Have you ever felt motivated but didn’t actually take action? I can give you an example of this kind of motivation right now.
Have you ever been very motivated at 7:00 PM for all the great changes you were going to make in your life….tomorrow?
How is it that we can be so very motivated at night, and then that motivation evaporates in the morning? We never end up taking action at night, because we are too excited about all the great action we will engage in tomorrow.
“Yeah tomorrow I’m gonna wake up at 5:00 am, workout, eat, start writing my book, and finally get my life together!”
Average Guy
But tomorrow comes, that motivation has already faded into the night, and we are left with the same habits we had before. Only now there is nothing pushing us on to take action. So we fall into laziness and do nothing.
The point of that analogy is simple: to illustrate that it is possible to feel motivated, but not act, which is essentially a massive waste.
A. The Limitation of Motivation
Motivation is not enough to achieve the goals you want. Because it is an emotion, and like any other emotion, it fluctuates constantly. Additionally, as an emotion, it serves to propel you toward action. Therefore, emotions without subsequent actions are meaningless. They are empty. They represent a violation of the individual’s responsibility to use emotions properly for a constructive endeavor.
II. Recognizing the Illusion of Motivation
A. The Illusion of Productivity
If you let the emotion of motivation get the better of you, it can feel like you accomplished something when in fact you accomplished nothing. You feel good before you actually get started working! You get the sensation that you are working effortlessly towards a goal. But the problem is that you are getting nowhere. You are just basking in the sensation of motivation.
Many Christians do the same thing. They bask in their emotional experiences without actually using those em emotions for something productive. Or they make the critical error of believing that the quality of their faith is somehow reflected by the quality of their emotions. So in chasing non-stop positive emotions, they miss many key elements of truth in scripture.
Constantly being able to feel a sense of motivation without acting actually leads us to complacency. Because we enjoy the feeling of motivation instead of acting, and we do this day after day after day. Every night we get motivated and fired up, and every morning we fail to follow through. Some might think of this as progress, as “getting the mind ready for change”, but it is the equivalent of spinning our wheels.
B. The Opportunity Cost of Motivation
Motivation actually exists as an opportunity cost. While we could be spending our time actually making progress towards our goals, instead we are spending time just feeling motivated. We are basking in the feeling without any forward movement. This comes at a cost. Actionaless motivation is not free. We are missing out on time to actually make meaningful progress towards goals that matter to us. This is the opportunity cost of motivation. [And this is the opportunity cost of marriage].
Many are aware of the laws of motion, that an object at rest stays at rest until acted upon by an outside force. Well while we are feeling all nice and motivated each evening without actually moving towards our goals, we are actually building inertia against us. We are remaining at rest, and rewarding ourselves emotionally for remaining at rest, making it even more likely that we will remain at rest in the future.
Unfortunately, we build the habit of rewarding ourselves for staying still. Because it feels good to be motivated, yet we don’t act. So in a way, we are emotionally rewarding ourselves for inaction. This is a problem. Actions that are rewarded get repeated. It’s already easier to do nothing than something, so we should not be making a special effort to reward ourselves for doing nothing.
III. From Motivation to Action
A. Self-Awareness
The first step to change is always awareness.
You cannot fix a problem if you don’t know it exists. In order to start to shift from basking in motivation without action to making meaningful progress, you have to admit there is a problem, admit there is something that needs to change in your life.
High-level athletes or employees often undergo the process of a “needs analysis”. This is where the demands of the sports or jobs are analyzed, and the athlete/worker themselves is analyzed to determine a few things. One is what are the demands of the sport/job, and the other is where the athlete/worker is, and what they need to improve.
You can perform one of these on yourself.
1. What are the traits you need to have in life?
2. Where in the process of developing those traits are you?
For a basic start, it can really be as simple as that. Know where you are and know where you are going. But do not get overly bogged down in the emotion of motivation.
Here is a link to a free needs analysis that goes beyond the sample I’ve provided here.
B. Actionable Goals
The problem with so many of the goals people make is that they refer to a Person’s end-state or the result. They leave out the key piece – the system that produces that result.
