Hijacking Our Motivation

To improve your chances of going after those long term goals, you need to hijack your body’s own motivation system. You need to force it to sometimes turn the hierarchy of needs on its head.

How do you do that?

One option is to try and minimize those nagging doubts and physiological needs.

In other words, you make sure that you start your day full of high quality food and you start your day with a clear slate.

If you’re eating low quality processed cereal for breakfast, then your body is going to want more sustainable energy and nutrition. Therefore, you’ll be anxious and you’ll struggle to focus on other tasks (even if you aren’t aware that hunger is the problem).

Eat a meal of complex carbs, protein, and fruits, and your body will be satiated and sustained. The result is that you’ll have one less thing on the back of your mind.

Likewise, you should try to remove all nagging sources of stress. Tim Ferriss refers to these kinds of issues as “open loops.” These are jobs that you know need doing, and that are causing a mild, low-level stress. That might mean answering an email to tell someone you can’t make it to their party, or it might mean arranging your car’s MOT.

Whatever the case, many of us will put off completing these kinds of tasks. In doing so though, we actually prevent ourselves from focussing 100% on our current task.

Solve this problem by following the “one-minute rule.” That means that if a job takes less than one minute to complete, you should do it right away!

Now, if you start your day with no distractions and minimal stress, you’ll be able to focus on your goals much more easily. You’ll find you are less likely to procrastinate, and you are more likely to get the work done that you really need and want to get done.

#stress #fitness #workout