3 Motivation tips that don’t work and why

Motivation: the desire to do something besides staying in bed, doing nothing all day. I do believe that we all have a bit of an issue with the lack of motivation on some days.

Lately, I noticed that a lot of people mix excitement and motivation. They seem to believe that they only need something exciting to do, in order to be motivated for something. That’s usually not the case. It certainly helps that you’re excited about doing something and it helps to build the motivation. But mostly to keep yourself motivated, you just have to find something that you need. As soon as a “deed” or an action is on a way to meet your need you’ll be motivated to do it, solely because you need it. But on the other hand, if you’re only excited about the idea for something, without needing that thing it can happen that your excitement will go down the drain along with the non-existent motivation for it.

I’m one of those people who have a hard time finding the motivation to do stuff and not long ago I realized why. To motivate myself I always followed the “tips for motivation” and those tips were busted from the beginning. If you look at human psychology, they are made in a way that induces laziness, even if they look motivational from the beginning.

Of course, I’ll now name the top three motivational tips, that are useless and why they fail.

1)    Write it down and you’ll do it
This one is a bad excuse of a tip. Because, if you write it down you feel like you already achieved something, therefore you don’t feel the need to do anything else but to write down what you want.

It’s like you know “I just did something towards my goal and now I deserve a break” after that, people usually don’t go back and do what they wrote down (unless you have the need to do it.)

2)    Try to do your best
Most people interpret that as “I’ll just try and whatever happens, happens.”  They don’t actually do their best. I know that “do your best” seems like a great and motivating sentence it’s actually just a good excuse to do a bad job or not do it at all because you tried your ‘best’ towards it.

3)    Be positive and want it
I am positive about getting a unicorn because I really want it! And there is no way for me to get that unicorn. In case you did not understand the reference, you can be positive and want something, but it doesn’t mean your goal as that is possible to achieve. You need a plan, not just a wish.

Basically, most of the motivation tips lack efficiency because you don’t have a need to reach your goal. To tell it simple, even if you really want something, it doesn’t matter that you believe, that you need it.

Like stated in the first sentence of this blog, motivation is a DESIRE and the ultimate desire of humans is powered by their NEED. Why? Because a need is something that is necessary for an organism in order to live a healthy life. Needs are distinguished from wants by that, in the case of a need, a deficiency causes a clear adverse outcome: a dysfunction or death.
Needs can be objective and physical, such as the need for food, or psychological and subjective, such as the need for self-esteem.
There are also needs of a social or societal nature. [Source]

If you make something to be your need, you won’t feel de-motivated to do it. Tell yourself that you need to reach your goal, not just want it. However, when telling yourself that you need something, make sure to make it reasonable and simple. Don’t push your need far into the future like “I need this because I want a bright future.” rather tell yourself that you need it now in order to have a free weekend.

Right before I end it, I’ll throw in a pro tip. While you work on something listen to music! Don’t listen to your favorite music, rather find a heart pumping soundtrack. It’s best to use (action) movie soundtracks or video game soundtracks because they are made to motivate you (to watch a movie, play a game while you’re doing it). So why not use it to motivate yourself to do other useful stuff?