Don't Bet on Motivation

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A brief story about motivation.

For the last month, I've gotten up every morning at 6 am, opened my calculus textbook, put my head down, and worked. The first three days were fun. But after the excitement of starting something new wore off, it quickly became difficult to sit down for 45 minutes each morning to learn math.

If I had relied on motivation alone to learn about differentials and integrals, I wouldn't have made it past day three. Motivation is an emotion. It's something we feel that can help us start things, but it's very poor at helping us continue to do things.

You may feel motivated to start a diet, go to the gym, or run a marathon, but motivation won't help you stay consistent. When most people start a diet, the first week is great. But when the excitement about starting something new wears off, so does motivation, resulting in the abandonment of the diet.

This is the vicious cycle of motivation – it makes you feel like you can do anything in the world. But when you start doing that thing, it doesn't help you stay consistent with it. That's because consistency requires discipline.

On day 17 of learning calculus, I had a slight headache (probably from a few too many beers the night before) and didn't want to sit down, open my textbook, and do the work. Luckily, my why for learning calculus is stronger than my why for not learning it.

I'm learning calculus to prepare for my grad program next month. So, it doesn't matter how I feel. There's a job to do, and I will do it – regardless of my emotions at any given moment. In other words, my why is too damn big.

And that's the key to having discipline in any endeavor; have a big why. Big enough to get you through the times when you're not motivated, feel like shit, or don't want to do anything. But not too big where you lose touch with it.

Here's the punchline; nobody successful relies on motivation. They are disciplined. Motivation made me open the textbook, but discipline got me to page 417. And discipline will get me the rest of the way.

Have a big why, and stay disciplined.

Cheers,

Noah Cracknell