Motivation

Motivation is a powerful but tricky beast. Sometimes it's really easy to get motivated, and you find yourself caught up in a whirlwind of excitement. Other times, it's nearly impossible to figure out how to motivate yourself, and you're trapped in a death spiral of procrastination. This page contains the best ideas and most useful research on how to get and stay motivated.

This isn't going to be a rah-rah, pumped-up motivational speech. (That's not my style.) Instead, we'll dissect the science behind how to get motivated in the first place and how to stay motivated in the long run. This page should cover everything you need to know about motivating yourself or a team.

Making Motivation a Habit

You can build better rituals and make motivation a habit by following three simple steps.

Step 1: A good pre-game routine should be so simple that you can't refuse it. You shouldn't need any encouragement to begin your pre-game routine. For example, I begin my writing routine by getting a glass of water. I begin my weightlifting routine by putting on my lifting shoes. I can't say no to these tasks because they are so simple.

The most important aspect of any task is getting started. If you can't get motivated to start, you'll find that motivation usually comes after you've started. That is why your pre-game routine must be extremely simple to begin.

Step 2: Your routine should get you moving in the right direction.

A lack of mental motivation is frequently associated with a lack of physical movement. Consider your physical state when you are depressed, bored, or unmotivated. You're not making much progress. Perhaps you're hunched over like a blob, gradually melting into the couch.

The inverse is also true. If you're physically moving and engaged, you're more likely to be mentally engaged and energized. When you're dancing, for example, it's nearly impossible not to feel vibrant, awake, and energized.

While your routine should be as simple as possible to begin with, it should gradually progress into more and more physical activity. Your motivation and mind will follow your physical movement. It is important to note that physical movement does not have to imply exercise. If your goal is to write, for example, your routine should bring you closer to the physical act of writing.

Step 3: You must repeat the same pattern each time.

The main goal of your pre-game routine is to create a series of events that you always do before performing a specific task. Your pre-game ritual informs your mind, "This is what happens before I do ___."

Eventually, this routine becomes so linked to your performance that simply performing it pulls you into a mental state primed to perform. You don't need to know how to find motivation; simply begin your routine.

Even if you're not motivated to do it, your pre-game routine is the trigger that kickstarts your habit.

This is significant because determining what to do next can be difficult when you are unmotivated. When faced with another choice, you will frequently choose to simply quit. The pre-game routine, on the other hand, solves that problem because you know exactly what to do next. There is no deliberation or decision-making. It makes no difference if you are unmotivated. Simply follow the pattern.

How to Achieve Maximum Motivation

This wonderful combination of happiness and peak performance is known as flow. Athletes and performers experience flow when they are "in the zone." Flow is a mental state that occurs when you are so focused on a task that the rest of the world fades away.

Flow can be described as your state of peak motivation in many ways. You would be hard pressed to find a state in which you are more motivated to complete the task at hand.

One factor that researchers have discovered is related to flow states is whether or not you follow the previously mentioned Goldilocks Rule. Working on challenges of optimal difficulty will not only motivate you, but will also increase your happiness. According to psychologist Gilbert Brim, "one of the important sources of human happiness is working on tasks at a suitable level of difficulty, neither too hard nor too easy."

To achieve this level of peak performance, you must not only work on challenges of the appropriate difficulty, but also track your immediate progress. One of the keys to achieving a flow state, according to psychologist Jonathan Haidt, is that "you get immediate feedback about how you are doing at each step."

As a result, we can say that measurement is an important factor in motivation. To put it another way, facing an optimal challenge and receiving immediate feedback on your progress toward that challenge are two of the most important components of peak motivation.