Motivation is always hyped as the key to achieving one’s goals. You’ll often hear limp-wristed life forms say, “If only I was motivated I could achieve my goals.” or “When I started I was on fire but now the motivation has gone.”
Sound familiar?
I’m going to reveal a harsh reality that you’re probably unaware of. If you rely on motivation to achieve your goals, you’ll probably fail.
The fact that there are so many theories on motivation, hints at its fleeting flimsiness. Check out some information on motivation here at Wikipedia. Experts are still trying to figure out how motivation works and how it can be applied. Good luck with that, boys!
When it comes to setting goals, you’re not going to get far if you’re only motivated. In fact, I’m willing to guarantee that you WILL fail to achieve any long term goals if you only rely on motivation to keep you progressing. The problem is that motivation is often as slippery as an eel to hold on to and is easily diluted by emotion. As your emotions change so can your motivation.
Move over motivation, focus is in town.
Although, motivation gets all the press and glory, it’s actually focus that is responsible for successful people becoming leaders and experts in their fields. Focus kicks motivation’s tender, pink, little bottom when getting you to achieve your goals.
Millions of obese people are motivated to lose weight; millions of smokers are motivated to quit smoking; and millions of employees are motivated to get out of the rat race and become entrepreneurs. They all have lots of motivation. However, most of these millions never get there. Why are these motivated millions failing to achieve their goals and remaining fatties, stinky-coughers and wage slaves?
Because they lack focus.
Using the analogy of a car, motivation is like the ignition while willpower is like the engine. Motivation can get you started but it’s focus that keeps you moving. The problem with motivation is that it’s too abstract. Your major goals are usually far off in the future.
How to focus.
Focusing is as easy as keeping your eyes closed when you’re asleep. Just remember that focusing is a simple series of on-the-spot decisions.
Let me repeat that because it’s extremely important for you to remember that. Focusing is just a simple series of on-the-spot decisions.
Let’s imagine your goal is to lose fifty pounds by summer. To achieve that goal you’ll need to exercise, eat right and sleep well. In other words you’ll need to have a disciplined lifestyle. Focus keeps you disciplined and progressing towards your goal in a way that motivation can’t. Focus isn’t a fleeting feeling, desire or mental image; it’s an instant decision.
When you lack motivation due to it raining or after a late night out and you want to sleep in instead of going to the gym, all you need to do is to decide what is more important to you. Once you decide what is more important and do it, you keep moving forward.
Look at the four example questions to see how simple it is to focus:
• What is more important to me right now, sleeping in or getting up and going to the gym to get in great shape?
• What is more important to me at this very moment, eating pizza or eating a tuna salad which will help me to reach my ideal weight?
• What is more important to me right now, going out for a boozing session with the lads or to attend that seminar on marketing which will help improve my sales?
• What is more important to me at this very moment, to chat on line or to write this article which will generate more visitors and income for my website?
You need ask yourself what’s more important to you and then do it. Yes, you’ll probably have to make the same decisions over and over again, but they only take a moment and they’re easy.
In reality, it can be exhausting trying to remain motivated. It’s emotionally and mentally draining. In fact it’s darn near impossible, especially when you have several goals for different areas of your life, which will take long periods to time to achieve.
You’ll find that knowing what’s more important to you now and choosing to do it is the real key to reaching your goals.
It’s time to turn your back on motivation’s millions of failures and step across the line to join those champions who have focused.
The choice is yours: Focus or fail.
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G'day! I'm Gordie, founder and editor-in-chief of Lifestyle Design For You. I want to welcome you to the center of the universe when it comes to lifestyle design and personal development blogs. We're a team of ten writers providing you with articles to help nourish your mind and improve your life. Lifestyle design is about designing your life so you can do what you want when you want. 
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Gordie! That’s a cool way of looking at “being focused”. However, do we not need to have the motivation to focus? Motivation, I suppose, looks at a bigger span of things….while focus is aimed at small decisions leading to your goal. But I suppose you gotta have the overall motivation to say, lose weight, for you to be able to focus and make spot-on decisions everyday! Interesting post there, Gordie…..thought provoking. Well done!
Motivation is not the basic desire of achieve your goal with no work, motivation is also present in focus and you can focus because you are motivated to achieve something. Why put the two concepts in different places? They work together. And we are all different people. What you mean here is that you get more easily what you want if you remain more rational because you get more discipline when you think rational about simple choices once at a time. But you see, there are people that work way better with the emotional side (me!!) and my motivation or ‘passion’ for what I do is what makes me achieve my goals, everytime I have little choices to do I feel an emotional conection between my simple little acts and the ‘abstract’ ideia of achievment of something greater. For some people like me this emotional crap works… :/ Interesting post, anyway!
