Brian Johnson breaks motivation into three phases: spark it by combining clear ambition with belief you can achieve it, sustain it through daily micro-goals, and amplify it with a positive environment. He ties this to the procrastination equation and flow theory, where matching challenge to skill reduces delay.
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You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another micro class. This one's on Spark +Sustain+ Amplify. We're talking about your motivation and how to do that. It's inspired by the motivation manifesto by Brendon Bouchard. How do we spark, sustain and amplify our motivation? I love the way Brendan walks us through this process in his book Three Phases to Motivation. Spark, sustain, amplify. Let's look at them quickly. Each of them has two components. The first component of sparking our motivation is ambition. The basic question here is what do you want? What do you want? And not kind of, sort of, oh, that'd be okay. Kind of want a strong desire. The stronger the desire the better. You've got to want something very deeply if you want to spark a high level of motivation. Two, very importantly, you can't end there. You have to expect that you can achieve it. Can I do it? Is the question here, can I actually bring this into my life? It's a really important variable. If you have a super high level of ambition, a super strong desire, but you do not believe that you can achieve it, that's not motivation. That's actually a little bit despairing. That's a hope or a wish. It's not a strong grounded motivation. So you need to combine ambition and expectancy, two powerful things. Again, what do you want? Do you believe you can have it? If you don't think you can have it? Remember flow, right? You need to match your skills and the challenges. If your challenge is too high and your skill is too low, you're going to wind up here and that's anxiety. And remember whoop as well. One of the virtues of whoop. When you identify your wish and the outcome and then you rub it up against reality and you think about the outcomes, you, you may realize that, wow, I actually don't think I can achieve that. That's a good thing. All that means is you need to bring back your ambition a little bit and match it so you can get into flow where you feel confident you can achieve it. It makes no sense to go after something that you don't think you can have. Cause you won't have a sustainable level of motivation. Which brings us to the second component here. So the two components to this part of the equation sustaining are the following. One, attention and two effort. In this part of the process, you've sparked the motivation, right? You've identified what you want. You want it deeply and you deeply believe you can have it, then you need to bring your attention to it consistently and you need to put in effort consistently. Might sound obvious because it is, but we need to make common sense, common practice. You can't get fired up about something and then forget about it. If you're really committed to something, you need to look at it on a daily basis, get healthfully obsessed about it, and you need to take action toward it on a consistent basis. If you don't do those two things, that's a great way to kill the sustained momentum and then this spark will be for nothing, right? Second phase, third phase has two components which are attitude and environment. This helps us amplify. People with sustained high levels of motivation have a great attitude. If you haven't noticed, there aren't too many super, super negative, super super successful people. They're positive people. They're enthusiastic, they're joyful, they're engaged with life. And that didn't come accidentally. They worked at it. They've also created a supportive environment, both physical environment that inspires them, right? That allows them to do their work and people who are bringing them up, not constantly telling them that they can't achieve anything meaningful in life. If you want to amplify your motivation, pay attention to your attitude and your environment. Spark, sustain, amplify. It's very similar to the procrastination equation which we keep on coming back to. Piers Steel won the equivalent of psychology's Nobel Prize for this equation. I think we should all tattoo this in our consciousness. Motivation equals expectancy times value. Well, guess what? That's exactly what we talked about with ambition expectancy. Do you think you can have it in value? Do you actually want it? Because you will never be motivated if you don't expect it or you don't care. And then that's going to be divided by your impulsivity. How easily you're distracted and you forget what you're doing. You don't do what needs to get done, which is part of sustain and how far away the goal is delay. You need to create micro goals that keep you fired up. We're going to talk about this a lot more in our class on Procrastination 101, which I could have just as easily called Motivation 101. For now, that's a long micro class. But I hope you enjoyed. Where are you strong in this equation and where can you put a little more energy into optimizing? Let's spark, sustain and amplify our motivation and actualize our potential. Have an awesome day. See ya. Hi, this is Brian. I hope you enjoyed that micro class. If so, I think you'll enjoy everything else we offer at BrianJohnson. Me two basic things one our free newsletter. It's called the Optimizer. Over 50,000 people start their day with it and they tell us it's pretty awesome. And 2 our optimal living Membership program. This is where I put all my best stuff. 10 bucks a month for a ton of wisdom. Two primary things in there philosopher's notes plus optimal living 101 classes. When you sign up, you'll get instant access to 250 philosopher's notes, which are basically six page PDFs and 20 minute MP3s where I capture my favorite big ideas from from great books. The PNTV episodes are kind of a mini version of all that goodness. You'll also get instant access to all my Optimal Living classes. This is where I take all the ideas we cover in the Philosopher's Notes and boil it down to the most practical stuff you can apply today. Classes include Confidence 101, Getting Stuff Done 101, Relationships 101, Habits 101, et cetera. You'll also get access to what we call micro classes that I think you'll love. We aim to astonish and we're blessed to have thousands of members telling us we're helping them change their lives and that this is the best 10 bucks they invest in themselves every month. Go to BrianJohnson ME membership to learn more. Thanks for your support and have an awesome day.
