The Hustler’s Playbook: Motivation Is Your Problem

Motivation is wanting something so badly that you are literally compelled to take action. Continuously. As if moved by some unseen force. Until you achieve what you want and set your sites on some new goal.

What Moves You

Motivation means that your ambition literally launches you out of the bed in the morning, inspired to work on what is compelling you. It keeps you up late at night, working for hours on end, pursuing what it is that is driving you. When we say someone is “driven,” we are describing them in a way that is inaccurate. They aren’t “driven,” they are “being driven” by something so big, so important, and so compelling that it can’t be denied.

When you are motivated, you can’t not do the work that moves you closer to what you want. No one has to ask you to do this work. You don’t need anyone to manage you, and most of what you do doesn’t need to be written down on a task list. You never need to be reminded. What motivates you consumes you. Nothing can stand between you and what motivates you.

You Can’t Be Motivated

There is a reason that no one can motivate you. That reason is this: no one can want something for you that you don’t want for yourself.

Have you ever wanted something for someone who didn’t want it for themselves? Even though you wanted them to want for themselves what you could so plainly see was the right thing for them, they were completely unmoved. Unless or until this person changed and wanted for themselves what you wanted for them, they took no action.

This makes motivation your problem. You have to spend the time discovering what you want and why you want it. You have to determine what is worth taking relentless, consistent action and persisting over time to obtain.

If you are going to have ambition, what is the source? What are you willing to give yourself over to so much that you all know it to “drive” you?

What can you not leave undone?