- When we're being unproductive and wasting our time,
we like to tell ourselves that what's missing is motivation.
Intuitively, we think that to get something done
like writing that essay or working on that project,
we need to summon up some mystical energy,
this mental or emotional state, this motivation
that gives us the spark to get started.
But what if we've misunderstood the idea of motivation?
What if we could reframe the idea
and structure our lives in a way
where we'd never need to worry about motivation ever again?
Hey, friends, welcome back to the channel
and to this next episode of Book Club,
the series where we distill and discuss
highlights and ideas from some of my favorite books.
And today we're talking about
"The Motivation Myth" by Jeff Haden,
"How High Achievers Really Set Themselves Up to Win."
And it's a book that tries to debunk
some of the popular myths around motivation,
hence the title,
and it talks about how we can kinda restructure our lives
in a way that helps us be happier,
healthier, and more productive,
which is what we're all about on this channel,
which is fantastic.
Using examples from his own life,
along with lots of inspirational people
that he's interviewed during his career.
Jeff explains why we've all misunderstood motivation.
And then he uses this theory as a springboard
to discuss other issues linked to success and happiness.
- Motivation is something you can create yourself.
Put in effort, you will improve, you will make progress.
That feels good, and that gives you enough motivation
to carry you to the next day
so that you can get up and do whatever it is on your plan.
- Although there's loads of snippets of wisdom in the book,
we're gonna split this video up into three core ideas.
We'll start by looking at why motivation is not the spark,
then we'll look at processes over goals,
and finally, why being a jack of all trades
is the best way to live life.
The first idea and the premise
that the whole book is based around
is the idea that motivation is not the spark.
This is the ultimate motivation myth,
it's this idea that we all have
where we think we need motivation to get something done.
If you're anything like me, you know,
you might watch a motivational YouTube video
or read a motivational quote
or see someone's topless photo on Instagram
and think, "Yes, I'm motivated.
I've got the motivation to get that body.
I wanna look like Zac Efron."
But if you're anything like me, that motivation never lasts.
And Jeff actually calls us out in the book very nicely.
He says that for most of us
motivation is a sugar rush that never lasts.
And instead he's says that
there is only one recipe for gaining motivation, success.
Specifically the dopamine hit we get
when we observe ourselves making progress.
The main idea is that motivation doesn't lead to action,
instead, action leads to success, which leads to motivation,
which prompts action,
which generates more success and more motivation,
and this creates a positive dopamine driven feedback loop.
It's these tiny doses of success
that give us the motivation that we need to continue.
And so with this model,
motivation isn't based on like wishing and hoping
that we're gonna get this activation energy to do the thing.
Instead, it's based on this reality
that we're creating for ourselves
where we're doing the thing,
we're getting small successes,
we're generating those dopamine hits in our brain,
and that is encouraging us to continue doing the thing.
Summing this all up in a nice pithy, tweetable soundbite,
motivation isn't a spark,
motivation is the fire that starts burning
after you manually, painfully, coax it into existence,
and it feeds on the satisfaction
of seeing yourself make progress.
And genuinely this is actually a life changing insight.
Like for me when I first realized this idea
that I didn't need motivation to do something,
like motivation was a myth
that actually I should do the thing
and then motivation will naturally follow,
it just opened up so many doors
for like all of the different things I can do in life
without relying on motivation.
But that's all well and good.
Let's say we've accepted that motivation
comes after we start to make progress,
but how do we start making that progress in the first place?
And that is where the second theme of the book comes in.
We're often told that to get the motivation to do something,
we should set some kind of goal.
The common wisdom is that when we have an end goal,
we'll have something to concentrate on,
a motivating force to get us started,
but once again, Jeff tells us that this theory is misguided.
He says that there's nothing wrong with having a goal,
but just having a goal isn't enough.
Like for me, just having a goal to run a marathon
is not actually gonna get me across the finish line.
Instead, success depends on our process.
When we focus on process,
we build the foundations for our success,
and therefore we generate the momentum
and the positive feedback loop
that maintains the sustainable fire of motivation.
As Jeff says,
"If you dedicate yourself to working your process,
you will make progress and then success is inevitable."
So if we're trying to run a marathon, for example,
the goal would be I'm gonna run the marathon
but that's fine,
but then we forget about the goal and instead
focus on the process,
the process of every day I'm gonna do
a certain amount of kilometers or miles
or whatever runners do.
And in the book, he's got loads of tips
about how we stay on track with the whole process thing.
