You Don't Lack Motivation—You Lack This (The Truth About Consistent Action)

By Art Harrison • July 2, 2025

Stop blaming your motivation for inconsistent results. The real problem isn't your drive—it's your system for turning motivation into sustainable action.

You wake up Monday morning feeling unstoppable. You're going to finally launch that business idea, update your website, make those sales calls, and tackle your ambitious to-do list. You're motivated, focused, and ready.

By Wednesday, you're back to scrolling social media instead of working on your goals.

You blame your motivation. "I must not want it badly enough." "I'm just not disciplined." "Maybe I'm not cut out for entrepreneurship."

But you're diagnosing the wrong problem. Your motivation isn't broken—your system for converting motivation into action is.

Why Motivation-Dependent Entrepreneurs Fail

Motivation is an emotion, and emotions are temporary. Building a business on motivation is like building a house on sand—it works great when conditions are perfect, but it crumbles the moment things get difficult.

I see this pattern constantly: entrepreneurs who are incredibly motivated for 2-3 weeks, make significant progress, then hit their first real obstacle and completely stop. They're waiting for motivation to return before they continue working.

Meanwhile, their less-motivated competitors are eating their lunch because they have systems that work regardless of how they feel on any given day.

The Motivation Trap: Why It Feels Good But Fails

Motivation feels powerful because it creates the illusion of control. When you're motivated, everything seems possible. You can picture yourself succeeding. You have energy for big actions.

But motivation is actually the least reliable business resource you have. It depends on your mood, your energy level, how your day went, whether you got enough sleep, and dozens of other factors completely outside your control.

Successful entrepreneurs learned this early: you can't wait for the feeling before taking the action. You have to take the action that creates the feeling.

What You Actually Need: Action Systems

Instead of depending on motivation, successful entrepreneurs depend on systems—predictable processes that produce results regardless of emotional state. Here's how to build them:

The Motivation-Free Business System

1. Minimum Viable Actions (MVAs) Identify the smallest action that still moves you forward. On unmotivated days, you only have to do this minimum. On motivated days, you can do more, but you're never allowed to do less.

2. Environmental Design Make the right actions easier and the wrong actions harder. Set up your workspace so that working on your business requires less effort than avoiding it.

3. Emotional Independence Create decision-making frameworks that work whether you feel confident or scared, motivated or tired, optimistic or pessimistic.

Here's how I applied this in my most successful business:

My MVA for sales: Send one prospecting email every day before checking any other emails. No matter how I felt about sales that day, this had to happen first.

Environmental design: I kept a list of 50 prospects on my desk with checkboxes next to each name. Checking off one box every day was satisfying regardless of whether the email led to a response.

Emotional independence: I decided that rejection was data, not defeat. Every "no" moved me closer to the next "yes." This framework worked whether I felt confident or insecure about my offering.

The result was consistent business growth regardless of my emotional state. On days when I felt like a fraud, I still sent the email. On days when I felt unstoppable, I might send five. But I never sent zero.

Building Your Motivation-Free System

The goal isn't to eliminate motivation—it's to make progress independent of motivation. Here's how to build a system that works whether you're feeling inspired or just getting through the day:

The Daily Minimum System

Choose your one non-negotiable daily action. This should be something small enough that you can do it even on your worst days, but significant enough that doing it every day for a year would transform your business.

Examples of effective daily minimums:

Write one paragraph of content • Make one prospecting contact • Read one page of business education • Test one small improvement to your offering • Document one lesson learned

The key is consistency over intensity. Doing something small every day beats doing something big sporadically.

The Emotional Weather System

Think of motivation like weather—sometimes sunny, sometimes stormy, mostly unpredictable. You don't cancel important meetings because it's raining. You don't avoid work because you're not feeling inspired.

High motivation days: Do your minimum, then capitalize on the extra energy for bigger projects.

Low motivation days: Just do your minimum. That's enough to maintain momentum until motivation returns.

No motivation days: Still do your minimum. This is when the system proves its worth.

