-level, day-to-day motivations.

When you’re wondering whether all the healthy eating and exercising is worth it, when you’re still struggling to get your new business off the ground, or when your novel has stalled part way through chapter three, that end goal can seem very far away. Here’s how to keep your motivation and enthusiasm up:

1. List what you enjoy about actively working on your project

(By “project”, I mean any long-term set of actions leading to a specific goal – not necessarily a work-related “project”.)

Get a piece of paper, or open a new document on your computer, and list what you enjoy most about working on your project. These are the benefits you get on a daily basis, as you head towards your end goal.

For example, if your big project is writing a novel, the day-to-day things that you enjoy might be:

• The fun of creating characters and putting them in difficult situations
• The sense of achievement when you meet the day’s wordcount
• Sharing your work-in-progress with friends in a writers’ group

If you can’t find anything that you enjoy on a day-to-day basis, it’s time to reconsider whether this is a goal you should have. With any big goal, the journey to get there is as important as reaching it: don’t assume that achieving the goal itself is what makes you feel happy or fulfilled. So if you want to have written a novel because you’d enjoy seeing your name in print, but you dread approaching the keyboard each day, rethink your goal.

2. Set small and specific sub-goals

If your end goal is going to take a long time to reach, it helps to break it down into smaller chunks, and set these as specific sub-goals. This lets you get a regular sense of achievement, and the feeling that you’re making progress – very important for your motivation levels!

For example, if your big project is to redecorate your entire house, you might set sub-goals like:

• Clean out the basement
• Paint the spare bedroom
• Get the hallway recarpeted

Any project can be broken down in this way. Even if your project can’t be “seen” until it’s finished (maybe you’re creating a website), you can still set sub-goals of completing small parts of it. For an extended written piece, try setting word-count goals. For any project, you can set goals of spending a certain amount of time working on it.

3. Track how far you’ve come towards your goal

When you’ve been working for months, and you still have a long way to go, you might feel quite dispirited. It helps hugely to see how far you’ve come, and this simply means keeping track of progress – ticking off sub-goals as you achieve them, or recording statistics related to your project.

For example, if your big project is to lose weight, you could track:

• How much you weigh each week
• Your eating habits each week (to see how they’re improving)
• How you look – get someone to photograph you every 2 or 4 weeks for a visual record.

When you’re three or four months into your project, you can look back over all those weeks of records to see that you have made progress and that you’re infinitely nearer your goal than you were before you started on Day One!

4. Celebrate milestones along the way

Setting small sub-goals, and tracking your progress, puts you in an ideal position to celebrate the milestones that you reach. Most projects will have significant moments where you can say with confidence that you’ve achieved something worthwhile – even though you aren’t yet at your final goal.

For example, if your big project is to get your Bachelors’ degree, your milestones might be:

• Successfully being accepted onto a degree course
• Passing your first set of exams
• Completing your first significant piece of coursework

Reward yourself when you reach a milestone: go out for a nice meal, buy champagne, treat yourself to a day doing whatever you like, or buy a CD or book that you’ve been wanting to get your hands on. Celebrating your achievements in this way can give you added enthusiasm to push on towards the next milestone; most of us are more motivated by rewards than we like to admit.

5. Get rid of niggles in your project

However much you set yourself small goals, track progress and reward yourself, you’ll find that there are some aspects of your project which bore you, frustrate you, or take up too much of your time. Identify these “niggles” – and be ruthless in eliminating or at least diminishing them.

For example, if your big project is creating a successful blog, you might remove niggles by:

• Paying someone else (or bribing a spouse/child) to do routine administration tasks
• Automating as many tedious, repetitive aspects as you can
• Asking a friend to guest-post once a fortnight for you

Try not to get held back by niggles or feel that they are an inevitable part of your road to success which must be endured. There are few unpleasant aspects to your project which you can’t overcome with a bit of creativity. Even if your project is something like “healthy eating” (you can’t really outsource “not eating chocolate”), you can take action to reduce food preparation time or to make resisting temptation easier by not having junk food in the house.

6. Set a schedule for working on your project

Most of us feel motivated when we’re fully on top of things, and ahead with the work which we’re doing (whether that’s paid work, or work towards a personal goal). And most of us feel correspondingly demotivated when we feel that we’re behind, floundering and getting overwhelmed. Setting a project schedule can be a huge step towards feeling in control.

