Over the last week, I’ve been sharing lessons on thinking of motivation as a system. One which, if you master it, can allow you to make more progress on your goals with less struggle. Key to all of this, of course, is self-awareness. You can’t diagnose a problem if you don’t even know you have […]
Why We Struggle to Motivate Ourselves
In the last lesson, I introduced a simple metaphor for motivation: action always flows downhill. Thanks to the amazing circuitry in our basal ganglia, we take the billions of simultaneously firing neurons in our brain and produce sequential thoughts and actions. Yet the choice of which action to take isn’t always the one our higher […]
The Neuroscience of Motivation
In the last lesson, I shared why it was important to think about success in terms of systems, not inspiration. This isn’t because motivation isn’t important—rather it’s because motivation is itself a kind of system. If you can understand it, you can change it. Success as systems may not be so dramatic, but the results […]
Inspiration is Overrated
Next week, I’ll be reopening my course, Make it Happen!, for a new session. This course is about mastering the invisible systems that help (or hinder) you in making progress on your goals. Before that, I’ll be sharing a free four-part lesson series. Let’s get started… There are two dominant stories about how success happens. […]
I'm a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, podcast host, computer programmer and an avid reader. Since 2006, I've published weekly essays on this website to help people like you learn and think better. My work has been featured in The New York Times, BBC, TEDx, Pocket, Business Insider and more. I don't promise I have all the answers, just a place to start.