Episode 1143: Motivation is Mind Management

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 1,143 of the inspired stewardship podcast.

[00:00:07] Laura Warfel: I'm Laura Warfel. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to realize there's always more that God calls us to is.

[00:00:26] And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott.

[00:00:34] Scott Maderer: see the truth is our brain actually works against us. To some extent when it comes to getting things done, our brain actually has biases built in, and this is just a few of them. There's actually a lot. This is why it's so important to understand who you are. Welcome and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast.[00:01:00]

[00:01:00] If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the inspired stewardship podcast, you will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that. Can impact the work

[00:01:21] and today's episode about investing in others by stewarding your time. I talk with you about three biases that prevent you from being motivated. I also share three things that help you get more motivated, and I share why motivation can use your brains biases against. As we talk about stewarding your time.

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[00:02:06] I've talked before about how motivation is a myth that this idea that we're going to wait until we get motivated, or if we can get motivated, then we can get things done. Isn't really how it works. And I've been thinking about it. And if you think about it, if you've ever been trained in certain martial arts like judo or Akido or others, this idea comes about.

[00:02:33] If you resist someone more powerful than you, then you will get defeated. But if you can use the opponent's power against. Then you can win this idea of a small person able to throw a large person like you've seen in judo is about using the energy of someone else to your advantage. And we can do the same thing with our own [00:03:00] brain.

[00:03:00] Our brain has biases and other things that we do that we think that we believe that are down deep in our. That causes us to tend to not act, but you can actually use those against your brain to actually help you act instead. So for instance, we have a tendency to do. Patrol sometimes here called the fortress fallacy or this idea of the perfection fallacy.

[00:03:29] We, we tend to think in our brain about these grand visions of what something could become. We tend to think about what our business will look like in the perfect world and what something else will add. And then this will happen. We think about relationships this way. We think about business this way. We think about our home life.

[00:03:48] This. When you think about the job that we will have, and we build these grand fortresses, these grand castles that don't actually [00:04:00] exist. And the problem is the bigger it gets in. The more elaborate it gets, the more intimidated you get about even getting started, because it begins to feel like it's an impossible, desperate destiny.

[00:04:13] Similarly, we have these ideas of shiny object syndrome. This is when getting started on one thing immediately gets us thinking about what we can't get started on what else there is to do. And we get distracted by the new, exciting object that comes up. We see something new to do. That must be better and more exciting.

[00:04:37] Then the project that we've been grinding away on for a year or more, that maybe hasn't had as much progress as we want. And then of course we have starter's block the idea that looking at starting something is actually agony. It's hard to think about starting because starting [00:05:00] feels like commitment.

[00:05:02] So here's. Ways to think about it instead to use your brains weaknesses to your advantage. One of them is the short time hack set a timer for 10 or 15 minutes or 25 minutes. If you really want to stretch it and just work on one task for that entire time, while that timer is going, just work on something without stopping it almost doesn't matter what you're working.

[00:05:30] This idea helps we have this cognitive bias. We think to ourselves, I can do almost anything for 10 or 15 minutes and you can't stop if you recognize that's what you've committed to during that time. What's interesting is sometimes by the time that 10 minutes is up, you'll continue to work because you've already gotten started in the project.

[00:05:54] And now that momentum will keep you moving forward. The second one is [00:06:00] this idea of the whip, yo, a whip gains momentum. And that travels down that whip until the end of the whip actually breaks the speed of sound. That's that whip crack that you've heard. And so the idea here is look at the end of the task, or look at the point in the task that brings the most energy, the thing that you find most enjoyable.

[00:06:23] The thing that most excites you and try to start the task there. And the third one, a third idea is this idea of being your own boss. See, the interesting thing is that deciding to do something and doing something actually have different parts of your brain involved in those actions. This idea of planning or thinking is different from.

[00:06:50] That's why if you actually block off and dedicate time to play in what you're going to do, and then to schedule it and put it on your calendar, maybe even [00:07:00] using one of these other two hacks, then you're more likely to actually do when you get to that task, because the planning has already been done and you don't have that cognitive barrier against doing it.

[00:07:15] And that helps you get started and make more progress. See the truth is our brain actually works against us. To some extent when it comes to getting things done, our brain actually has biases built in, and this is just a few of them. There's actually a lot. This is why it's so important to understand who you are and get into that deeper before you work on what you're going to do.

[00:07:47] It's why it's so important to understand that if it's just about getting motivated, you're much less likely to actually get things done than if you actually build in systems and processes [00:08:00] that support it. Yes. It still takes some tricks and some tips and some motivation to actually get started, but the systems and the processes is what keeps you going.

[00:08:11] That's why I talk about motivation sometimes as. Thanks for listening.

[00:08:18] Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast as a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your call. If you liked this episode on the stewardship of time, be sure to sign up for our stewardship of time tips series by going to inspired stewardship.com/time or texting 4 4, 2, 2, 2 time tips, and that'll get you our best tips on stewarding your time[00:09:00] until next time investor.

[00:09:03] Your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact the world.