For example, if your big project is starting a freelance business “on the side”, you might:

• Devote half an hour each morning to reading about your industry
• Make the first hour of your evening “freelancing time”, to look for clients or work on client projects
• Set aside a full morning or afternoon at the weekend for freelancing purposes

Having a specific day of the week, or a specific hour of the day, devoted to your project – and sticking to it without making excuses – means that you have a structure in place to help you towards success. Trying to fit your project in when you “have time” almost inevitably means you’ll end up getting very little done.

What big project(s) are you working on? What helps you find your day-to-day motivation for making progress towards your end goal?

Ali Hale is a writer, blogger and postgrad student. She runs The Office Diet (RSS feed) and Alpha Student (RSS feed), and writes for several large blogs.

ALSO, if the subject interests you, be sure to check out her post on Up-And-Coming-BLogger called Staff Blogging: Get Paid To Practice Your Blogging.

This week has been full of guest posts; two of mine and two of Sean Platt’s (well, technically one of Sean’s was last week, but who’s counting. ).  So I figured it was important to bring these shared selections to your attention so you don’t miss out on some potentially appetizing articles.

Write To Done

This first one had nothing to do with “Motivate Thyself” but is worth the mention none the less.  It was published last Friday and written by Sean Platt of Writer Dad:

How to Build a Perfect Bouquet of Words

Pick The Brain

The next one was written by me and published on Tuesday at PickTheBrain:

10 Traits Of A Successful Human Being

“Motivate Thyself”

Then we have Sean Platt of Writer Dad who shared some great words here on Wednesday:

Living Success: One Step At A Time

Writer Dad

And finally, today I have a guest post on Sean’s blog about one of my Miniature Dachshunds:

She’s Mighty Dog In Her Mind!

So I hope you enjoy at least one of these posts, but you are certainly welcome to read them all.  And be sure to join us tomorrow as I close out this moth’s Motivate2ACTION! theme of ‘Exercise‘.  Until then…

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Sean Platt of Writer Dad.

We each blog to the beat of our own lives.  Different schedules and rhythms require a multiplicity of approaches, but there is a constant.  If we want to be the best blogger we can be, without becoming a prisoner of our posts, then it is necessary to approach each day no different than a sunrise on the farm.

Farmers don’t waste the sunlight.  They make every minute matter.  So should we.  Bouncing around from task to task only carves us a tunnel leading to nowhere.  Modern innovation has led to an endless array of distractions; email, twitter, YouTube, Digg…  I could continue, and easily turn this into a two part post.  We must focus, or risk drowning beneath the billions of bytes.

I’m married, with two children.  I run a preschool, and a successful blog which posts five times a week.  I’m also writing a book, editing a second, and have a few other projects in various stages of development.  Even with all that, I’ve never thought of hiding under the covers and hoping it would all just go away.

The key is in how we organize our time.  We can not simply run up and down the court and hope to sink the shot.  We must first aim and then release.  When I first started blogging, I believed I could juggle a dozen things while dancing.  Alas, I can not.

I successfully sweep through my days by tackling a single task at a time.  I start each morning with a list of everything that needs to be done.  Then, I set my priorities.  Of course I check email, tweets, and comments, but only when it’s time.

Imagine you’re in the kitchen cooking.  You’ve got something on each burner, and something else is in the oven.  There’s frozen food thawing in the microwave, and a rainbow of ingredients spread across the counter.  You smell something burning, and run to check the oven.  Smoke spills out, and you grab a potholder.  One of the pots on the stovetop is bubbling; spilling angry liquid over the edge.  You reduce the flame, and begin to rapidly stir a series of sauces.  Sweat drips from your face as you wonder what went wrong.  Why you didn’t start out with a plan.

Too much blogging at once will never burn our houses down, or ruin our dinners, but it might make us wish we’d never even started.  I treat each day as a collection of minutes, where each one matters as much as all the others.  It is the only way I could ever hope to get everything done without wanting to run from the room and find a place to cry.

If you enjoyed this post, you can find more great writing by Sean at his blog Writer Dad.

Re-Centering: Finding Your Way Back To The Life You Meant To Live

It’s main premise is how we tend to get lost as we pursue our goals.  Our achievements become useless when we miss out on those things we cherish most.  So check it out and see if you can’t relate.  Are you living your life in step with your core values?  Let me know in the comments at zenhabits.

