Motivation is a sugar rush that never lasts. There is only one recipe for gaining motivation, success. Specifically, the dopamine hit we get when we observe ourselves making success. The main idea is that motivation doesn’t lead to action, instead action leads to success, which leads to motivation, which prompts action, which generate more success and more motivation.
And this crates 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 this 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 the 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 generally this is actually a life changing insight.