One of my favorite ones is using the power of language.
Like when we're doing anything that's hard,
we are gonna be tempted to stray from the process.
Like for me, starting this YouTube channel,
the process is I'm gonna make one or two videos a week.
And it's very, very tempting to stray from that
because all other things in life come up.
But actually one way of keeping ourselves on track,
and one thing that I found very helpful
is by changing our language,
so moving from I can't to I don't.
So I can't is a decision that we've made
based on external processes,
like I can't afford a Tesla Model S.
It's like the external reality
like I physically don't have enough money to spare
to buy a Tesla Model S
like it is outside of my control, I can't do it.
And in this money example, it might be true,
and there's nothing I can do about it for now.
But actually, there's a lot of areas in life
where we say I can't,
when we actually do have it in our control.
Like for example, I might say,
I can't eat that cake because I'm on a diet
and that will just subtly reinforce
that it's an external thing,
it's not like an internally generated decision.
And so inevitably, I'm gonna end up caving
and I'm gonna eat the cake because I've said I can't.
And the trick that we can do to kinda get over this
is to replace I can't with I don't,
because I don't is much more a personal,
lifestyle, identity type decision,
rather than an external forces type decision.
Like if I say, "I don't eat unhealthy meals."
I'm reinforcing to myself that I'm a healthy person,
therefore, I don't eat unhealthy meals.
If I say, "I don't drink."
That is reinforcing that this is my identity.
If I said, "I can't drink."
It's sort of, "I can't drink 'cause I'm driving tonight.
I can't drink 'cause I'm pregnant."
It's, you know, it's an external force,
it's not an identity-based thing.
So whenever I can,
if I ever find myself using the phrase I can't
then I switch it around to I don't.
So like, "Oh, I can't eat that McDonald's drive through.
I don't eat McDonald's drive through
because I'm gonna look like a Gymshark athlete one day
and this is my identity, this is who I am."
And so after reading books
like "Motivation Myth" and "Atomic Habits",
the way that I think of goals now
is that yeah, you set a goal,
but then you completely forget about the goal
and you focus on the process instead,
and you can read "The Motivation Myth"
to get loads of other tips about this.
And on that note, maybe if for you, you know,
getting started with something
or sort of sticking to the process is a difficult thing
you might like to check out my brand new class on Skillshare
about the principles of productivity.
In the class, we start by defining
what productivity actually means
with my patented productivity equation,
and then we talk about the three myths,
the three laws, and the three powers of productivity.
And this is one part of a three part kind of series
that I'm doing on Skillshare, all about productivity,
because the question I get asked most of all,
outside of anything else is how are you so productive?
How do you do all of this stuff?
How are you so cool?
If you click the link in the video description,
you can sign up to a two month free trial of Skillshare
if for some reason you don't have an account already,
and then you can watch this new productivity class
where I take you through how to be more productive.
You can also check out my classes
on how to study effectively for exams,
how to memorize anything with flashcards,
how to edit videos exactly like this one,
I've got loads of stuff,
like sort of hours and hours and hours
of content on Skillshare
and you should definitely sign up to Skillshare
to watch all of that
because it'll be good.
Once your trial is over
the premium subscription is less than $10 a month
and it is totally worth it,
like I pay for Skillshare,
even though I'm a Skillshare teacher,
and they sponsor my videos and stuff.
But it's just so good,
like you can just learn anything on Skillshare,
it's fantastic.
So thanks Skillshare for sponsoring this video.
Anyway, now that we've talked about
the importance of process,
the final idea that we're gonna talk about in this video,
is how we can turn our process driven mindset
to become, as Jeff says, serial achievers.
And again, our mate Jeff is being a bit of a contrarian here
because the conventional wisdom
is that we should try and be specialized
and get like really good at like one thing.
And that tends to be what most traditional metrics
of like success and accomplishment are defined by,
like how good can you be in one specific field,
but Jeff says that we should instead
be thinking like generalists, rather than specialists.
This advice makes me feel pretty good
because this idea of becoming a jack of all trades
is something I've been preaching to myself
and to anyone who'll listen for the past decade,
like there are so many different skills
that we can learn that will synergize with each other
and a lot of times
like innovation in any specific field
it doesn't come from being super, super, super specialized
in that one field
because then you sort of have a tunnel vision
kind of, you've got your blinders on.
Instead, it comes from sort of combining innovation
from multiple different fields.