Also: Don’t forget to check out Leo’s guest post here at “Motivate Thyself” called:

Quick and Dirty Little Tips for Exercise Motivation

Definitely worth the read!

For week2 of Motivate2ACTION! (Exercise) we have a special guest.  He is currently training for a marathon so this subject is particularly fresh on his mind.  So let me hand this over to him as he shares some of his own insight into the great challenges of exercise motivation.

This is a guest post from Leo Babauta of Zen Habits.

My life right now is focused on training for the Honolulu Marathon on Dec. 14, and while my training has been more intense than ever before, I am having a ton of fun.

Yesterday morning I woke up at 2 a.m. to start running at 3 a.m., so that I could complete a 20-mile long run before the brutal Guam sun got too high in the sky. That in itself was quite an accomplishment — and while I’ve come a long way as a runner and fitness enthusiast, it was just a few short years ago that I couldn’t run half a mile.

The Leo Babauta of three years ago would never have believed he could do a 20-mile training run, much less be training to complete his third marathon. Life was too busy, with two jobs and six kids, and such discipline seemed beyond me at the time.

But today, I exercise almost every day of the week (I force myself to rest once a week), and what’s more, I can’t imagine ever doing otherwise. I love it too much. I know that’s not the case with everyone, so I’d like to share some tips that have helped me to motivate myself to exercise:

1. Start small. As I said, I started by trying to run half a mile. That was hard enough for me. If you start out too ambitious (and believe me, I’ve tried it many times), you’ll likely fail. But if you start small and only increase gradually, you can do it. Baby steps.  Start out REALLY easy.

2. Focus on one goal. If you are trying to quit smoking, eat healthy, start running, begin lifting weights, get organized, and so on, all at the same time, you will spread your energies out too much. Trust me –

I’ve done this over and over again. Instead, pick one goal, and focus on that for at least a month. If you want to start running, or walking, or whatever, do just that. The other stuff can come later. And if you do one goal at a time, you’ll be amazed at how many goals you can tackle this way. I tackled all of the goals listed above, and many more, in the last few years with this method.

3. Enjoy yourself. If exercise is a huge pain, you won’t be able to do it for very long. No matter how disciplined you try to be. Instead, have fun. Set little challenges for yourself. Listen to great music.

Have great conversation with a friend. Play games. Have competitions. Join a race. Exercise doesn’t have to be a chore — it can be a blast!

4. Get a partner. While it can be tough to have a partner for every workout, it can be a great motivator to have someone to talk to while you run or do some other workout. And on those days when you would

have skipped the workout by yourself, you’ll make sure to make an appointment if you have a partner to meet.

5. Just start. I like to tell myself that all I have to do is lace up my shoes and get out the door. That’s all. And that isn’t very hard. Once I’ve done that, the rest is easy. But if you let yourself get stalled before you get started, it seems too difficult. Just get out the door.

6. Celebrate your progress. If you keep a log, you can see your progress over time. You have to be patient, because progress doesn’t always come quickly, but if you look back over several weeks or

months, you can see how far you’ve come. And that can be an amazing feeling. Celebrate! Congratulate yourself. Appreciate how wonderful this is.

7. Mix it up. Don’t always do the same thing all the time. Try new workouts you find in magazines or blogs. Try a training plan with a variety of workouts. Set new challenges. Try a new route. Vary your

pace and distance. Do intervals. Do hills. Whatever it takes to shake things up and make things interesting. Boredom is the enemy of motivation.

Above all, have fun out there. A good workout can be a world of joy.

For more from Leo Babauta, check out his blog, Zen Habits

Sponsor Leo and support a great cause!

As you may already know, Leo is working with Train for Humanity to help in “Raising funds for orphans & refugees who have been affected by genocide and civil war.”

Right now he is training for the Honolulu Marathon for his ‘Train for Humanity’ event.  You can support him and this great cause by going to his Sponsor Page and making a donation.  You can also help out by spreading the word and encouraging others to do the same.

Now I want to encourage you to apply some of these great tips as you strive for better health by finding an exercise routine (or not so routine) that works for you.  This week, test out some new ideas and be ready to share the results with us in ‘M2A! Week3′. I look forward to hearing all about it!

If you found this post to be helpful in your exercise pursuits and/or you think others may be able to benefit from Leo’s personal insight, please don’t hesitate to share it using your favorite social media.