Motivation is the first leg of the stool. It’s also the trickiest to harness, for a bunch of reasons.

• It’s fickle. You have motivation for a period, only to have it fizzle long before you accomplish the thing you want.
• There are competing you’s. Hungry you and healthy you often fight each other. Short term you and long term you battle with how best to allocate your money.
• Motivation fluctuates over time. People sign up for gyms in January and after Labor Day, and plummet in November and December.

This doesn’t mean motivation doesn’t matter. It just means it’s insufficient. You have to combine it with strategies to maximize ability, and generate appropriate prompts to maximize your odds.

That said, there are some things we can do to increase our motivation:

Get specific quickly

As soon as you identify an aspiration or goal you have, create a list of behaviors that could help you get there. Motivation can fade over time if we don’t create a specific plan for how we’ll get there.

We’ve already done some of this. It’s why we translated our 10 year visions into 1 year plans. It’s also why we translated our values and our character into a set of specific things that we will and won’t do.

If we get specific we can see the path to achieve the goal. Without the path, we lose motivation quickly.

Get an early win.

Momentum is huge. As soon a you create your plan or list of behaviors, identify your next action that will move it forward.

Sometimes there’s a clear next thing that must be done before anything else can. But often it’s not that clear. When any number of next actions would be useful, you can ask yourself, “which of these would be the fastest or easiest to complete?” That can create a sense of forward motion.

This is especially powerful when it involves roping in another person. Even scheduling a coffee, or a meeting to kick off an initiative creates a light form of accountability.

Use Identity Statements

I’m a believer in the power of self talk. Your mind tells you things all the time, often sabotaging your efforts to change or grow. Replace those statements with superior statements. And perhaps the best kinds of statements are identity statements.

Instead of saying, “I’m trying to exercise more often,” start saying to yourself, “I’m the type of person who exercises several times a week.”

You won’t notice an immediate change. Because you don’t believe it yet. But as you allow that statement to sink into your bones, you will start to identify yourself as someone who works out. Your motivation to act consistently with that self-belief will increase over time.