How to Multiply Motivation

I'd like to ship you a free copy of my book Habits of High Performers. If you come and join the 2026 goal setting workshop, I will ship you one of these today. The link is in the notes. Please come and join me to set up the very best 2026 you could imagine. If you've set up goals in the past or New Year's resolutions and they haven't substantiated, I'm here to help you across all the key pillars of your life nail your goals. I'll see you there. Welcome to Lead On Purpose. I'm James Laughlin, former seven time world champion musician and now executive coach to global leaders and high performers. Each week I'll publish a solo cast where I'll share my top high performance habits and methodologies to supercharge your life and career. If you enjoy the show, please take a short moment to subscribe and leave a rating and review. I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks for taking the time to connect today and investing in yourself. Enjoy the show.

Often I get asked about motivation. How do we stay motivated? How do we stay on task when tough things present themselves? How do we stay passionately motivated to keep going? How do we motivate others? It's honestly one of the most common things I get asked about. What habits do we need and how do we install them? Look, I wanted to share something with you today that I think will be really beneficial. Not just for you to up level your own motivation when it comes to the things that matter to you, but also to help others. So what you're about to learn today, I would love if you passed this on to someone in your team, in your family, or someone you care about. So there was a study that took place with researchers Milkman, Minson and Volp, and they wanted to see whether the right motivation would make students visit the gym more often. Okay, so let's just say this. It doesn't have to be students and it doesn't have to be the gym. This is just what they did for this particular piece of research. This could be you and a piece of work you need to get done. This could be you and a book that you're trying to read. This could be you and trying to really develop something up, whether it's an idea or write a book, whatever it might be. So they wanted to get these college students to be more motivated to visit the gym more frequently. So they gathered 226 students who are all having trouble going to the gym as often as they would have liked to and Then they broke them into three groups. So group one got an iPod loaded with popular audiobooks. They got it as a 10 week loan and were allowed to only listen to it in the gym. That's the important part. It was lent to them so they didn't own it and they were only allowed to listen to it whilst in the gym. The second group got the audiobooks for free and they could load these onto their personal ipods. They were encouraged to listen to the tracks in the gym, but could also do it anywhere else they wanted. And in the third group was the control group. They got a gift certificate and were encouraged to hit the gym more often. Now look, the audio novels included cool books like the Hunger Games, Da Vinci co Twilight series, highly addictive books that are hard to put down. Can you guess which group worked out at the gym the most? Which one do you think it was? Was it, you know, the one that had the ipod loaded with popular audiobooks on a 10 week loan that could only be listened to at the gym? Was it group two who got the audiobooks for free and could listen to them at the gym or anywhere they wanted? Or was it group three, the one who got the gift certificate and were encouraged to hit the gym more often? Group one, Group two. Group three. Which one? Give it a guess. Well, it was group one, so well done if you said group one. The students that got the ipod as a loan and could only listen to it in the gym, they were a lot more motivated to work out as they had a reward that they could only access while being physically actually in the gym. This led the first group to outperform the second group by 29% and they outperformed the third group by 51%. Okay, so by physically restricting access to the tempting desire, the students got a 22% boost compared to their average productivity. I mean, that's huge, right? Absolutely huge. And here's another interesting fact before I give you some takeaways. This system works so well that group one who were just lent the iPods for 10 weeks, when they were asked if they'd like to keep using the ipods and to pay to use the iPods, 61% of the group said, yep, would love to, happy to pay for it. Quite incredible. So I want you to think about what it is you want to level up for in terms of your motivation. Whether it's healthy eating, getting to the gym, doing a piece of work, doing administerial work that you don't like doing. What's something that you resist, what's something that you don't really love doing. I want you to get that in your mind's eye. Or if you're not running or driving right now, write it down somewhere. What's that one thing that you don't love doing that much that you don't have a lot of motivation for? Write it down. Okay? Then I want you to do these three things. Number one, find something that you love. And it could be listening to incredible music, it could be a certain food, it could be access to new books, or maybe even it's being in nature. Could be out fishing, something that you absolutely love doing, right? But it has to be practical. And secondly, tie that reward with action. You'll get the reward after you finish a task, or if it's applicable, you'll get it whilst you're doing the task. So, for example, these individuals that went to the gym could be listening to the audiobook at the same time. So whatever it is that you find that you love doing, it needs to be tied, you know, tied in as a reward for the action of the thing you don't enjoy doing. So let's say, you know, it's a piece of chocolate that you love, Swiss chocolate, and you really don't like doing your tax return. So what you're going to do is say, you know, every week that I file my receipts and reconcile transactions or do the spreadsheet, every time I do that, I'm going to get a little piece of chocolate. And the third part of this is, don't let yourself have the reward before you've completed the task. It won't work otherwise. But the studies show that this approach is going to help you to multiply your motivation at a psychological level, at an emotional level. So there's three things. One, find something you love doing. Two, tie that reward with the action of the thing you don't enjoy doing, and you'll get that reward after you finish the task. And three, do not let yourself have the reward before you complete the task. Now look, I'm not a believer in positive thinking. I'm a believer in positive action taking. So right now, as you listen to this, I want you to try this for the next two to three weeks. Pick that one task you're not great at doing, you're not motivated to doing, whether it's going to the gym, reading all the books that you've bought that are sitting, propping up your shelf, your shelf help books, you know, helping the shelf stay up. I want you to pick something that you need more motivation for, then get out there, find something you love doing, tie a reward with the action, and don't let yourself have that reward before you've completed the task. So I really hope this has served you in helping you multiply that motivation. And please share it with someone else who wants to have more motivation to grow and to be their best self. I hope you're looking forward to our next guest. We've got an incredibly special guest coming up very soon, but for now, please get out there and lead your life on purpose.

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