The Science Behind Action-Independent Systems

Research shows that motivation follows action more often than action follows motivation. When you act first, motivation often appears during the process, not before it.

This is why "fake it till you make it" actually works. You're not faking success—you're practicing the behaviors that create success until those behaviors become natural.

Every entrepreneur who relies on motivation eventually hits what I call "The Motivation Wall"—the point where the initial excitement wears off and real work begins. Those who survive have systems. Those who don't survive were depending on feelings. If you're hitting this wall, you're not failing—you just need better action-taking strategies.

The Four Pillars of Motivation-Free Action

Pillar 1: Identity-Based Action

Instead of "I want to start a business," think "I am someone who takes action on business ideas." Identity drives behavior more consistently than goals drive behavior.

Example: "I am someone who writes every day" leads to more consistent writing than "I want to write a book someday."

Pillar 2: Process Over Outcomes

Focus on controlling your inputs (actions you can take) rather than your outputs (results you want). You can't control whether prospects buy, but you can control how many prospects you contact.

Pillar 3: Streak Thinking

Track consecutive days of action, not cumulative results. Your goal becomes maintaining the streak, which is within your control, rather than achieving specific outcomes, which often aren't.

Pillar 4: Implementation Intentions

Instead of "I'll work on my business when I feel motivated," create specific if-then plans: "If it's 9 AM on a weekday, then I write one paragraph of content before checking email."

Your Anti-Motivation Action Plan

This week: Identify your one daily minimum action. Make it small enough that you can do it even on your worst day.

This month: Practice the emotional weather system. Do your minimum regardless of how you feel, and track your streak.

Long-term: Build identity around consistent action rather than sporadic motivation. Become someone who shows up, not someone who waits for inspiration.

The entrepreneurs who succeed aren't the most motivated—they're the most systematic. They've learned that action creates motivation, not the other way around.

Stop waiting for the feeling. Start building the system. Your future self will thank you for choosing consistency over intensity, systems over emotions, and daily minimums over periodic maximums.

Your motivation will come and go, but your systems will build your business.