Goals are excellent because they tell you where to go, but you have to further analyze how to actually get to that goal. What are the stepping-stone actions that need to be taken in order to get where you want to go? Without identifying those actions, goals are irrelevant. So what if you want to get to Iceland – if you don’t have a map with your route laid out, you might as well guess which way to go and start heading that way.
Smaller actionable steps also reduce the friction for actually getting started. This is key – because what limits many people in their behavior change process is too large of a goal, or too large of a habit step.
They begin with too much ambition relative to the amount of discipline they have.
Make your action steps so small that it is almost impossible not to start. Then you get the ball rolling. Once the ball is rolling, it is significantly easier to keep it rolling – based on that same law of motion we mentioned moments ago.
C. Establishing a System of Accountability
As much as it pains me to say, you may need accountability in order to override your lack of motivation. Yes, I have written before that it is critical to develop strength alone, that accountability is overrated, that accountability is a crutch.
I stand by all these statements, but sometimes people are so weak, so far behind the starting line that they have to look for extrinsic motivation. As I’ve also written, I believe that motivation should be generated from within. This is key because you cannot always count on those around you.
You may not always have someone there to help you. External sources of motivation will not always be there. But you can always count on yourself. And if you can learn to generate that motivation from an internal place, or to develop the discipline that allows you to act no matter what your motivation may be, then you are infinitely more powerful.
But at times it helps to have accountability. Again I emphasize that this is generally a remedial process. It is like a rehabilitation protocol. People who have surgery or get injured are extraordinarily weak and require precise amounts of training and rehab in order to improve and heal, and they require crutches and other assistive devices.
They are not expected to remain in that condition, in fact, they are expected to rapidly improve. They are expected to leave their crutches behind. Just like the average person should not overly or for too long rely on accountability for his strength.
IV. Building Habits and Consistency Over Motivation
A. The Power of Routine
Where motivation fails, habits will sustain you. The best and worst part about a habit is that it puts behavior on autopilot. That is why it is up to you to decide what habit to engage in. This is critical.
Your habits form your character as well as your future skills. Build them with intentionality. Never build a habit or set a goal because someone else wants you to, or because someone else has that goal. Set your own goals. Forget everyone else. You will never have motivation if you take other people’s goals without giving a thought to what you want.
Habits bypass the need for motivation. Get them started and then they will get you started. You will have goal-oriented behavior on autopilot.
B. Action
Your plan of action has to be structured. You need a strategy. Identify your end state, then identify the sub-goals needed to carry the strategy to fruition.
C. Discipline and Persistence
The emotion of motivation fluctuates. Your discipline ensures you continue to act despite your emotions. And your habits support your discipline. Better habits reduce the need for discipline, but discipline pushes you when your motivation fails. Force yourself to act despite how you feel. Start with small actions and build up from there.
V. Progress over Perfection
A. Perfectionism
The perfect is the enemy of the good. So many people live beneath their true potential because they are perfectionists. This prevents them from taking the majority of the action that they are capable of taking. They are so scared of being less than perfect that they forget to act!
Perfectionism is a type of cowardliness. The perfectionist fears what others think, so they do little or nothing instead. The perfectionist only takes the actions that they have little to no choice but to take.
Accept that not everything will be perfect. But by doing so you will act more. By acting more you will get better. Then your “good” will be better than the perfectionist’s “perfection”, simply because you practiced more.
Focus on incremental improvement. Do not worry about the end result.
B. Small Wins
Worry about incremental progress and small improvement. This builds momentum and allows you to improve consistently. Allow yourself to be proud of small victories. Small victories fuel your long-term motivation in the end.
Do not concern yourself too much with motivation. It comes and goes. Sometimes it shows up on your doorstep, other times you won’t see it for a week. Concern yourself with taking action, developing habits, and working on parts of your life that matter to you.
Forget what everyone else wants for you. forget what your parents and grandparents want. Forget what your wife wants. Be excellent for you first – then everyone around you will benefit.
