Motivation - How I discovered it is a false idol
Over the years I have had many skills I have wanted to learn, either as a hobby or a potential change of career (I'm a dreamer). Â Many of these things I have mustered the courage to actually try (which is often considered to be the hardest part), but very few have I continued with to any degree of mastery.
The problem I found was that I would always start off extremely motivated and research the heck out of the topic at 1000mph (I love to research) but within a few weeks my motivation would taper off, my progress would slow down and I would inevitably lose interest and drop the skill completely. This became I reliable pattern for pretty much everything I tried.
For a long time I thought I just lacked the attention span to learn anything beyond a beginner level, it was as if I just wasnât hard working or diligent enough to achieve anything. I would beat myself up about it so much that I just stopped trying new things altogether.
Eventually I had a mini epiphany and brought myself out of this slump by âforgivingâ myself. I decided that if it was something I was truly passionate about then I wouldnât lose motivation, so the problem wasnât that I was deficient in any way but that I had been trying things that I wasnât truly passionate about. This led to me trying several new things in search of my passion, many of which I managed to pursue much longer than anything I had previously and I even went back to a few and managed to get much further with those also. But then the pattern eventually returned of slowly getting less motivated, making less progress and then inevitably stopping spending time on the skill completely. This started to really frustrate me as many of these skills I enjoyed immensely and was extremely passionate about them and yet they still somehow never reached that level of passion that allowed me to pursue them day in and day out without losing motivation in them at some point and beginning the downward spiral of lower motivation, less time/effort spent on developing the skill, seeing reduced progress which fed right back to having even less motivation!
Now because I love research, this time I looked at this in a more positive way and decided I need to find ways to boost my motivation. In my mind, motivation was the root cause of my issues so that it what I needed to target. I started reading blog posts on motivation, watching youtube videos on it, pinning every motivational poster and article I could find on Pinterest, the usual.
I then went one step further and realised this directly related to productivity and started looking up everything related to that too. After reading hundreds of blog posts/articles and watching close to a hundred youtube videos on these topics I came to the conclusion that actually a lot of people have come to before me but somehow this wisdom seems to be hidden from everyone else.
Motivation is like caffeine, it certainly helps give you a boost but you should absolutely not be relying on it for any kind of consistent benefits. Sure there may be a minority of people who either have an excess of motivation for activities or are so passionate that their motivation never falters, but the vast majority of successful people manage just fine without it. There is a quote that sums this up nicely from the extremely prolific writer, Stephen King and it is as follows: âAmateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to workâ
Just do the work. Donât wait for inspiration, donât rely on being motivated, just do it.
Once I started to apply this, rather than learning turning into a chore like I imagined it would do, instead it actually got easier. Every night after I have had dinner, I do some studying. I try to get in at least an hour a night. I donât wait for inspiration and I certainly donât wait to be motivated. I just do the work. This simple change in thinking has led to possibly the most productive few months of my entire life.
If you have been relying on being motivated or inspired and have still struggled to follow your passions, there isnât anything wrong with you and there isnât anything wrong with your passions either. Donât be tricked by the buzz of motivation, just do the work.
