The motivation myth

Motivation is often a big talking point these days. I’m sure you may get the image of an angry sports coach screaming at his players to fire them up.

Even if you’ve never experienced the motivational speaker talks we can see self-help, encouragement, and tips negating unproductivity is an increasingly popular topic these days.

People want to know how to get over the slump in their lives and achieve more. However, this is where the conventional idea of motivation leading to achievement is flawed.

If we wait around for light bulb moments we can remain stagnant for who knows how long.

So why do people do it?

Because it provides an excuse.

“I have writer's block, I don’t have any ideas, I lack motivation”

This is all rubbish. We want to justify why we aren’t progressing in whatever field we are in. In addition to this we watch motivational videos and read productivity books to make us feel like we are doing something, yet, we are deceiving ourselves.

Waiting around isn’t the answer.

Upon reading Jeff Haden’s ‘The Motivation Myth’, my key takeaway was this new approach to gaining momentum. He suggests that successful people and organisations ignore the classical notion of lightning strike motivation being a requirement to bring about achievement, instead, they follow the cycle:

1. Small success
2. Some motivation
3. More success
4. More motivation

Then repeat.

It’s not sexy, nor does is it include hacks or tips and tricks. You just need to have action.

This is where the quote; ‘Start before you’re ready’ by Steven Pressfield, becomes very helpful.

You should be constantly making sure to generate small successes early and on somewhat of a regular basis to keep a continuation of motivation.

When the recognition that motivation does not simply come to you but rather you make it, you can begin to find that motivation can be quite predictable.

The word ‘success’ seems intimidating to many, yet, can be simplified to doing the right things, the right way, over and over. And on a small scale, this is incredibly doable.

I’m personally a massive fan of early mornings and good routines exactly due to this. I wake up and get a ‘small win’ of sorts. That could be doing my bed, reading, doing some writing, or something with a quite low resistance to starting.

Upon completion of the said task, I feel almost bad for not doing anything on that same ‘success’. For example, if I write blogs for an hour or two I find it stimulates my brain and compels me to do some reading, research, or even do other work that has a decent chunk of resistance normally.

It is the momentum.

And don’t get me wrong it doesn’t always act that way. Some days I wake up so motivated that I change around my small routines to attack high resistance items. In these moments I keep going until I sense a dwindle and then use the ‘small successes’ such as daily routines to top me up.

Hence the need for productive breaks and good forms of rest that keep you in the flow state.

Ultimately, the main takeaway should be that you have more autonomy over motivation than you think. It’s not something that can be externally screamed to you nor relied upon to hit you at any given state- it’s a muscle you have to train.

• Start with the small successes, accessible easily in daily repeatable habits.
• Gain motivation and use it for bigger projects.
• Work on these larger works to get more success and motivation, then retreat to small successes to replenish you.

Remove the paralysing perfectionism and need for something amazing to happen to you externally. Put your head down and do the work. Motivation will come.