Work Isn't the Problem: 4 Habits Killing Your Motivation

Since motivation is the most important way I get anything done in life - here's the ways I don't hear discussed as often that I preserve mine in order to get things done in a fun and passionate way :)

To make your life easier:
0:00 Intro
1:11 Rewarding Yourself for Work
5:29 Forgetting Over-time
8:40 Medieval Time-Tracking
12:00 Digging into the Trough

If you want to stay in touch:

Or leave a comment, I (try to) answer 100% of comments :)

[skullknight]

The way I understood it:
1. Don't do the task for sake of the reward.
2. If the work is stressful or getting mundane, find a way to make it enjoyable.
3. Don't lock yourself in a time frame. Do the task until you're done or satisfied.
4. Check your feelings. How motivated you are. Don't force yourself if it really feels dreadful.

[yohaizilber]

I belive Nutrition, Physical shape and Mental health are hUGE factors in being motivated. If we feel unwell, you don't want to do anything.

[VictoriaVaden]

As a mom of three small children (7, 3, 1), the toxic motivation reward relationship only works with potty training (I’ve found). It is very short-lived, because they 1000% will only focus on the reward and get irritated by the task. They are much better at listening, engaging, and learning when the reward is removed. This is a very general and blanket look into our parenting, but that key component really stuck out to me.

[quizzicalsmudge]

As someone with ADHD this is really helpful, as I am also time blind and find it difficult to focus without motivation.

[AngDevigne]

I really appreciate your videos. They are basically a full force, shame free guide on hacking ADHD as an adult and not feeling terrible for being neurodiverse.

[miriamcalvoortiz]

What I love the most about your videos is how refreshing they are. You don't repeat the same recycled motivation tips that all productivity YouTubers talk about. You take into account that we, as humans, can't always perform out of sheer willpower. Therefore the only thing we got left is work around our highs and lows.


One can tell you are a very introspective person and even though it may sometimes feel like a curse, it makes you produce these gems. Never change ❤

[Miaow]

Rewarding oneself for tasks could be likened with a very conditional self-love. Humans grow and thrive when treated with unconditional positive regard/unconditional love. The whole point is that we do NOT need to prove ourselves worthy of love by having to "do" things. We just are worthy. Surely this should be the same for self-love: we will thrive and have more motivation if we give ourselves unconditional love rather than being our own taskmasters. We don't have to "earn" or "deserve" treating ourselves kindly.

[sablisland]

So true about using extra pay on ourselves. My spouse and I sometimes do freelance work on the side of our regular full time jobs - the regular jobs pay us enough that we don’t need the freelance to get by, so our rule to ourselves is that if we’re going to dedicate some of our free time to working, the money earned from it only goes to fun things like books, activities, meals out, or equipment for outdoorsy things!

[Konzertheld]

I love the medieval time tracking idea. It solves two problems for me: a), when I got something done in less time than I estimated to, I have zero motivation to fill the rest of the time but feel bad when I don't, and b), when I have a lot of motivation but planned to only do a thing for an hour, I will stop after an hour because I "fulfilled my goal", wasting energy I could have used with no effort.

[lilyinthewater]

This is like a whole alternative productivity system for ppl with ADHD. I have applied some of your learning and productivity tools and it’s one of the few things that really really work for me. Even just the shift in mindset that I don’t have to be a prisoner of time and todo list is amazing. I actually focus better and longer and it is becoming intrinsically pleasurable to work. Thank you so much. 😢

[takihasan]

Your way of thinking amazes me and validates my doubts about popular ongoing advices floating around. Many of your attributes that you mention in your videos very often matches mine and your videos are really helping me and making me think

[rml]

You mentioned how a plumber stops in and leaves in 30 minutes when his job is completed, I've always noticed that say when I'm house cleaning the amount and pace of work I'm able to accomplish Falls far short of what I've always been able to do in the capacity of my time being paid for as a professional chef, and also of note when you " go into work, by and large you pretty much have to get the job done regardless of exactly how you mentally or physically feel!, which perhaps circles back to your reward bits and pieces", absolutely love your Channel

[mettlerr]

Another great video! Thank you for producing valuable content!

[suveruzgar]

The pomodoro method is really useful for really long-haul projects like writing a dissertation or a novel, though. These are the kinds of projects where even the smallest meaningful "sub-task" (such as completing just one scene or one section of a chapter) can take days or weeks to accomplish and each task also has somewhat vague borders, and there isn't always a way to divide it into single meaningful activities that can be accomplished in a day or two. For example for just a short section of my dissertation I may need to do several hundreds of pages of reading (in the form of book chapters and articles, but sometimes also entire books). And these are generally really dense texts you can't just sit down read flowingly like you would a work of literature. And reading a single one or two of them, while still an accomplishment, won't mean anything much in terms of accomplishing the final goal (i.e. writing that section) because the research is only meaningful if you have knowledge of all the relevant sources to compare/analyze/cite them (and you also need to do the writing of course). And sometimes you discover the source you've been working isn't all that useful, or there is that other source that you somehow overlooked so far but is actually relevant and now you need to read that too. In short I sometimes just need to "trust the process" and be content with having put a certain number of hours of work towards the final goal each day. If I expect to accomplish something super concrete every time I sit down to work I will be overwhelmed, and often can't motivate myself to even start. I know this because I experienced it, and the pomodoro technique (and its variations) actually really helped me.

[chasm]

i like hearing about what works for others! I will say though, for me (ADHD and somewhat time blind), #4 about the motivation trough is both good to acknowledge but bad advice for me personally. Sometimes (often!!) it's best if I push through the bad mood, because my emotionality and time blindness can make me spiral further into negative emotion. In the moment, it feels like the way I feel then is the way I've always felt and will always feel. Just wanted to say that in the comments so others who deal with time processing issues won't think they're failing if that one doesn't work for them.

[HollyAnn]

Rewarding myself for a task also doesn’t work all the time but for different reason than you shared. A lot of times I’ll tell myself I can do something fun after I do what I /have/ to do but I severely underestimate how long it takes to get what I needed to, done. So at the end of it all I don’t even have time to do the reward without cutting into my sleep and sabotaging my next day.

[nokronis]

I didn't expect a self help video to actually involve real thinking and not just copy pasting from a book! You actually had helpful advice, thanks for the perspective!

[gracehan]

The biggest motivation is watching you talking. Big shout out to you. A million of thanks

[iiawatha]

This video is exactly what I needed these last few weeks ! I realised that with the responsibilities of adulthood, I turned all the activities that I liked into "rewards for when I'm done with the rest" without even realising... 😅

[thisisthendgame]

A few things. 1: Thanks for the video. I learned that Feynman's relationship to physics is actually similar to my relationship to music. 2: A video dedicated to how you "sharpen the axe" would be really helpful. And 3: A conversation between you and a hyper-disciplined individual like Jocko Willink is probably unlikely to happen, but would be entertaining for sure lol. Thanks again :)