Motivation is a sexy and elusive muse. There are few greater feelings in this world than a feeling of pure, unstoppable motivation.
But that’s hard to come by.
Often we sit and wait for the spirit of motivation to move us. And often it never comes. So how can we expect to accomplish everything we want to do?
One hack I’ve found is to bypass motivation altogether. Instead of waiting for the desire or energy to move me to action, I put systems in place that force my behavior.
For example, this very newsletter is a system I’ve put in place to force behavior. I know that every day, I need an email to ship at 7am EST. Since I’ve created that promise and expectation, I have no choice but to fulfill it.
My biggest enemy is sleepy evil Jay. Sleepy evil Jay tells me that I don’t need to get out of bed quite yet…I can snooze for another 9 minutes (and he’s very persuasive).
But sleepy evil Jay won’t put meetings at risk. So I’ve created a system of setting morning meetings just about every day to force myself out of bed, into the shower, and into work mode.
Where motivation fails, try creating a system.