I recently spoke to Tiago Forte, author of Building a Second Brain.
One of the things he observed is that it’s become difficult for us to stay motivated. With a seemingly endless avalanche of information, projects & tasks coming at us at all hours of the day, it’s tough to make out true wins when they happen.
And yet, this is exactly one thing that drives motivation.
As we talked, it occurred to us that this is not the only reason though.
It seems as if every day, there’s a new convenience to take away another pain of working, learning, and living.
Play audiobooks at 3x speed. Automate your notes. Read pre-created book summaries.
All of these things can be helpful – if used consciously.
However, lately, I’ve found myself not enjoying, not learning, and not growing as much as a result of it.
The problem?
There is no struggle.
The feeling of a true win comes from overcoming a struggle. Whether that’s reading a book and manually taking notes to create YOUR summary, turning that call transcript with a customer into YOUR notes for the CRM, or deciding what you’re gonna do with those 25 emails sitting in your inbox instead of letting a filter do the work for you.
You’ll be able to see Tiago and I elaborate on this tomorrow on YouTube, when we discuss his new best-selling book: Building a Second Brain. It’s all about building a system to process information overload so you can focus on your creative work.
Actionable advice for this week: remove an automation.
Get back into manual mode and see how it feels. Do you feel pure annoyance at having to do it yourself again? Or do you perhaps feel a sense of renewed motivation, inspiration, or learning? Shutting off autopilot every once in a while ain’t so bad.