You Have to Engineer Your Own Motivation

Most people treat motivation like something that happens to them.

They feel motivated, so they do the thing.

They don't feel motivated, so they don't.

And then they spend a bunch of time trying to figure out how to become more motivated.

I think that's the wrong way to approach it.

Because motivation isn't just something you experience.

It's something you can influence.

You can actually arrange the circumstances around a decision so that following through becomes much more likely.

I call that

motivation engineering.

I was working with somebody who had a list of relatively simple things he needed to complete over the next two weeks.

The tasks weren't difficult.

But they were important.

They involved some personal financial planning and tracking.

Things that could have a meaningful effect on where he was financially a year from now.

And he'd already demonstrated that knowing how important they were wasn't enough to get them done.

So instead of giving him another speech about discipline, I asked him what he really enjoyed.

Something he'd look forward to.

We talked through a few possibilities and landed on something simple.

A nice dinner out with somebody important to him.

If he completed everything on the list, he'd go enjoy it.

But I also wanted a consequence if he didn't follow through.

Something that would actually bother him.

So we established a financial penalty he could afford but wouldn't enjoy paying, and I had him tell somebody close to him about the agreement while we were still on the call.

Not later.

Right then.

And his reaction changed immediately.

The dinner sounded nice.

The possibility of having to hand over money because he hadn't done his homework?

He really didn't like that.

Which was the point.

Now, there's a reason this works, and it comes out of behavioral psychology.

Our behavior is influenced by consequences.

Rewards can make certain actions more attractive.

Penalties can make avoiding certain actions less attractive.

We like to think we're operating entirely through conscious choice, but our environment, habits, and the consequences attached to our decisions influence us constantly.

The question isn't whether you're being influenced.

You are.

The question is whether you're going to participate in designing those influences.

And this is where understanding yourself becomes important.

Some people respond incredibly well to rewards.

Give them something they're excited about, attach it to a clear result, and they'll work hard to earn it.

Other people respond much more strongly to the possibility of losing something.

And some people won't care about either one unless there's another person involved who knows what they committed to.

You have to figure out what actually moves you.

Because a consequence that means nothing to you isn't leverage.

I know people who could agree to a financial penalty, miss the goal, pay the money, and go about their day.

It wouldn't change anything.

For somebody else, that same penalty would be enough to make them rearrange their entire schedule to get the work done.

Neither person is necessarily better or worse.

They're responding to different incentives.

And once you understand that, you can stop relying on generic advice and start building something that works for you.

There are a few important pieces, though.

The task has to be clear.

You need to know exactly what completion looks like.

There has to be a deadline.

And the consequence has to be meaningful enough to matter without being so extreme that it creates a bigger problem than the one you're trying to solve.

You also can't do this with every little thing in your life.

If everything has a reward and a punishment attached to it, the whole system becomes exhausting.

But for the relatively simple, high-leverage things you keep avoiding?

Things that would materially improve your life if you would just sit down and do them?

This can be incredibly effective.

And I think there's a larger principle here.

We spend so much time talking about self-discipline as though it's a personality trait.

Somebody has it.

Somebody doesn't.

But a significant part of discipline is learning how to structure your life so that the actions you want to take are more likely to happen.

You still have to do the work.

Nobody can make that decision for you.

But you can stop leaving the conditions around that decision entirely to chance.

If you know what motivates you, use it.

Don't just hope you'll feel like doing the thing.

Give yourself a reason to do it.