Motivation is Overrated
Discipline often matters more.
I came across this topic while reading James Clear’s Atomic Habits. The environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior. Despite our unique personalities, certain behaviours continue to repeat due to environmental conditions. We are changed by the world around us. All habits are contextual. We often wait for the motivation to get the job done, but if that doesn’t happen, we’ll work in a hurry as the deadline approaches.
We spend unnecessary time looking for appropriate motivational songs, or uplifting conversations to encourage ourselves.
In the process, we keep relying upon motivation and forget about discipline to follow. Here, motivation is synonymous with luck, which sometimes may not work.
I was going through the difference between motivation and discipline and here’s the saying that I found which I think all of us tend to forget at times.
With discipline, you don’t have to wait for inspiration because you already have an effective system on-call.
Motivation is the willingness to do something. Whereas discipline is doing something in a controlled way. Motivation is something you need to get before starting the work to proceed with it in a disciplined way. Let the motivation be the push to start working on discipline. Consistency is the key to creating discipline. Once consistency becomes a discipline, it becomes easy to work with motivation.
You are allowed to give yourself a reason for not working because you have that negative vibe of “not feeling motivated” in your head. And since you’re not feeling motivated, you won’t work until you get the motivation back. But, that is less likely to happen if you have built the habit to work. Let us take an example of working out or doing an exercise on a daily basis. You’re not going to do it until you find the motivation. Whereas, if it would have been a habit or a consistent activity then it would not specifically ask for motivation to perform it.
