The Motivation Myth: How High Achievers Really Set Themselves Up to Win

by Jeff Haden

I was in the grip of an insidious myth. I thought motivation was a prerequisite to starting a tedious learning process—a spark necessary to get me going. But motivation is really a result. 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. The problem with waiting for motivation to strike is that it almost never comes with enough voltage to actually get you started.

Success is a process. Success is repeatable and predictable. Success has less to do with hoping and praying and strategizing than with diligently doing (after a little strategizing, sure): doing the right things, the right way, over and over and over.

You’ll stay motivated when you find a process you trust and commit to working that process for as little as a week. Forget how far you need to go to reach your goal; just commit to following the process for a week. By the end of that week you’ll have made a small improvement: You’ll be able to run a little farther, or lift a little more weight, or speak with greater confidence, or perform a task more effectively. Whatever goal you set, you will have moved a few steps closer to achieving that goal.