(upbeat music) - Whatever we're struggling with, whatever we're struggling to get started with, there's always a little bit of a push of energy that we need to get started with the thing. Now, the question is like, how do we get there? Like once we've got the clarity on the thing, once we've tried to figure out what our emotions are getting in the way, at some points, some stuff is just kind of boring and you just kind of have to do it.

So like, how do you nudge yourself to just get started? At this point, you know, some people would say that motivation is a thing. And so like, you got to motivate yourself to do it. You got to like really want it. You got to want it so much that you can't breathe or whatever these motivational videos say.

And that's fine. But like, there's a great book by Jeff Hayden called "The Motivation Myth," which basically argues that like, motivation is a bit of a myth. Like, we don't summon up the motivation magically to do a thing. We do the thing. And by seeing a small success, that then helps us summon the motivation to continue to do the thing.

And so really, motivation doesn't lead to action. Action leads to motivation. And so understanding that I think was a big, big unlock for me that like, really, just because I don't feel like doing something doesn't actually stop me from doing the thing. And therefore, I can just do it.

And sometimes that works where I just tell myself that like, I could just get out of bed right now, even though I don't feel like it. Oh, that's like the motivation approach. And you've got like the discipline approach, the willpower approach, the David Goggins approach of like, well, if you're not doing it at that point, you're just soft.

You just got to, you know, use the willpower. You've got to use grit, determination, discipline to kind of push through and do the thing. That's fine as well, that works. The thing that I personally like to do is I like to tell myself, I'm just going to do the thing for two minutes and then I'm going to stop doing the thing.

So I've got a couple of songs on my Spotify playlist, which are like two minutes long, like instrumental songs. I'm just like, if I, yeah, I'll just like put on one of the songs. I'll be like, I'm just going to do this thing until the end of the song.

And usually the song ends, the next one plays on shuffle. And I don't even realize that I've just continued doing the thing. Occasionally I just do it for two minutes and then I stop and I think, cool, that's fine. That's not my day. But I say 90% of the time, as long as I can just talk myself into doing it for two minutes, then I'm unlikely to stop doing it because once I've gotten to the swing of things, it's a lot easier to get started.

And I guess my kind of final kind of point on this is, if all else fails, something that will never fail is actually putting money on the line. So I know, you know, my friend Thomas Frank is this huge YouTuber, two and a half million subscribers. The way he motivated himself to publish videos in the early days of his channel, when no one was watching, was an app called Beeminder, which is an automatic thing where it like connects to your YouTube RSS feed.

And if you don't publish a video every week, it will take $30 out of your debit card or out of your bank account, just completely automatically. And that was how he made himself accountable. He's like, well, I've got to publish a video every week, otherwise I'm losing $30. Now, depending on who you are, $30 might not seem like enough money, but it needs to be enough money to sting.

So one thing that I've actually tried in the past is giving my housemate 1,000 pounds and saying, if I don't do this thing, you get to keep the 1,000 pounds. And that has just worked magically for me to do absolutely anything. I don't like using it all the time.

I'd much rather use all these other nicer methods, but that is a fail safe. If I'm ever really struggling to do a thing that I know I have to do, like write 1,000 pounds, transfer the money, and they can always give it back to me once I've done the thing.

- It probably depends on the circumstance. I was running today with our daughter in a stroller, which, by the way, for anyone who doesn't have kids, once you start running with a child, you're like, I'm now a horrible runner. Like I've taken like 10 steps back because I'm now pushing this stroller and I just can't run as fast.

I use the Goggins approach, which is like, am I really gonna tell myself that I can't just make it to the end of this neighborhood? Like, I really can't do that. That works really well, but I don't think that works as well when you're like sitting down at your desk to complete a task.

So having all the tools is probably pretty helpful.