Not sure they’re so easy to seperate! Without motivation, focus goes out the window; without focus, what are you motivated for?
What I’m trying to say in the post is that motivation is over-hyped at the expense of focus. I’m also trying to get people to think that motivation for most people, not Sara of course;), used as the primary tool to get to your goals sadly fails on a daily basis.
As I said, most failures are motivated and have goals. Why do they fail? Because they lack focus.
Perhaps, I sounded anti-motivation, while I’m actually not. I realize that it’s what gets us moving in the first place towards our goals.
I’m going to make a bold statement.
I believe achieving goals requires ten percent motivation and ninety percent focus.
What do you think?
Every achievement is a mix of inspiration and perspiration. Here inspiration is closer to motivation, while perspiration is closer to focus. Same thing basically. Am not sure of the proportion though…..probably there’s more perspiration/focus in terms of percentage….:)
Ah I see – thanks for the clarification. Reminds me of when I was doing weights (used to be a scrawny weakling!) – I had the focus of wanting to get bigger, which helped me get it done daily.
I understand your point. Its like when people want to become an artist and the teacher allways tells them: insipration 10%, hardwork 90%. And I agree, but I don’t see motivation as the similar to inspiration here… I see motivation as something more complex like… you said discipline is important and I agree, maybe this is the most important word here. But how can I explain? For some people the motivation is the source of discipline. An practical example: I couldn’t learn chinese if I hated China (my motivation: my interest in China). But some people can still learn chinese even if they hate everything about China and evene if they never watched any Zhang Yi Mou’s movie. I really admire them because they can get self-discipline studying something they don’t need to necessarily like or be particularly interested in. I think the way you can get self-discipline is the main point of the question. Right now I’m here comment on your post, right? I should be studying… so…! How can I improve my self-discipline? Helpp!!
Maybe it would be more accurate to say that you need to focus your motivation. OK, I know that’s just a cheap way of agreeing with everyone and everything but its true, you need motivation to do things, a real passion but you also need to point that passion in one direction or you go around like a balloon in a Tom and Jerry cartoon. What we really lack is not motivation or even focus We lack focused motivation that will drive you forward no matter what gets in your way, a bulldozer of motivation that has only one speed, one direction and no brakes
i wonder if we have a bit of a semantics issue here. In some places in the article, “focus” is used to mean “willpower” which, in my opinion, is actually more akin to motivation, and in some places it’s used to refer to clarity of vision or knowledge. Let’s look at their actual definitions:
focus: 1. Close or narrow attention; concentration; 2. A condition in which something can be clearly apprehended or perceived
motivation: provision of incentive; moving to action; impeling, stimulation, instigation.
and from Business Encyclopedia: “A simple definition of motivation is the ability to change behavior. It is a drive that compels one to act because human behavior is directed toward some goal”.
(above definitions taken from http://www.answers.com)
I think Gary’s comment is probably the most accurate. Focus and motivation most certainly work in concert, and what we need in terms of “drive” to achieve a goal is definitely “focus of motivation”. merely “concentrating” on something or seeing clearly how something can be accomplished is useless. we must have the motivation, or “ability” to accomplish goals, and stimulation and drive(motivation) to act and achieve what we can see (focus) we need to do. Focus takes that action and drive and concentrates it on the task that must be done, but it’s definitely useless without the motivation. A water faucet “focuses” water into a specific location, but without the water (or water pressure to ‘motivate’ the water to flow to the faucet), the faucet is useless. If we understand clearly what “focus” and “motivation” reallly are, I think it’s clear that both work together in the process of achieving goals. I would hesitate to say that achieving goals depends 90% on focus and 10% on motivation. In fact, i think it’s impossible to quantify the “focus to motivation” ratio. can you really measure how many rations of focus and how many measures of motivation you have in your brain? Is there some magical tool out there that can put a number on that, because I’ve never seen anything like that. Let’s just stick to saying that both are necessary and important to achieve goals.
Motivation is not all of course, the more important is how one’s motivated. If the force is from the outside, you’re not gonna win when that force disappears. If the force is from the inside, you’re gonna win when you are determined to achieve your goal – that’s something you called ‘focus’.
Hey Gordie….when is your next blog post coming up, man?:) People are waiting for your “words of wisdom” you know!:)
Just letting you all know that my next blog post should be up in the next couple of days.
People with no self belief need motivation;
people with no self discipline need focus;
people who can’t stop jerking themselves off need to break the habit;
most importantly, people need the courage to be themselves;
what a lot of people’s “goals” are screaming out is that they want to be someone else! That road does not lead to happiness or success,except for the therapists.