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Video Transcript

Lack of motivation isn't the thing that's holding you back. It's not. And I want you to get that out of your head. You know that you're capable of being motivated. If you're in the right situation, you'll find all of the energy and drive an efficiency that you possibly could ever need to get things done. So today we're going to talk about what it is that's actually holding you back. What's stopping you from making a change or a decision or going after something that you feel would bring you a little bit more fulfillment. And let's start by talking about motivation. Think about the job you have. Think about if your boss gave you a call to night and said, "Hey, listen, I need you to give the presentation to the company tomorrow." Even if you didn't like that job, even if you don't think it's fair that you're being asked that, "What would you do? Would you do nothing?" Of course not. You would find all of the motivation, all of the inspiration, all of the effort and energy required to make sure you did a good job because that's just who you are. And because you don't want to look bad in the morning when you're the one actually delivering that presentation. So motivation is something that you're capable of. We're all capable of being motivated in the right circumstances. When you're back against the wall, when the stakes are high, when you know what to do or when you know what the consequences of not doing it are going to be, you're motivated. So clearly, that's not the only thing that's stopping you from whatever it is you want to achieve. And before we talk about what it is that's stopping you, there's just get a few of the other things that is not out of the way so that we can just focus in on actually helping you get ahead. Despite what all the people tell you, all the productivity bros and experts that are out there, it's not a productivity system or productivity app. That's just kind of garbage. That's the activity. Those frameworks have value. If you are trying to do something, if you are working hard at it, if you know what it is, and you need to be a little bit more productive, great. Go and listen to those people go and find those systems and those apps. But otherwise, it's just energy that you're going to waste. If you're productive without knowing what it is you're doing, or if you're doing the wrong thing and being really productive at it, it's not going to get you anywhere. The same goes for any sort of organization, the same goes for the mentality of working harder than 99% of the world. It doesn't matter if you're doing the wrong thing. The other thing that isn't stopping you is the routines or habits of successful people and your desire to mimic them. There's amazing people out there that have done some remarkable things, Warren Buffett is my favorite example. He's a billionaire. He's got a great life as far as I can tell. But one of his habits is that he eats McDonald's basically every single day and he drinks a coke every day. Do you think that if you just started doing that, you would be successful because you did the same thing that he did of course not. It's not a good habit. It's not good for your health. And it has absolutely no correlation with how successful you are, how fulfilled you are, how happy you are. Same goes for anyone else that you want to look at. Elon Musk: just don't be like him. He's got a lot of companies. He has a lot of success. But no, that's just not someone you want to be trust me. I'm not even going to the details why you know why. And take me. I'm a success. I have a ton of freedom. I've made a lot of money in my life. I have a lot of fun and joy. But the habits that I have aren't necessarily something that I would wish on anybody else. I struggle with motivation and doubt. I don't like to get up in the morning. I have other things in my life. I want to improve like my health, like my fitness, like losing a few pounds. And I can't bring myself to do just about any of them. So it's not some system or habit or ritual that I have that's ultimately making me successful. So what is it then? If it's not motivation or productivity, if it's not just some ritual or activity that I do every day, what is it that I do, that Warren Buffett does, that other people do or have that you need if you want to be successful. And answer is actually pretty easy. And it's going to sound a little trivial. But I'm going to make sure that I go through it in detail with you so that you can apply the same approach to your own life and figure out what it is you want to do because the answer, the thing that all of us have, the thing that you want to have is clarity. And the reason I know this is because I was exactly where you are right now when I was in my early 20s. I was motivated to make a change. In the pit of my stomach, I knew that I wasn't living up to the potential that I had. My whole life people told me that I was going to be capable of doing so many things. That I was smart, that I was ambitious, that I had a quality that other people kind of aspired to. But I wasn't realizing any of the potential or results. So what I would do is I would abandon my entire social life. I would bail on my friends. I would avoid going to any sort of social interaction. And I would spend every night in most weekends in a coffee shop trying to change my life. I thought that if I was willing to make those sacrifices, if I was motivated to make a change, and if I actually put in the time in the effort that eventually I would just figure out that thing that would catapult me to amazing types of success. But you know what happened? I would go every night, I'd buy a coffee, I'd sit in the back corner, put on some headphones. Firstly, I would usually just daydream. I dream about the life I was going to have, about how I'd make up for the last time, how I'd finally feel satisfied. And then I would tinker. I would spend hours there. I would watch other people, but I wouldn't really get anything done. And all that it did was it perpetuated this feeling like I was letting myself down. Like I wasn't living up to that potential, because not only was I not seeing any progress in my life or in the things that I desired, but I was also missing out on the things that were bringing most of the other people around me joy. So all the