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If your motivation is low, it's because you're not thinking about doing the pragmatic, tactical, tangible thing. You're stuck in idea land. That's why you're not motivated. You have to convince yourself things have utilitarian value. I have to go. This will make a practical difference. This is something I'm going to do because it will make a practical, real world difference. I need to do that. If you're trying to develop real depth in motivation and discipline, I think this scorecard could really serve you. Let's work through number one. I always want you to score your sense of connection with future identity. So if I finish the day, I'm like, you know, I just didn't feel motivated today. A way to increase performance in this area tomorrow is to go, well, what was my future identity connection? Was I like, what did I think about my future identity? If I didn't think about it at all, that's zero. Well, guess what? If I don't think about my future identity, I didn't activate what ambition my future identity is tied to. What else? Esteem. Oh, oh, oh, okay. Esteem and ambition. Oh, right, right, Brennan, these are all coming together. My future identity. I didn't see it. I didn't have vision to it. I didn't think about. Is what I am doing today tied to my future identity? Did I tie it or align to it so that my future identity can be manifested? So let me give you another way of thinking about the scorecard right now. If you take action or not, it's tied to whether or not you believe that that action helps or hurts your future identity. Make sense. So if I need to go work out today, if I choose not to work out today, I can go. You know what? I didn't think about my future health. That's what happened. I just felt like, do I feel like working out? I didn't think. I didn't take the action of working out because I didn't have a high concentration on future identity. My future identity connection to this task workout was low. Same thing if I don't write my chapter today or the book I'm working on. When I go to scorecard myself, at the end of the day, I'm like, I wanted to write my book. I didn't. Why I did not connect that action today to the fact that I'm a writer. I want to make this impact in the world. I got disconnected from future and stuck in impulse. Make sense. Detached from future, stuck in impulse, stuck. That's why discipline wasn't there. That's why motivation wasn't there. I know you see it all coming together, so I'll work through this fairly quickly, but I think it's a great tool. It's a tool to use in analysis. Was I connected to Future Identity? Yes or no? Did I connect this task to Future Identity? Yes or no. But also, if I want to use it as a tool today to get motivated and to increase my discipline, I'll go, all right, I need to connect this to my future identity. Let me visualize here for a minute. Let me think for a minute. Let me stew on this. Future benefit, future reward, future world. Let me think about that for a minute. And you mentally get yourself jazzed up because you're thinking about the future. Okay. Second thing is the task at hand. Does it have intrinsic value? Intrinsic value means I personally feel engaged, interested, and rewarded by this thing. It's internal. There's no external status that I need to have. It's like, I like this thing. There's passion there, there's interest, there's engagement. I would just do it anyway. Whether I got paid for it, rewarded for it, seen for it, appreciated for it, I just like it. And a lot of people, when they study, for example, self determination theory has a huge, huge opening in their mind. They're like, oh, the reason I'm not motivated is I'm not doing things I like. There's no orientation of this thing I'm doing towards my personal values and the things that I value and find interesting or passionate. And so intrinsic value is really important in our life's motivation. What do I naturally like to do or personally value separate from external reward that I would just do it anyway? And so I think that's important. Like, for me, I have to think. I'm like, would I. If I just. If I had a free day today, would I write? I would say, I don't have a free day. So I need to align myself to a free day. I need to align to the active, in which I can experience the intrinsic joy of doing something. So for a lot of you who run teams or as you're working with your kids, you have to find where's their natural disposition, where do they want to focus, engage, where do they take interest from? What do they naturally like to do? And your job is to empower that natural, intrinsic thing they like, right? Like support that, cheer that on, fund that, tell them to go for that. Like, the more they can align towards that, the more motivated they'll be, which will increase discipline, which will increase performance, which will increase the result. Y' all follow? Okay, second big thing, or third big thing is you don't do the thing because you see no utilitarian value. Oh my gosh. This one's really important. And we don't talk about as much as we used to, certainly in economic terms, but it's like utilitarian value means I am going to get a specific tangible benefit from doing this thing. Like it matters. It makes a difference. It moves the needle, right? It's not wasted time, waste, wasted effort. Like there's going to be a direct or immediate utilization. Like there's utility in me doing this thing. There's something tangible that comes out of it. This is so important. Many of you who have teams, if your team struggles motivation, they might be doing things that they just don't think matter. They don't see the outcome, they don't see the result, they don't get the experience, the reward. And so why do it? It doesn't matter. So often that's what people are saying. It's like, why even try? Why even do it? They can't see the utilitarian value, the actual practical, tactical, tangible difference that doing the thing does. Right? It's like the same