Book SummaryThe Motivation Myth, by Jeff Haden

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of The Motivation Myth

Do you have goals and ambitions that you can never seem to get off the ground? Are you waiting for a spark of motivation to finally get yourself moving? If so, then you’re going about it all wrong. According to Jeff Haden, motivation comes after achievement, not before. It’s only once you’ve started down the road to your dreams that you can create the motivation to keep yourself going.

In The Motivation Myth, published in 2018, Haden explains how to build up motivation as a product of success and use it to push you toward even greater achievements. He argues that your lofty goals should only provide a direction for the path you want to take in life and that true motivation comes from learning to take pride in every inch of incremental progress you make. Instead of waiting to bask in the glow of achieving your...

The Motivation Myth Summary Preparation

The first step toward reaching your goals isn’t finding motivation. To begin, you must first design a program that will help you build the momentum you’ll need to accomplish your objectives. In this section, we’ll cover Haden’s advice about finding a professional example on which to model your program for success and creating a routine that will kickstart you into action.

The hardest part of following a course of action is starting in the first place. Haden says that once you get over that initial hump, it’s much easier to keep moving toward your goal. What’s holding you back isn’t a lack of motivation, but rather a lack of preparation. Preparation gives you enough confidence to help you cross your first hurdles, after which, incremental success will slowly grow your motivation to keep going.

(Shortform note: In Switch, Chip and Dan Heath suggest that the difficulty you feel when starting toward a goal is caused by the friction between your rational and your emotional mind. Your emotional self responds most strongly to instant gratification, and the seemingly endless wait for the rewards of long-term goals can feel daunting to...

The Motivation Myth Summary Repetition

Since motivation isn’t what starts you down the road to success, what role does it actually play? According to Haden, motivation is momentum that keeps your program of improvement moving forward through a repeating, self-energizing cycle. In this section, we’ll talk about how that cycle works, how repetition reduces luck as a factor in your success, and how it provides you with steady, regular feedback that you can use to adjust your program going forward.

The path to achievement is a slow and steady process that requires putting your nose to the grindstone and doing the work, day after day. That’s disheartening if you’re focused on your goal, such as getting a million YouTube subscribers or growing the prettiest garden on your street, because especially in the early days, your goal will seem a million miles away. Instead, you should focus on individual steps, celebrating each bit of incremental progress. Haden writes that every small victory triggers a response in your brain’s reward center that sets up a positive feedback loop, which will push you to take the next step, and the next. There’s the motivation you’ve been lacking—not at the start of the process, but in the...

The Motivation Myth Summary Resilience

Even with the motivation cycle that comes from repetition and incremental improvement, that by itself may not be enough to keep you going. Therefore, it’s important to develop resilience, which Haden defines as the ability to persevere through difficulties and disappointments. Such resilience doesn’t come from being stronger, smarter, or more energetic but from learning to make the most effective use of the abilities you already have. Haden gives two specific suggestions for efficiently using your time and energy, which we’ll cover in a moment:

1. Conserve your resources by saying no to things that distract from your goal.
2. Dedicate an entire day to focusing your efforts on one specific task.

In general, though, resilience (like motivation) is a mental construct that arises from making a deliberate choice to ignore distractions and focus on your goal.

(Shortform note: In addition to helping you overcome hard times and disappointments, resilience is also necessary to overcome a third productivity killer—boredom. In Atomic Habits, James Clear warns that [boredom is a natural side effect of skill-building...

The Motivation Myth Summary Success

Suppose you’ve done everything that Haden's recommended. You’ve created a program for success and followed it, celebrated every improvement you’ve made, and learned to endure all the bumps and roadblocks. How do you know when you’ve finally “made it,” and what do you do next if you find the success you’ve been after?

Defining what success means for you is crucial to living a balanced, healthy life. Haden offers guidelines on how to realistically measure success, why you should aim for it in multiple parts of your life, and why personal goals should be just as important, if not more important, than professional ones.

He begins by pointing out that any goal you pursue comes with a cost. Chasing professional goals will often mean neglecting the rest of your life while devoting yourself to personal goals will usually mean not making the most of your career. Therefore, Haden says it’s unrealistic to believe that you can maximize both. Instead, you need to be honest with yourself about how you define “good enough.” If you wish to be among the top 1% in any field, whether that’s sales, photography, or weightlifting, it will take a lifetime of single-minded dedication. However,...

Shortform Exercise: Pick a Goal and Start Working On Your Plan

Haden’s central argument is that instead of waiting for a “spark of motivation” to get you started on the road to your ambitions, you generate motivation by creating a plan, breaking it down into achievable steps, celebrating every win, and persevering through disappointments. Consider how you might put this into practice.

What’s something you’ve dreamed of doing but have never done? Write down the general steps you can think of to get you started down the path. If you’re not sure, where could you turn to for more information on the subject?