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

by Jeff Haden

I ate a protein bar for a midafternoon snack: simple, convenient, and easy to eat on the go. Remember, snacking with a purpose is smart. Snacking just to snack is not.

Burn about five hundred extra calories a day.

If you already work out, then those calories are already factored into your daily routine and re...

unless you’re a high-intensity-workout fool, you’ll need to work out for at least an hour to burn five hundred calories.

Cycling is my favorite exercise for burning calories: If I average between sixteen and eighteen miles per hour and toss in some decent hills, I can easily burn seven hundred to eight hundred calories an hour.

you’ll be less likely to overeat at mealtimes because you won’t want to spoil the hard work you put in.

Cheat wisely.

sweets are all about taste, and taste can be quickly satisfied. I let three or four chocolate chips melt in my mouth, one at a time, after some of my meals. The calories were negligible but the taste was nice . . . and I felt a little less like a food monk.

Keep a food j...

Hawthorne effect works: When we know we are being observed, we instinctivel...

you will be the one doing the...

writing down everything you eat will keep you from doing any “mindless” eating and will keep you from underestimating—because we all un...

write everything down. Then total up your calories at the end of the day. Ideally, you’ll eat four hundred to five hundred fewer calories than you did before you started, and at the end...

Check off each step in the process.

I said “process,” not “progress.” The key is not to focus on your goal; the key is to focus on following your process. So make yourself a chart and check off each time you follow the process:

I also bought a box of protein bars and a bag of almonds to put in my backpack so I would never be without.

because my schedule, like yours, was often unpredictable, I realized the only way I could be absolutely sure to exercise every day was to get up early and do it first thing.

While it wasn’t fun to get up early, it was fun to always ...

Inevitable success is the best success of all—and it will happen when you set your goal, forget your goal, and focus on working your process.

Of course, money isn’t everything. As John D. Rockefeller, America’s first billionaire, said, “If your only goal is to become rich, you’ll never achieve it.” His point is well taken: If the only thing you care about is making money, no matter how much money you make, it will never be enough.

Top 400 Individual Tax Returns Reporting the Largest Adjusted Gross Incomes,

Where it gets interesting is how the top four hundred made their money: Wages and salaries: 8.6 percent Interest: 6.6 percent Dividends: 13 percent Partnerships and corporations: 19.9 percent Capital gains: 45.8 percent The top four hundred averaged $92.6 million in capital gains. That’s 16 percent of the total capital gains reported by all taxpayers.

Working for a salary won’t make you rich. Neither will making only safe “income” investments. Neither will investing only in large companies. Owning a business or businesses, even in part or partnership, not only could build a solid wealth foundation but could someday generate a huge financial windfall.

total of over 3,800 taxpayers have made the top 400 since 1992, but only 27 percent appear more than once, and only 2 percent appear ten or more times.

Check out the top ten people on the annual Forbes billionaires list. Whom do you find? The usual suspects. Bill Gates. Warren Buffett. Larry Ellison. David and Charles Koch. A collection of Walmart Waltons. Sheldon Adelson (proving, as if you need proof, that no one wins in casinos but the casinos). All entrepreneurs. I worked my way down into the two hundreds, and when I still couldn’t find an employee, I got bored and quit looking.

Clearly getting rich, in financial terms, is the result of investing in yourself and others, taking risks, doing hundreds of small things right . . . and then doing one or two big things really, really right.

When we talk about the financial side of being an entrepreneur—exit strategies, revenues, IPOs, the ever-popular “cashing out”—they’re interested but far from animated. But when we talk about the life of an entrepreneur, when we talk about how it feels to be an entrepreneur, every one of them lights up. They enthuse about the challenges, the responsibility, the sense of mission, the sense of purpose, the sense of fulfillment and excitement of working with and for a real team, the amazing feeling of empowerment and control over their own destinies.

Every entrepreneur lights up when we talk about being an entrepreneur, because as entrepreneurs they feel alive. They feel free to chart their own courses, to make their own decisions, to make their own mistakes—to let the sky be the limit not just financially but also (and almost always more importantly) personally. Hugely successful or barely off the ground, they haven’t just started businesses. They’ve become something. They’ve become entrepreneurs. And they already feel rich, regardless of income or wealth.

The only way to become financially rich is to start your own business, even if it’s just on the side. Even if it’s just, at first, a slightly stepped-up hobby. Any other approach will not make you rich.

Everything I’ve just written is totally empowering. If you want to become wealthy, there is a way. If you want to achieve a huge goal, whatever your goal may be, there is a way. Especially when you use the power of language to help you stay on track.

So what is the best way to say no to yourself? It’s easy: Stop saying “can’t” and start saying “don’t.”

Participants told to say “I can’t” gave in to the temptation 61 percent of the time. Participants told to say “I don’t” gave in to the temptation 36 percent of the time.

Not only was “I can’t” less effective than “I don’t”; “I can’t” was less effective than using no strategy at all.

“The refusal frame ‘I don’t’ is more persuasive than the refusal frame ‘I can’t’ because the former connotes conviction to a higher degree. . . . Perceived conviction mediates the influence of refusal frame on persuasiveness.”

“I can’t” sounds tissue-paper thin because it’s a decision based on external reasons or causes. “I don’t” sounds like a brick wall because it comes from deep inside you. It’s part of your identity. It’s who you are.

YOU CAN’T MAKE EXCUSES TO YOURSELF.

When you “can’t,” you automatically start to find excuses, reasons why you can. When you “don’t,” you automatically start to find ways to ensure you do—because that is the person you have become. That is the person you are.

YOU COME ACROSS AS MORE CONFIDENT.

Use “I don’t” to ensure that what must be nonnegotiable remains nonnegotiable . . . and then shift to terms you are willing to negotiate.

“I don’t care what other people think.” Most of the time we should worry about what other people think . . . but not if it stands in the way of living the life we really want to live.

If Gladwell is basically right (and snarkiness aside, he always is—but I have better hair, so at least I’ve got that going for me), then the average person will need to put in about forty hours a week for five years to become highly accomplished in their chosen pursuit.

You don’t need to be a world-class athlete to (cliché alert) run a marathon, but if that is a goal you set, and you achieve that goal, you will then have accomplished something that 99.999 percent of the population never will. Because the average person can successfully train to run a marathon in less than a year . . . when you think of it that way, achieving the rank of “superior” is an excellent alternative to applying Gladwellian levels of effort. Besides that, you don’t want to try to become world-class in a variety of pursuits. It’s incredibly difficult to perform at an extremely high level in very different—and sometimes conflicting—pursuits.

My editor at the New Yorker magazine, David Remnick, is a better writer than 95 percent of the people who work for him. He’s constantly in this position of having to accept articles that are not as good as the ones he would write himself. If he were to be completely honest and say, “I can’t accept this,” he wouldn’t have a magazine.

That’s the triathlon problem. At a certain point I have to say, “I can’t optimize for being an amazing runner because I have to worry about swimming or cycling.”

That’s the same problem you face every day. Pay too much attention to any one aspect of your job and other aspects suffer. Work too hard on one area of your business and other areas suffer. Work too hard on any one aspect of your life and other aspects suffer. That’s why it’s...

Get to the 90 or 95 percent level in any pursuit and you will be extremely successful and will feel incredibly good about yourself. ...

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the pursuit of perfection is the enemy.

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