thing when you're teaching a kid math. Like if you're teaching the kid math or some type of abstract math as an example, you have to show them how that math or that thing that they just learned in algebra. Let me show you how that helps you figure out something around the house. Like, the more you can take a concept and make it practical and real, the more motivating it becomes for people. If it's not practical and not real, you'll attract the philosophers, but you won't get a lot of things done. And so this is really important. Also, if your motivation is low, it's because you're not thinking about doing the pragmatic, tactical, tangible thing. You're stuck in idea land. That's why you're not motivated. You have to convince yourself things have utilitarian value. I have to go. This will make a practical difference. This is something I'm going to do because it will make a practical, real world difference. I need to do that. That's a lot of motivation comes from utilitarian value, which economists talk about. But people in motivation and discipline got away from, I don't even know why, probably in the 70s and 80s in terms of academic research. But utilitarian value is huge and under discussed in the academic literature and psychology. So I want you to understand, like practical, tactical, Tangible. If I know it's going to be that, I'm way more interested in doing it. For example, if I think I'm shooting a video and it's not going to help anybody, or if I don't think about shooting that video, taking that card, going over there, hitting here, uploading it, making a real video on YouTube, then I'm just shooting videos. I'm like, this is stupid. No one's ever going to see it, right? There's no utilitarian value. So I think it's really important to think about that and to amp yourself up in utilitarian value as well as help your team see it. 4. Back to self determination theory. We're into intrinsic value, often called intrinsic reward, specifically because extrinsic. The way to think about this is intrinsic. This was internal. Extrinsic is external. Meaning I believe by doing this thing I'm going to get external benefits, I'm going to get status, money, power, achievement, accolades, respect. I'm going to get some kind of possession, some type of reward that is outside of myself. Somebody's going to recognize it, honor it, pay for it. So I should do that. It will give me status, money, power, respect in the external world. Let me do that. And that's really important. Often people think extrinsic value is titled, oh, those are just the egoic needs. I'm like, fine, call it that if you need to. But having a sense of status reward in life is important, right? We're social animals. We want to be loved and accepted, seen, taken care of, paid off. We want that sense of like, wow, my actions matter in the real world and I get to benefit from it. That's extrinsic reward and it's so important. Next up. Oh, this is good. Did I sense I have any personal control here? Another way to think about that is, do I have the autonomy to do the thing? Can I impact this or not? I want everyone here who's ever had a team to recognize how important personal control is for your team, your employees, your contractors, people who work with you and collaborate with you. If they don't believe they can make a difference on this project, that's why they're not doing anything. That's why their performance is low. They don't sense they have the agency, the permission, the decision making authority to autonomously do the thing, to impact it in a positive way. And so if you don't give people decision making authority, trust or autonomy to do something, they're just like, I'm out. Because no one Wants to just follow orders all the time. We want a sense of personal control. Well, in your own life, please listen. When you feel like everything is out of control because you've not organized or aligned your life, or because there's chaos because something wrong is going on. We know that in basic sociology studies, as culture becomes more disordered, as we are in a family system of chaos, our motivation tends to go down. And so what you have to do is, even if the system or the family or the team is in chaos, you have to go, what can I do? I know the world is busted, but what can I do? I know this company I just got hired into is a hot mess, but what can I do? Because if you don't say, what can I do? What will I do? What am I willing to do? If you don't take a sense of personal control agency and take the autonomy or assertiveness to do the thing, you won't change anything. If you don't change anything, you won't be motivated to keep going. There'll be no momentum. And so this is so important to understand, like your sense of personal control. If you are at the end of your day and you look at all of your tasks that you did not do on a continual basis, if you look at all your tasks, your activities, your dreams that you did not do, I promise you, you believe your sense of personal control was low. So how do we increase that sense of personal control? You start taking on problems in your life. That's it. You stop avoiding them. You start taking them on, and you start getting momentum and progress and breakthroughs. And the more you do that, the more your sense of. Of self, efficacy, control, autonomy and assertiveness, it just goes up. You become a highly agentic person by actually being responsible for the problems in your life. Not responsible as a cause, responsible as somebody who has an input now who can change things, who can make things better. That's so critical to understand. So critical. If I'm not doing something that's important to me, I probably sense my personal control isn't there. Or it just won't matter because utilitarian value. See how these tie together? Okay, this one is huge. People don't do things because of bandwidth belief. What does that mean? I don't have the time. I got too many things in the fire already, Brendan. I can't take it on in my work. In high performance, we