I was listening to Dan Pink on the Tim Ferriss podcast and he had this neat tip for boosting your motivation.

What you do

Let’s say you are not feeling very motivated to do your Microactions today (Microactions are the daily actions you take towards your 100 Day Goal).

1.Get a pen and paper

2.Give yourself a score out of 10 for how motivated you feel right now. Let’s say you give yourself a three out of ten.

3.Now ask yourself, “Why didn’t I give my motivation a LOWER score? Why didn’t I give it a ‘one’ or a ‘two’?

4.Write down your answers. [The writing part  is important, because of brain quirkyness: our subconscious brain (where motivation lives) “hears” our conscious brain (our thoughts) better when we write them down.]

5. Now how do you feel?

More motivated, yes?!

Eh? What? Why does this work?

Well it’s down to clever brain science.

When you ask the question ‘Why aren’t I giving my motivation a lower score?”, it forces you to think about why you still want to work towards your goal (because you still do, even if it’s just a little bit!)

When you then write down these reasons, your subconscious brain “hears” reasons TO DO your microaction, as opposed to reasons to not do it. Because your subconscious brain ‘hears’ you give reasons to take action it thinks you actually WANT to take action, so it kickstarts the action-taking-system inside the brain. Part of this system includes the release of a nice big dose of a neurotransmitter called Dopamine which – ta-dah-  floods you with feelings of energy and motivation!

Neat eh?!

If you liked this tip, I’ve got over 150 more that I’m putting together in a little book with a long title “Everyday Motivation: practical, easy and fun techniques for instant-ish enthusiasm”

Because the book will take a while to publish, I’m going to share the technique (Yes! There’s a technique for everyday motivation!) and the tips  in an online (watch-when-you-want) class . It’ll be available by the end of April. Pop your name down here and I’ll remind you when it’s out. [I’m planning to price it at approx $19/£10].