So if you are a generalist,
if you're a multidisciplinary sort of person,
you can then combine these things in interesting ways
to make a company or invent something cool
or just make loads of money or kinda do whatever you want.
And in the book,
Jeff actually says that we should all try
and become an and person,
like someone who is this and this and this and that,
like, you know, when I (chuckles) lay awake at night in bed,
I think to myself, you know what, I'm a doctor and YouTuber,
and podcaster, and blogger, and musician and magician,
and I try and sort of stack these like ands onto my identity
for various different reasons,
you know, we might talk about inferiority complex,
we might talk about the need to impress other people,
but that's a topic for another video.
The point is, Jeff agrees with me,
it's good to be an and person
rather than just a single specialized individual.
Jeff uses Venus Williams' example,
alongside being an absolute legend at tennis,
she's been really successful as an entrepreneur
with her activewear brand.
It's not just some celebrity vanity project
apparently she's heavily involved in the business,
and she's even taken extra degrees to improve her skillset,
and to give her something to work on
when she retires from tennis.
So that's all fine, this idea that we should all try
and be learning all these different skills and stacking up
all these different kind of bits of our identity,
but to be honest, maybe you've got a full time job,
maybe you're saving lives as your day job,
and it might be quite hard to actually make the time
to come home from work
and then produce incredible, high quality,
life changing YouTube videos, for example.
But actually, Jeff has got a solution for us,
he says that we don't have to do all of this at once.
And this is actually great, because what Jeff says,
which kind of really resonated with me,
is that you can get pretty good,
like almost world class
at almost anything in like five to seven years.
And so if we kind of split up our lives
into these five to seven year segments,
like I'm 26 now,
hopefully got like 12
of these five to seven year segments, at least
left in my life,
if the whole anti-aging thing
doesn't go the direction that it's sort of heading.
That means that for me,
like I can become like really, really good
at like another 12 different things
because I'll have like five years to work on them,
and I think that's really cool, right?
Because, especially working
in a traditional field like medicine,
usually doctors kinda do their thing,
and then that's the only thing that they do.
And very occasionally,
you'll get doctors who do stuff on the side,
and that's really cool.
But if we think of our lives
in these sort of five to seven year chunks,
it means that, you know, I can become a salsa dancer,
I can become a Gymshark athlete,
I can become a touring musician
like there's so many things I could do,
there are so many things that we can do
when we think about our lives in those sorts of seasons.
And I think that's one of the fun ideas from the book.
And actually, in the book, Jeff says that
becoming this sort of multifaceted, absolute legend,
it doesn't just help us in our professional lives,
it also helps us like personally.
Professionally, it means that
we're not necessarily restricted to any one career.
Like, again to use myself as an example
because I'm a narcissistic twat.
I'm taking a break from medicine,
like a one year sabbatical from medicine in August 2020,
and I can do that because I've got these other businesses
and this YouTube channel and stuff
that make money on the side,
which gives me the freedom to explore other interests,
and that's a freedom
that a lot of other colleagues that I have,
people who are also taking time off,
they don't necessarily have that
because instead they have to kind of do locums
and do extra shifts to actually make money.
But apparently on the personal side as well,
Jeff says that a lot of the people that he's interviewed,
it seems like the people who are the happiest,
in his estimation,
are the people who have got
these sort of this and this and this and that,
like who have different facets of their identity
into their lives,
so they're not overly reliant
on any one thing to be going well.
I'm not sure how much I buy this,
like, it just seems a little bit strange
that stacking up skills is a recipe for happiness,
but hey, maybe that's just the radical
liberal side of me talking,
and maybe this is actually the chip.
And anyway, like success and achievement and accomplishment,
they all kinda mean different things to different people.
We all have different definitions of it,
but the point is that whatever our definition of success,
if we set the goal to however we wanna get there,
and then we forget about it, and focus on the process,
and treat motivation as a myth,
and instead rely on kind of doing action,
making progress and relying on the dopamine to sustain us,
then that'll be a recipe for living a healthier,
happier, more productive life.
As Jeff writes, "Let your past inform your future,
but don't let it define your future."
We should forget about relying
on some form of motivational spark
to kickstart us into action, it'll never come.
Think about what you want to become,
set your goals, both personal and professional
and start focusing on the process to achieving them.
As he says in the book, "Your dreams are important,
but your plan is what will allow you
to achieve your goals and live out your dreams."
Don't wait for motivation, get started, work your plan,
when you do you'll find all the motivation that you need.
Thank you so much for watching.
(gentle music)