Motivation Hacking: Making Yourself Do the Things You Want to Have Done
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 7
- Confidence
- —
Sanderson's personal philosophy for self-directed creative work starts from an honest admission: he loves writing and it is still work, and a game of Civilization would deliver a purer dopamine hit than starting a chapter. So rather than waiting for motivation, he engineers it. He treats motivators as instruments with expiry dates, cycling through a stick early in his career, then a carrot, then a self-sustaining progress counter, and re-tooling whenever one stops working. He also redesigns tasks he dislikes so they route through the part of the process he loves. The payoff is not just output but a day that ends satisfying: work done, family time had, hours left to goof off.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Name the part of the work you actually love
Identify the specific moment that is the real reward. For Sanderson it is writing 'the end' and then letting people read the book. Everything else is the six to eighteen months of slow, steady work required to reach it.
Pro tip Being specific matters — 'I love writing' is too coarse to design around.
- 2
Accept that starting is the hard part, not the doing
On most days he enjoys the work once he is into it but has to force himself to begin. Treat starting as its own separate problem needing its own mechanism, rather than as evidence you have chosen the wrong career.
Watch out Reading reluctance to start as a sign of lost passion is the misdiagnosis that ends creative careers.
- 3
Try a stick, and watch for its expiry
Early on, before publication, Sanderson wrote to escape a 'phantom cubicle' chasing him that would spit him out as a salesman if he stopped. Fear-based motivators work but tend to decay quickly, especially as circumstances improve.
Watch out A stick that has quietly stopped working still feels like a system, so output drops before you notice why.
- 4
Try a carrot, and watch for its expiry too
When newer and younger he would let himself open a pack of Magic: The Gathering cards after finishing a week's work. Once he could buy a hundred packs a day without noticing, the carrot stopped functioning entirely.
Pro tip Choose rewards that are scarce for you now, and expect success to destroy them.
- 5
Build a self-sustaining progress counter
He discovered he loves watching numbers count up on a spreadsheet, so tracking his daily word count made him more likely to write the next day. The percentage inching toward completion is an experience bar — gamification that survives changes in wealth and status.
Pro tip Track a number you control daily, not an outcome you don't.
- 6
Re-engineer the parts you dislike
Revision is his least favourite stage, so he outlines his revisions — outlining being one of his favourite parts. The revision becomes goal-based implementation of exciting new things rather than repair of a broken book.
Pro tip Ask which stage you love, then find a way to run the hated stage through that stage's format.
- 7
Re-audit whenever a motivator dies
Learn how your own brain works and keep swapping mechanisms as your life changes. Done properly the days become genuinely satisfying — work done, hours with family, a couple of hours to goof off — instead of deferring happiness to a future milestone.
Watch out What works for you may be the opposite of what works for others; some people are binge writers who need three months of nothing else.
In the wild
After the fear of a fallback career stopped motivating him, Sanderson noticed something small about himself: he likes watching numbers count up on a spreadsheet. He began keeping track of his daily word count, and the simple act of logging it made him more likely to write the next day. The percentage crawling toward completion functioned like an experience bar, and finishing was satisfying enough that the counter kept compounding across projects. It is the one motivator that survived his transition from unpublished writer to bestseller.
→ A motivator immune to money and status, still driving his output decades later.
Early in his career Sanderson used a reward system built on his nerd hobby, Magic: The Gathering. Finish the week's work and he could open a pack and look at the new cards. It worked while packs were a meaningful expense. As soon as he had even a little success — enough that he could buy a hundred packs a day without noticeably affecting his bank account — the carrot stopped being effective. Fortunately, by then the word count structure was already in place to carry him.
→ A worked example that motivators expire, and that you should have the next one running before the current one dies.
Revision is the stage Sanderson likes least; outlining is one of the stages he likes most. So he creates an outline for the revision itself — what this pass will accomplish and what the book will look like when it's done. That reframes the work from 'I have a broken book I have to fix' into 'I get to implement this new thing that will make the book more interesting.' The task is unchanged; the emotional format it arrives in is not.
→ The least favourite part of the process becomes goal-based and genuinely exciting to start.
Common mistakes
Assuming one motivator lasts forever
Both the phantom-cubicle stick and the Magic-pack carrot stopped working for Sanderson, the carrot as soon as he had even minor financial success. Treating a motivator as permanent means your system silently degrades exactly when your circumstances improve.
Waiting to feel like starting
Even loving the work, he has to force himself to begin, because a video game offers a purer immediate hit. Ali describes the same pattern with filming videos. If you fall off at the starting stage, nothing downstream happens at all.
Deferring satisfaction to the finish line
Sanderson's rule is slow and steady, make every day satisfying — not 'I'll be happy in the future.' Postponing all reward to publication or launch produces the dysfunctional, unbalanced life he sees in many artists and writers.
From the transcript
“i love watching numbers count up on a spreadsheet”
“i talk about learning to hack your brain find out what motivates you on a day-to-day basis and figure out how your brain works and…”
“as much as i enjoy writing playing another game of civilization would probably be more pure dopamine hit than working on my books”
From the episode
Bonus Episode: Originality, Writing and Career Fulfilment with Brandon Sanderson
Brandon Sanderson