energy, all the effort did absolutely nothing except put me into a darker place. And that's potentially where you are right now. You have these ideas. You want to make a life for yourself that is maybe more free, more exciting, that has more love or joy or anything else. But trying, and not knowing with clarity what it is you want to do is actually making you feel worse. And that's the thing that you want is clarity. Clarity is something that will create all of the motivation. It will create the framework for you to actually succeed. You need to have clarity on what it is you want and why you want that thing if you want to change your life. And the easiest way to do that is just to be honest with yourself. And being honest is a really tricky thing. You know, we all like to believe that we're honest with our friends and family. Like we know ourselves, like we're true to who we are. But when it comes to figuring out what it is that's missing in your life, it's pretty easy to get general. To just say, "Well, I want more money. I want more freedom, more time. I want to have more joy or love." But that's not a specific thing. Think about your clarity. Think about what you want and why you want it as a destination. If you don't know where you're actually headed, you could hop in a car, you could drive through the night, you could avoid taking breaks, you could keep filling up the gas to make sure you have the energy to get where you're going. But you'd never get there because you actually don't know where it is you're headed. You know maybe I'm headed east and you might end up kind of east. You might even come across some interesting things along the way. But you're certainly not going to arrive at the perfect destination if you didn't even know what it was to begin. And that's a real problem. I've experienced that not just in my personal life but in my work life as well. My last business, Ryan and I, my partner, we were really excited about what we were doing and we saw some amazing early success when we had clarity. But as a business grew, we thought we were capable of so much more. We hired brilliant young people. We had executives. We had everybody that was so passionate about building the business but we didn't do a good job of creating clarity for everybody. And so everybody hopped in their individual cars and drove as fast as they could. They were burning the midnight oil. And people were starting to feel a little bit of resentment and disappointment because no matter how hard they worked, no matter how fast they drove, we weren't getting where we needed to go. Not only that, what it was a team, everybody was aiming at a different destination. So that clarity was completely missing. And it could affect you in the exact same way. So that's why going back to what I was saying earlier, the goal here is for you to create clarity of what you want and why you want it. Start by just writing it down. It's the easiest thing to do. You get yourself a note pad and you just write down what is it that I want. You might want health happiness, you might want wealth, you might want freedom. It doesn't matter. There's no right answer to this exercise. But what you need to do is you need to start questioning why do I want those things. Is it that I actually want this or is it that I want something that might come from it? For example, let's say the first thing you write down is I want to make more money. Why? Why is it that you want to make more money? Is it that you want to make more money because there's something that you want to buy? Is it because you need to make more money to support your lifestyle or your family or your obligations? Or is it that you think that with more money, you'll have more free time. Time to spend with your family time to take vacations. If you can identify the reason behind the things you think you want, why it is you want them often you can create a better sense of clarity for yourself. For me, there's been times where the first thought that I had was that I wanted to make more money for that exact reason. I wanted to have more freedom. And then I thought about why I wanted the freedom. Well, I like to work for myself. I like to have the freedom to spend time with my family. I like to have the freedom to explore the ideas and the passions that I have. Okay great. Well, what are those passions? If I had the money, what would I do? What would you do if that's the thing you aspire towards? So you keep writing on that list. You keep exploring the ideas. Maybe the reason that you want that freedom is so that you have time to start a consulting business. To start a YouTube channel, to open a dry cleaners. I don't know what it is that you aspire to, but figure out those things. And then you have to ask yourself again, what is it that I really want? Do I want more money or do I want a life that looks this way? And if it's the latter, you need to move that thing from the reason you want something to being the thing you want. Because one of the secrets that I'll tell you is that it's easy to make money. And I know that that's going to sound trivial, particularly if right now you think money is the thing that you want, but it's not actually that difficult when you understand what it is you want. There are all kinds of ways to make money in this world. You can be a freelancer, you can start a channel, you can write a book, you could be a contractor, you could not even care about money if you're doing something that you love. It's not hard to figure out unique paths. It's only difficult to figure out a unique path, when you don't even know what it is you're aiming for. That's why a lot of people just end up on the traditional trajectory of their life. They end up on the corporate ladder because they haven't taken the time to figure out whether or not there's another way to live the life they want to make the money they need. But that's not you. That doesn't have to be you anyway. If you spend the time to create clarity for yourself, then you can get creative on the ways to support that. The ways to support the life you need, the obligations you have. One of our favorite examples are people who say that they're working to travel. They say that they need to get the promotion. They need to make more money because what they really want to be able to do is to travel a month, two months, three months