If You Want to Get Things Done, Forget Inspiration, Motivation and Willpower

Let your strategy be called ‘doing things’

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I don’t know about you, but I am in awe of people who accomplish things. Be it about business, writing, parenting, exercising or even organising a wedding. I buy into success-porn and productivity hacks, and motivational quotes too.

We know that there is no shortcut to success and that you have to take the stairs, but we still would like to believe that at some point we will come across some advice that saves us time and effort.

Deep down we know this is not how it works, that success takes time, that we need to put in the work and show up.

Showing up seems incredibly hard some days.

By putting our faith in things that don’t serve our interests, we make showing up more difficult than it should be. We cherish notions and overromanticize concepts that have little to do with accomplishment. Instead of taking them as a bonus, when present, we rely on them.

The concepts of inspiration, motivation and willpower are more harmful to our success than we’d think. They are great ideas and when we are blessed with them, they can help us start and finish — but they are not the key to success.