Self-help: The motivation myth

I came across a really interesting video Ali Abdaal made in his book club series, where he talks about the book "The motivation myth" by Jeff Haden. It is a really insightful video on the book, which discusses how our idea of motivation, although socially accepted is actually pretty twisted and how motivation is actually a myth. If you want to check out the video and learn why it was so inspiring I'd highly recommend  you see it for yourself. Ali Abdaaal: Why motivation is a myth

Ali talks about the book in three stages. Firstly, he talks about how motivation is not the "spark" (ergo: a myth). Secondly he goes onto talk about how success depends on the process and lastly he talks about why you should try to be a jack of all trades.

The idea that motivation is a myth, Jeff Haden tries to sell is that most of us are all under the impression that to do something, you NEED motivation. And what Jeff Haden argues is actually, no, motivation is just a byproduct of progress. What i mean by that and what the book is all about is how motivation is not something you get when you want to do something, but rather it's what keeps us going as we make progress and become more successful. Just wishing for motivation to hit is apparently not at all how it works. And the idea that you don't need it, to do something has changed my view of motivation completely.  A quote from the book puts this nicely,

There's only one recipe for gaining motivation - SUCCESS. Specifically the dopamine hit we get when we observe ourselves making progress.

The second idea he raises about the book is how success depends on our process. In our process, we make progress and progress is what brings us motivation which keeps us moving till we reach success. The book talks about various strategies you can use to stick to the process and keep up with the struggle as that is the tougher chore. One such change Ali talks about in his video is the language change from "I can't" which is impersonal and vague to "I don't" which is more responsible and self-controlling. Ali mentions that "I don't" has a certain identity to it and with many things, a simple language change is  enough to change your mindset to stay in pursuit of what you wish to accomplish.

The final idea (and my favourite part) is where Jeff Haden talks about how everyone should be a jack of all trades. What he means by this is that instead of being a specialist in one specific field (even though that's all well and good) we should all try be an "and" person with different detail to our identity. As he interviewed various successful individuals for his book, he found out that the ones who were the happiest (according to him) were the ones who were these "and" people with different features in their identity. And as one who aspires to be good at multiple things, i can say it does boost your self-esteem and confidence, and knowing your huge ego has enough to feed on when it's up in those clouds is satisfactory. 

Finally what the book gets at is, don't wait for motivation, instead, set your goals, build up your process and work towards your  inevitable success. As Jeff Haden says,

Your dreams are important, but your plan is what will allow you to achieve your goals and live out your dreams.