Process as a Proxy for Motivation
When I was a student, I used to regularly drive right across Scotland, from the west coast to the east. Every time, I would get to Glasgow and be faced with a decision: I could either go north from Glasgow over the Kincardine Bridge, or I could head east and head over the Forth Road Bridge. Neither of these routes was better than the other - they took a similar amount of time, they both had places to stop to eat, they were both nice roads to drive on. As such, every time I got to Glasgow I was burdened with the mental labour of making this decision, and did not get much value from completing it. In time, I made a decision - I would take the route which went north out of Glasgow. I hear you ask, dear reader, ‘why did you decide to do that?’, and I shall tell you - I just did.
As I say, there was no real benefit in either route over the other, but there was a benefit in choosing a route over the other. Deciding to always take the northbound route did not mean that I would get there any faster, it did not mean that I would enjoy the trip more, it did not have any benefit related to the journey itself. It did, however, mean that I would not need to make a decision when I got to Glasgow, I would just have a rule which I had to follow.
Now, for a different example. Two days each week I need to get the train to my office. On this train journey I always bring my personal laptop and find something to fill my time with. I might work on some personal project, I might do some research, I might write something. Regardless of the details, I will always keep these journeys productive rather than scrolling mindlessly.
What do these two examples have in common, besides pointing to a writer who overthinks his commutes? Both of these examples demonstrate a process, or a decision made in advance, which achieves some goal, or at least pushes me further towards some goal. In the prior example, the process is a simple one - when given the choice between my two routes, take the northbound one, and the goal is to spend less time making decisions. In the latter example, the process is to avoid scrolling and to use my train journey time productively, and the goal is to study/read/write more.
What is interesting about these examples is that in both cases the goal alone is a tricky thing to achieve. If you were to have a new years resolution to study more, I would be willing to bet that come May you are back to how you were before. If you told your manager that one of your performance goals was to get better at making decisions, I am sure you would be told to tighten up your ideas. However, if you can come up with some process which forces you into making this decision then suddenly these abstract personality traits are achievable - basically handed to you for free! Instead of needing to find motivation and act on it, you can cut out the tricky bit, and just be left with an action.
These processes need not be especially justified in themselves. In the case of my journey to university, I did not pick my northbound route because it was better. In fact, if I were being thorough, small variations in daily traffic meant one route was technically faster on any given day. The ‘optimal’ approach would be to check traffic, analyze the data, and shave off five minutes from my journey. That is not what I was interested in though - I wanted to be able to drive through Glasgow and not need to pause my music, stop, and think.
This is done all of the time in software development teams. The whole set of principles and processes which are established when following Agile or Scrum are exactly the sort of processes we are talking about. We divide our time into 2 week sprints, we have our stand up meeting at 09:30, we have the same meetings at the same times every other week. All of these are principles which we decide on in a fairly arbitrary way. What is the goal, or the motivation we are aiming for here? To become more predictable, to deliver features on time, to work at pace. Without these processes, those goals still exist, but achieving them requires constant, active negotiation. Teams waste finite energy endlessly debating schedules instead of relying on a system that does the heavy lifting for them.
My request to you is this, make life simple. For any lofty goals which you have, find a way of achieving them without too much thought. If you want to write more, dedicate some hour in every week to writing. If you want to save more money, set up a direct debit on each pay day. If you want to change your behaviours, look at your actions first.