Motivation or Action First?
What comes first, motivation or action? In the book Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy Revised and Updated
If you said motivation, you made an excellent, logical choice. Unfortunately, you’re wrong. Motivation does not come first, action does! You have to prime the pump. then you will begin to get motivated, and the fluids will flow spontaneously.INdividuals who procrastiate frequently confuse motivation and action. You foolishly wait until you feel in the mood to do something. Since you don’t feel like doing it, you automatically put it off.Your error is your belief that motivation comes first, and then leads to activation and success. But it is usually the other way around; action must come first, and the moviation comes later on.
I think this is a powerful bit of insight. It tells me a couple of things:
- Don’t wait for inspiration to take action; take action and inspiration follows.
- Build momentum. In other words, starting with smaller hurdles first can build motivation.
- Schedule time for key activities versus wait until you’re in the mood.
very cool
i like the approach.
I generally adopted JP Morgan’s simple recipe – daily to-do list, execute against it, celebrate completion to encourage motivation
Plan, Execute, And Celebrate
From ToDo to Done — not bad. I think the key is how valuable the list is.
Nonsense.
Motivation must come first!
For achieving excellent results it is a necessary condition.
So if somebody does not know how to motivate oneself or others before the action he/she is doomed to mediocre results at the best.
Leadership is about excellent results, so it’s about motivation first.
@ Martin
That’s an easy trap to fall into since it’s the easy, common sense answer.
The problem is common sense is wrong.
It’s why a lot of people get stuck or don’t take action … they’re waiting around for inspiration. One of the fastest ways to change your emotions is get in motion. While it’s great to have motivation first, that’s not always the case.
That’s why it’s so important to setup time for things and build routines. Imagine the athlete that waits to feel like practicing.
Part of why motivation before action is tough is because we aren’t good at using our mental simulators to predict what we’ll enjoy.
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