Adam has a wealth of other creative mental tricks to keep him, and his students, on task. For example, he tells his students that motivation is like bathing—it doesn’t last. “You can’t wash once and be clean for the rest of your life,” he says. “Because no matter how much you bathe, you get dirty and smelly and you’ve got to bathe again. Likewise, no matter how motivated you are, the world can be a negative place. Things don’t go your way. You get criticized. You get ‘dirty’ again. So you have to learn how to motivate yourself every day, just like washing.”
