Stop watching those motivational videos and podcasts for motivating yourself and you’ll thank yourself later on!
Woahh! Seems like a pretty controversial title and clickbait-y too.
Don’t worry, I assure you, it’s not a clickbait.
Yes, I will provide you pretty plausible and logical reasons as to how these motivational videos and podcasts tend to decrease your productivity and possibility to achieve stuff in a longer run.
And well, I will “also” tell you what else should(must) be done to achieve stuff gorgeously in a longer run.
First of all, let’s get diplomatic
- This article is not about me hating towards or diss-ing motivational videos and podcasts. I love them too. I am just here to explain why these things are bad and even destructive for you in a longer run if you tend to go them for motivation.
- This article is just me giving an opinion of mine on the basis of some logical explanations backed by legit real-life experiences of mine as well as many people I know of.
- At times in this article, I might be saying something like “I won this”, “I achieved that”, etc. but seriously, I don’t have even the slightest intent of bragging about any of it. It’s just that those examples/sentences are going to be needed to explain and exemplify.
- If you don’t resonate with this article, it’s perfectly cool. People have different opinions. Here, I am writing about mine trying to hurt no one else’s :).
But wait, who am I to claim something like that?
Well, I am just a normal guy who was, thankfully, able to achieve a few things in the last one year which required good amount of effort and discipline for a good amount of time, as per my opinion (and general public’s opinion too :P)
And all those achievements perfectly align with the “title” of this article and are an outcome of the corresponding ideology.
Okay, enough with the boring stuff! Let’s get to the main stuff
Mechanics of the motivation flushed into our heads from these motivational videos and podcasts
So, basically, at times, people don’t feel like working towards their goal.
They plan everything, they know the deadline, they know how cool and great it is going to be to achieve that goal but still they don’t feel like working.
To tackle that they tend to go YouTube or Spotify and search for something like “motivation to work”, “motivation to be productive”, etc. and they watch or listen to one of the web results and get motivated and they work and “nail” it.
“Okay, Yash! That’s nice, right? They suddenly got productive. So, what’s your point here.”
Well, this looks great in the current scenario but things get pretty messed up in a longer run.
So, there is one thing to note about human mind
- It gets used to things. The time it takes to get used to specific things depends how strong the relationship or mentality it has of the respective thing but it surely does get used to it.
So, in this case, that person, after a while, will get used to that motivational video and will realise, “Oh no! I don’t feel motivated anymore from that video.” And he will now suddenly start searching for another video until he gets the right motivational video.
Now, a cool thing to notice here is that that person has started to fuel his motivation to work towards his goal solely with these motivational videos and podcasts.
And at a sub-conscious level, he has or probably will become totally dependent on these motivational videos so as to be productive.
And well,
there will come a time when he would be finding it difficult to find the “right” motivational video for him and well, he would waste a lot of time finding it and searching for it.
And at that time, subconsciously, he would be so dependent on motivational videos that he won’t be able to productively work without one.
So, basically, his productivity essentially would become a slave to these external motivational resources.
These motivational videos and podcasts are like a drug which feel great at the moment of consumption but you become a slave to this drug if you keep on consuming it.
So, what’s the solution dude?
One word — Consistency
“Wait, what? I read this article up until here for this? It’s too obvious. In fact, people watch and listen to these videos and podcasts for staying consistent towards their work only!”
Hold on! Hold on!
What I mean is!
Stop fueling your consistency with motivational videos and podcasts.
I’ll give some real-life examples
Me in June 2018:
- Health status: High blood pressure (175), Obese (BMI: 32.9), Couldn’t even jog for 200m straight.
- Academic status: One arrear/backlog and an extremely bad CGPA in hand.
- Social Media Status: Borderline addicted to it (XD)
- Career status: No industrial experience and nothing sorted for the future.
Me in September 2019:
- Health status: Reduced 20kgs (44 lbs) of weight, Normal Blood Pressure (~121), Normal BMI: ~24, can now run for 3km straight.
- Academic Status: CGPA increased immensely.
- Extracurricular Status: Cleared AWS CSAA exam with a great score (Google it ;) ), did tech blogging.
- Social Media Status: Pretty sure that I am not addicted to it now (Gave up LinkedIn/Instagram/Facebook/Twitter for 66-days straight.)
- Career status: Did freelance, did an internship under a US-based startup, got an on-campus placement with a great company.
Now, most of you might be thinking:
- “Dude, stop showing off, okay! It’s not cool that you flaunt about these things. Instead of sounding motivational, you’re sounding like a braggart, you $#@!”
Okay, as I mentioned in the beginning, I don’t have any intent of showing off what I have achieved.
In fact, honestly, I believe that there is nothing to flaunt about much because I don’t feel even slightly satisfied with what I have achieved right now and there is a long long long way to go for me.
But I am just highlighting the difference I got in my life in a span of almost 1 year.
And honestly, there was no motivational video or podcast behind it. Everytime, when I had to work, I just worked instead of finding ways to get charged and motivated.
And that proved out to work the best.
“Okay fine, Yash! You got a pretty positive difference in your life with that approach but still, you’re just a normal guy. You haven’t earned billions with this approach”
“Hence, I am still not aroused by this approach”
Okay then, let’s hear about a pretty kickass guy
The following is a conversation from one of the most well-known Elon Musk’s interviews
- Interviewer: When you had that third failure, did you feel like, “I have to pack everything up”?
- Elon Musk: No
- Interviewer: Why not?
- Elon Musk: I don’t ever give up. I mean I’d have to be dead or clearly incapacitated.
There was no person or podcast or video or a set of them which were behind him not giving up.
His consistency, his never-give-up factor were never fueled by some podcast or film.
He just knew he never had to give up, he just knew that he had stay consistent, and well, he just followed that belief.
Let’s talk about Army men
We all know how fit and disciplined army men are. Ever heard any one of them saying, “This person’s videos motivated to stay disciplined this entire time.”
All they did was, to take up a strict regime and stay freakin’ consistent to it. That’s it.
But how to stay consistent with no motivational material at all :(
Short answer — Force yourself to do so.
There is no easy approach to get the habit of consistency, sorry.
My approach — Whenever, I am in a situation where I have to choose between staying consistent or giving it up and chilling, I just ask myself, which choice would make my future-self happy and thank my current-self. And choose that option.
You can discover your perfect approach to choose consistency and discipline by, well, practicing it.
But wait, you can still watch the motivational videos and podcasts
Yes! you can, it’s okay to do so. Even I watch many many motivational videos and podcasts. My YouTube recommendations are entirely filled with those kind of materials only but I never watch them solely so that I can get motivated to get done with a task in hand.
All I am saying is: Stop fueling your consistency and discipline with them. Stop relying on them to become productive.
Final Words
If you have reached till here then,
I hope I was diplomatic enough to not be hostile to your ideologies XD.
And again, this article is just based on my opinion and my experiences, so if you still feel that it’s inaccurate, it is perfectly fine.
I would love to hear your views and understand your perspective towards or against this article :)
