People often tell me it seems like I’m on the grind constantly. I write prolifically and consistently. I do work pretty much every day. I am motivated, but I’m not a productivity robot like you might think.

I don’t work 12–14 hour days. In fact, I usually work about four hours per day. I don’t do a ton of busywork throughout the day. Mostly, I do a small handful of things really well and consistently.

I’m not constantly peppy and upbeat like Mel Robbins or Brendon Bouchard. I still have off days. I’m human. But, in the grand scheme of things, I’ve managed to maintain a consistent level of motivation for a half-decade and used it to build a career and life that I love. More or less, I have a solid base-level of motivation on a day-to-day basis.

Before you tell yourself it isn’t possible for you, just know that I used to be extremely lazy — cripplingly lazy. Those familiar with my work know the stories. You can turn the ship around, but you have to have a starting point and get momentum somehow. Let’s talk about how to do that.

How to Understand How Motivation Works

You think you don’t have motivation, but you have an abundance of it. You make decisions based on your motivations constantly. Let’s take a look at the definition from the dictionary:

The reason or reasons one has for acting or behaving in a particular way.

You can be motivated to do things that cause problems in your life. You can be motivated to get certain outcomes even if they’re not your ideal outcomes. If you had no motivation, you wouldn’t do anything, at all, ever. And you already have high levels of discipline in you. Don’t believe me?

Why do people go to work every day even if they hate their jobs? Money, mainly not being out on the street homeless, is quite strong and persuasive motivation — so much so that you never ponder whether or not you’re going to go to work.

Most parents do the best they can to raise their children, including a bunch of tasks they’d rather not do, because to them taking care of their kids isn’t a choice, it’s a duty.

Back to the definition — a reason for doing something.

You need motivation to watch Netflix. You’re compelled by the entertainment of the shows, look forward to an escape from reality, or you genuinely want to wind down after a long day.

Motivation is context dependant. I think back to the days in school where I felt like I was forced to learn. When I re-discovered learning on my own, it worked because I changed the context. I had intrinsic motivation, which I’ll show you how to get in a minute.

Dispel the myth you’re not driven by motivation. You are. You just need to change the framework for your motivation.

The Compelling Reasons Framework

It’s pretty simple. You develop a sense of intrinsic motivation when you feel compelled to do the work. When I say compelling, you feel pulled to do the work instead of having to push yourself to do the work.

For me, discovering something I was good at helped me feel compelled to keep going. When I first started writing, I enjoyed the process so much because I felt drawn to it. Try this exercise here to find something you’re drawn to.

Even when it comes to difficult and challenging tasks that seem like you need to push yourself to do, you’ll never do them until you create reasons strong enough to draw you to the activity.

Aside from, ‘I might be good at this’ some other compelling reasons to change your life are:

• Future extrapolation — If you can vividly picture how much your life is going to stagnate if you don’t change, you can compel yourself to change. When I was 25, I visualized the rest of my life working some shit job and never having control over my life for the next four decades. It helped me feel like I was being called to change.
• The people close to you — My motivation to make something out of my writing career went up when I had a child. Grant Cardone has a saying, “A lot of parents will go broke for their kids, but few will get rich for them.”
• Staying alive — Failing to eat right and exercise can shorten your life span. But so can working a job you hate and the stress that comes with it. So can the preventable illnesses you incur by sitting in a cube for 30 years. So can the myriad of issues — mentally, physically, and spiritually-that derive from not living a life of purpose. Look at some of the people in society. They’re not just spiritually sick. Literally, they’re sick.

The most compelling reason of all? It’s the cliche. But burning the cliche in your head can compel you, eventually, even if it doesn’t work 999 times in a row. The 1,000th time could hit you like a ton of bricks.

You just want more out of life. I know you do. I don’t know what that thing is, but you want it, and you can either pretend like you don’t want it or go for it. It’s that simple.

Reach the Traction Point and Follow the Self-Improvement Arc

These two concepts are the core of everything I’ve learned and taught about self-improvement. I mention them in every single article because they’re that important.

When you’re trying to build a new path for your life, completing the entire path itself isn’t important at all. You just need to complete the first 20 percent of the path and you’re 80 percent of the way there.

Most people quit almost instantly. Few make it past a year. Almost none make it five years or more.

As you pass each milestone — 90 days, six months, a year, few years, five years — your odds of quitting fall sharply. Make it six to 12 months and you really have a shot.

You don’t have the full dream yet, but you have signs that success is possible — an audience, some customers, a two-pack at the top of your stomach, whatever — and you deposit little subconscious signals into your brain that you’re someone capable and deserving of success.

You do this piece by piece.

When I first started writing five years ago the prospect of writing three books, quitting my job, and owning a six-figure business wasn’t even in the realm of reality for me.

But it didn’t need to be.

Your biggest and wildest accomplishments will fall outside of what you currently think you’re capable of. So don’t even worry aboutcthem. Focus on getting traction first.

Next, there’s the self-improvement arc, which is just a fancy way of saying you’ve gone through the process of achieving a long-term goal. Once you go through an entire arc, you realize just how limiting your beliefs are.

And, when the next venture arises, you know from day one that you’ll never quit. You don’t have to guess or think.

I started a YouTube channel about a year ago and was able to commit a half-decade to work on it, just like that. The decision was set in stone right away.

After settling into my ‘dad bod’ during my marriage and finding myself 50 lbs heavier than I am now, I knew when I went to the gym on day one that it was a forgone conclusion.

Why? Because I’ve gone through the arc, the arc that is much like a workout routine — painful with little to no results, to begin with, some progress six months down the road, and effortless to continue once you have a year under your belt.

Follow this arc enough times and you reach the state of consistent daily motivation.