Motivation. It’s suggestive of forward movement, of accomplishment, of success. It’s alluring, mysterious and somehow an addictive element  that has crept into the simplest scenario so we believe we need motivation to get anything done. But it might just be the biggest hoax of all time.

Remember when motivation seminars were all the rage? People would attend, get their fill of the feel-good drug (also known as the I’m-so-amazing-that-I-can-do-anything magic serum for suckers) and come home all fired up. A couple of days or months later, the motivation had waned and the exercise, whatever it happened to be, had languished. Another forlorn dream deposited on the scrap heap of motivation.

So motivation is vastly overrated. It’s a siren song that, in the end, might actually keep us from doing the things we want to do. And in that very sentence I believe we have the answer. It’s that ‘doing’ word again. The verb. We don’t need to feel motivated. We don’t need to feel anything. We need to do something.

Now we have found the kernel of truth. Let’s simply acknowledge how we feel (or don’t feel) then find the simplest thing we can do. We can look for the tiniest piece of the jigsaw puzzle and start there. We put that in place then pick up the next piece. The rest, as they say, is child’s play. When enough little pieces have been set in place, the picture will be complete and we will have succeeded at our entire project … without the need for even a skerrick of motivation.