Disagree about motivation. See Steven Pressfield's "War of Art" and "Do the work."
Motivation is ephemeral. Hard work, habit, consistently applying yourself regardless of your motivation, is key.
Motivation is ephemeral. Hard work, habit, consistently applying yourself regardless of your motivation, is key.
Tell a depressed, unmotivated person with no goals to just "work hard" and see how far that gets you. There needs to be some reason to do something rather than nothing.
Pressfield's "do the work" annoys me, because it undervalues the importance of energy and a goal. It's a great approach to make reliable progress and fight distraction, but it's badly inadequate to the task of creating activity in the first place.
It's a very fundamental condition. You can't do away with it. Being low on energy doesn't mean you're not motivated.
Hard work, habits, etc., are extremely relative things from what I've seen, and it's still not well understood what they mean and how they work.
Can we please stop worshiping someone's conviction from a book?