Mind Over Money

Motivation Won’t Save You

Only Massive Action Will

2011 was the most challenging year of my life. I had graduated from University in 2010 right at the bottom of the great recession. Jobs were hard to come by at this point, especially for new graduates living in an area that had a high unemployment rate BEFORE the recession.

The job market for 21-year-old economists with no work experience was non-existent at this point. At the same time, I had a mountain of student debt to service and other bills to pay. This led me to take a 100% commission job in the financial service industry.

My official title was “financial advisor” but in reality, I was a salesperson pushing high-cost mutual funds and insurance on my clients. I hated that job but couldn’t afford to quit. I felt completely “stuck” in life. Did I spend 4 years studying economics and takin on tens of thousands of dollars in debt for this?

Motivation got me moving

Needless to say, I was ready to make a change. My only goal was to find a new direction in life and begin moving in that direction as quickly as possible. I came across a viral motivational video on YouTube that completely struck a chord with me.

The audio on the video was a combination of music from the T.V show Friday Night Lights, a speech from motivational speaker Eric Thomas and an incredible sequence of workout clips from NCAA running back, Giavanni Ruffin.

If you are interested, here is the video.

A few weeks earlier I had been accepted to a Master’s degree in economics at the University of Guelph and was struggling with whether or not to confirm my attendance in the program in August.

Looking back with full knowledge of how events unfolded it amazes me that I struggled with this decision as much as I did. I was unhappy with how my life was unfolding and stuck on a financial treadmill. I was single with no kids and had absolutely nothing preventing me from moving anywhere in the world let alone anywhere in the country.

Yet, it was an agonizing decision at the time.

For one thing, I had never lived (and barely traveled) outside of Nova Scotia at this point in my life.
Even though I did not like my job, I had a paycheck coming in which I would have to give up pursuing my Master’s degree.
I had funding from the University but would have to find a way to pay my expenses and help my family when necessary during this time.
Finally, the program it’s self would be more intellectually challenging than anything I had done in my life.
I had particular concerns about the math requirements. There is a huge leap from Bachelor to Master’s level math in economics. On day one of the program I would be expected to easily perform at a level I had never even attempted.

This was an all-in move and a complete bet on my ability to pull it off. The motivation was enough to get me to “burn my boats”, but I required something more than motivation to “take the island”.

Massive action

Motivation is a powerful thing that got me to take the first step. But it wasn’t nearly enough to get me over the finish line. When you sit down and write a math test it doesn’t matter how motivated you are if you don’t know the material you will fail.

I had 4 months to teach myself graduate-level economics math. There was only one way to accomplish this goal; massive action. These 4 months were easily the most focused and productive of my life.

Here is what my schedule looked like.

6:30 AM: Wake-up
7 AM: Run 10 kilometers
9 AM- 1:30 PM: Study
2 PM-10PM: go to work
10:30PM-Midnight: Study

That was my life every single day for 4 months. Here is what I learned during that time.

The more action I took the more I saw results.
The more I saw results the more confidence I gained.
The more confidence I gained the more I began to believe I could pull this off.
The more I believed I could pull this off the more I action I took.

Taking massive action created a virtuous cycle that allowed me to graduate my master's degree a year later with a 3.8 GPA and land a fantastic job before I even received my degree.

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I kept listening to motivational speeches and still do when I feel my energy is low. But motivation has a diminishing return. I’ll never experience the same level of emotion and energy as I did the first time I watched this particular motivational video.