Winter - The Motivation Hacker

TheMotivation Hacker

by NickWinter

Copyright 2013 NickWinter

Smashwords Edition

Contents

Foreword

I wrote this book in three months whilesimultaneously attempting seventeen other missions, includingrunning a startup, launching a hit iPhone app, learning to write3,000 new Chinese words, training to attempt a four-hour marathonfrom scratch, learning to skateboard, helping build a successfulcognitive testing website, being best man at two weddings,increasing my bench press by sixty pounds, reading twenty books,going skydiving, helping to start the Human Hacker House, learningto throw knives, dropping my 5K time by five minutes, and learningto lucid dream. I planned to do all this while sleeping eight hoursa night, sending 1,000 emails, hanging out with a hundred people,going on ten dates, buying groceries, cooking, cleaning, and tryingto raise my average happiness from 6.3 to 7.3 out of 10.

How? By hacking my motivation.

The Motivation Hacker shows you how to summon extreme amounts ofmotivation to accomplish anything you can think of. Fromprecommitment to rejection therapy, this is your field guide togetting yourself to want to do everything you always wanted to wantto do.

ChapterOne: Protagonist

Spark

To burn always with this hard,gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. -Walter Pater, writer

The idea for this book cameblurting into my brain on a flight from Pittsburgh to SiliconValley. My ninety-nine belongings were in the mail, my backpack wasbloated with few clothes and many dreams, and I had just finishedrereading You Shall Know OurVelocity by Dave Eggers, a frenzied novelin which the broken-but-satisfied hero drowns on the cover (thebook starts right on the cover), flashes back three months, anddrags his best friend to Senegal, Morocco, and Estonia in one weekto give away all of his money and chase adventure. I gave thecherished book to the woman sitting next to me, who had heard of itand heard me laughing at the part where Will tries to leap from acar to a donkey cart in Marrakech. I thought, heres a guy wholived so much in one week that it overflowed a books pages and he had tosummarize the rest of his three-month epic escapade in a sentenceand die on the cover. What had I done in the last three months?Wrote code for 717 hours. Got better at handstands and pull-ups.Packed my moving box. Discovered that eating half a stick of buttera day wasnt good for my brain. My adventure count waszero.

I felt a moment of panic, as if Ihad let my protagonist license expire and now I would have toretake the test. I had planned this ruthlessness of work so I couldfinish my startups iPhone app before my California move. The ideawas to then move in with like-minded lifehacker . What could I do to change all of my habits at once, to gofrom single-minded startup man to lifestyle design hero?

I generated one amusingly implausible idea: todo all these things I had always wanted to do at the same time,limited only by the seconds in a day, while writing a book aboutit. I would max out my motivation with every trick I knew, with thetwo most important tricks being firstly to tell everyone I waswriting a book about all these amazing things I would do, andsecondly to set a time limit. How long does it take to write a bookor train for a marathon? I had no ideaId never written anythinglonger than an agonizing sixteen-page school paper or run furtherthan five desperate milesbut three months sounded perfect. I couldprobably fit in work and a dozen other deeds, too, because theywouldnt take that much timejust motivation. And I knewmotivation.

Missions

Goal : Write a book. Requirements : Write acomplete first draft of this book about motivationhacking.

Goal : Run a startup. Requirements : Stay ontop of Skritter work as cofounder and Chief Technical Officer (CTO).

Goal : Launch a hit iPhoneapp. Requirements : Manage launch publicity campaign and finish fixing allbugs.

Goal : Learn to write 3,000 newChinese words. Requirements : Go from 4,268 wordwritings learned in Skritter to 7,268.

Goal : Train to run a four-hourmarathon from scratch. Requirements : Build endurance from 5miles to 26.2 while increasing speed by 10%.

Goal : Learn to skateboard. Requirements : Be able totravel 10 miles on a longboard.

Goal : Help to build a successfulcognitive testing website. Requirements : Hack on QuantifiedMind , present to 100 people about it.

Goal : Be best man at twoweddings. Requirements : Learn public speaking and pull off two great best manspeeches.

Goal : Increase my bench press by 60lbs. Requirements : Go from 1 rep max of 150 lbs to 210 lbs (I weigh 140lbs).

Goal : Read 20 books. Requirements : Read 20fiction and non-fiction books on my reading list.

Goal : Go skydiving. Requirements : Jump outof a plane while screaming in terror.

Goal : Help start the Human HackerHouse. Requirements : Do my part of writing content, organizing events, andhelping housemates.

Goal : Learn to throw knives. Requirements : Hit atarget from 13 feet, 80% of the time.

Goal : Drop my 5K time by 5minutes. Requirements : Run an official 5K in 23:15 from a pre-test of28:15.

Goal : Learn to lucid dream. Requirements : Increaselucid dreaming and achieve three fantastic dreammissions.

Goal : Go on 10 dates. Requirements : Go on 10romantic dates with Chloe.

Goal : Hang out with 100people. Requirements : Have significant conversations with 100 differentpeople.

Goal : Increase happiness from 6.3 to7.3 out of 10. Requirements : Hit averageexperiential happiness of 7.3 over the three months.

I came up with eighteen goals. Some I pickedfor terror, like the marathon and skydiving. Others I picked forexcitement, like skateboarding and knife throwing, or becausetheyd be useful and fun, like learning 3,000 new Chinese words andreading twenty books. The rest I had to do, like giving the twobest man speeches and running the startup. I wanted to make sure Idid them well.

For each goal, I decided onsuccess criteria and motivation hacks to fire me up. Ill introducethese motivation hacks throughout the book, and theyre also listedin Chapters 11 and 12. I estimated how long each mission wouldtake, built a schedule that could just barely fit if I wasted notime, and grinned at myself in challenge. Lets see what youve got, Nick!

Techniques

A chef wields dozens of tools, from spatulasto potato scrubbing gloves. Every once in a while, hell need thepastry brush, but every day hell use a chefs knife, a frying pan,salt, and a stove. Like a chef, a motivation hacker has a core setof tools. Ill introduce these in Chapters 3 and 4: successspirals, precommitment, and burnt ships. Sometimes you can reachinto your motivation pantry (Chapter 12) and pull out sometimeboxing, but its often best not to get too fancy.

And just as the chef who dogmatically used hischefs knife for everything would cook a terrible pancake, so woulda motivation hacker fail to quit an internet addiction using onlyprecommitment. No single technique can solve every problem. Thisbook will recommend several approaches to increasing motivation.Use more than one at a time.

Self-Help Books

Ive read some great self-helpbooks that inspired me. In these books, the author writes about howhe used to suck at something, how he epiphanied out and then workedtowards a dream for years, and how now hes amazing at everythingand its all because of this empirically validated,Pareto-distilled , beautifully Zen method which he has developed and wants toshare with you in small bites mixed with inspirational anecdotesabout how he applied the technique in his impossibly interestinglife. I would consume one of these books, maybe create a To-Do toreorganize my To-Dos, and go back to exactly what I was doing whilefeeling great about how great I would be someday.