out of the year. I'm not telling you to quit your job if that's you, but for some people. If that truly is the thing that will bring you the absolute most joy. If you would be happy looking back at your life 50 years from now and saying I was able to travel every year to explore the world to do all these things. Well, maybe there's a different way to just do that. If that was me, if that was the goal that I had, the clarity that I had, I wouldn't say I need to make more money to travel. I'd say my goal is to travel. And that would become the singular item at the top of my list of the things that I want. And then I would start taking small steps. I would start exploring and talking to other people to figure out, is there another way that I could do that? If I'm making $100 a month right now, just pretending I don't want to talk numbers right now, if I'm making $100 a month. And I think that in order to travel, I need to make $200 because that'll give me an extra $100 to do my traveling. I might change my mindset. I might say, what if I could make $100 a while I travel? I'd be doing all the traveling. I didn't need to make any more money with that be viable. How about if I could make $80? And still do all the traveling? Would that be worthwhile? Yeah, I'm making a little bit less, but I'm living the life that I aspire to. I didn't have to make any compromises. And if that's the case, then I would get creative. I'd start looking at, hey, can I be a travel blogger? A vlogger? Is there ways that I could write for magazines? Could I teach while I travel? Would I be willing to pick up other work? I would look at all the ways that I could live that life without having to go down paths that I don't even want to go down. And it's not always that easy. There depends on what it is you want to do. If you want to teach, maybe you need to become a teacher, but also there are other ways to teach. You could become a consultant to coach. You could start a channel. You could write a book. There are different ways to do most of the things, but most people don't talk about that. I made a video about this recently saying that what I grew up, I didn't know how many different careers, how many different paths were possible in life because I didn't have exposure to them. And that's one of the reasons I'm making this channel. As someone that has made the majority of the dollars I've made in my life by myself, I've made more money on my own than anyone has ever paid me. And I've done that because I just got creative. I realize that I can make a website, a video, I can make a course. Maybe I can start a business and sell something that no one even knew existed. And I did all those things without ever having a frame of reference. It's not something my parents or my friends or anyone of my family had done before. And I'm sharing that with you so that you understand that there are ways to make money. I'm going to go into more detail in future videos. But right now, I wanted to share with you that key thing. The thing that allowed me to do all of those things and it was clarity. Once you have clarity or the destination you want to go to, the motivation will come. You can use those productivity systems, organizations, systems. You can choose whether or not you want to outwork everybody on your way there. But it's the clarity that will ensure you get to the right place. That's the fun thing about clarity. It doesn't actually matter how you go. How fast you go. Whether you drive or bike or walk. Once you know where you're headed, you'll start making progress towards it. It doesn't have to be instant. It doesn't have to burn you out. But even if you're choosing to walk or crawl, you're still headed in the right direction every single day. And your chances of getting where you want to go increase exponentially because you have a map. You know what it is you want to do. And that's why motivation isn't your problem. Motivation is just part of the activity. It's the gas and the car. It's the thing that you'll use when you have clarity. But for now, I want you to actually take that piece of paper out. A lot of times when you watch a video like this, when I watch a video like this, the person that's talking says I should write something down and I don't do it. And you probably are the same way. But I'm telling you, if you want to make a change in your life, you have to actually do this. You have to get honest with yourself and actually make a list. So stop right now. Pause the video. I'm telling you right down to three things, three things that you want and the reason why you want them. And then take that list and over the next week, I want you to just look at it every day and either add something to it, cross something out, or refine it just a little bit, moving something to the top or the bottom. And as you're doing it, you're going to have two sides. You're going to have the things you want and the reasons you want them. And I want you to really focus in on the reasons you want those things because sometimes the reason you want something should actually be moved to what you want. Because it's that end state that you want clarity on. What is the life you want for yourself? Why do you want that thing? And if you can make that the thing you actually want? And if you can make that your primary focus, you are so much closer to living that life, the life that you've aspired to, the potential that you know is there. And that's where I'm going to come in. You can watch this video over and over if you want. But more importantly, you can like and subscribe my videos and I'll keep making them because I want to share this information with you. I want to share with you that once you have that clarity, you can get creative. You can take a few risks. You're going to have to deal with some good days and some bad days. And you're going to have to learn how to actually become that person that you want to be. And I'm here for you. This is my entire life. It's helping guide you there. And one of the things that I think is going to be really important is you do it is learning about managing your self-doubt. So check out this video when you're ready as well because it'll show you how doubt can stop you from actually starting on that journey to the thing that you have clarity on, but it doesn't have to. So stay tuned and we're going to do this together.