often just call this competing interests. You have so many other things going on. You don't believe you can take on this thing, and that's why you didn't move it forward. Even if you believe you can move the needle, even if you believe there's rewards, you just don't believe you can take it on. You don't believe you can organize yourself or the situation or the world in such a way you can take it on. You don't have the bandwidth, you don't have the time. You just can't deal with it now. There's just way too much. If you even tried, there'd be so much opportunity cost. You won't try. That's what I mean by bandwidth. Belief. I don't believe I can handle it right now. I don't believe there's time right now. And a lot of people, that's their number one for those who sell, if you're in sales, the reason people don't take a sale, they don't do it. They don't believe they have the time. And so you always have to overcome that objection. You have to overcome that objection in yourself. You have to sell yourself on the idea you can handle something. You'll find the time. See, I don't believe I have the time to write a book at any. No point in my life have I ever just believed I have time to write this book right now. No. I got hundreds of employees across the businesses. I've got so much responsibility in the marketplace. I've got a family. I've got to take care of my health. There's the world. I got to pay the things. And there's never been a point across six bestselling books. I've written nine books. Only really six. I've been number one on every single chart. You would think as a person who told you earlier, I identify as a writer first and a coach and trainer second. Like, oh, wait, I'm a writer. I've never believed I have time. I don't. I have to tell myself I have time. If I don't tell myself I have time, if I don't make myself make time, that is why I don't do it. So your motivation, your discipline is tied to your belief about bandwidth. So if my belief about my bandwidth of writing a book is a big fat zero, I can't be surprised I don't write the book. So it is my job here, just like it is your job in every other area. Your job is to increase these scores. Again, this job, this scorecard, can explain why you are motivated or discipline to do a specific task, but it can also be used as a guide. I'm like, I got to increase each of these areas mentally, but also in my life, I got to increase my bandwidth to be able to take on this thing that is part of my ambition and my dream. So obvious. Except most people don't do that. Most people just like their affect. People with their thoughts, feelings, moods, their emotional energy. They. They believe they're victim to that. Most people also believe they are victim to bandwidth. I just don't have the time. All this stuff was thrust onto my plate. I'm like, that can be true in small little moments, small series of weeks, maybe a tight season of life. But overall, your actual time in your life has been constructed. It has been constructed consciously by you over a period of time, by setting things called boundaries. Your life has been set up consciously by the boundaries you have put in place. And if you don't believe that, then we got to talk about your actual agency and personal power. You have set up boundaries over a period of time that allowed you to do things that are important in your life or not over a period of time. Again, in certain acute moments, it's not yours, right? You have a brand, you have an infant and new baby. I mean, time, there's like. That is a very acute stage of life where it's like everything is there, right? There's times when the business has gone crazy and you got to work all those late nights to save the company. So I'm not saying that those things don't exist. Or there's times when you got sick or something bad happened with your health, somebody passed away. These moments, these are real life. Notice what I said, though. Over a period of time, time management. Over a period of time, you are granting yourself bandwidth to follow your passions or not. And you're the only person who, over a period of time, controls that. With the boundaries you set and the motivation discipline you activate. That is the mature, conscious way to accept life. Like, oh, yeah, life can throw me lots of curve balls, but over the long term, I have to realize I was doing a lot of the pitching. All right, number seven, this is important. Number seven, this is your sense or reality of social support. Do you have the support that you need? Team, family, friends, partner who will encourage you to do the thing is their not only recognition and reward extrinsically, but support. Do you have help, right? Do you have help or can you create help to do the thing right? As a writer, I have to really focus on this one. I'm like, oh, I don't have the time and no one will help me do all these other things. I'm like, it's my job to increase social support. How do I delegate? How do I hire? How do I train? How do I get an intern? How do I ask my family? How do I ask somebody for support? Like, that's my job. I'm not victim of social support. I have to construct social support throughout time in my life to set me up for the things that I'm motivated for. As I said, more social support. Guess what? Discipline gets way easier. This is why in every conversation about discipline, you hear that same old tired cliche, that's so true. If you want to do something hard, get a bunch of social support. You want to learn to run a marathon, Train with a bunch of other people who are learning to run a marathon. Because when you have that social support of encouragement, of belonging, of struggling through and seeing other people struggle through with you, then that reward of us going through something together, it's more likely I'm going to show up at that race that day. I'm going to push through mile five. When my legs are burning, I'm going to push through mile 16. My kneecaps feel like they're going to fall out, right? It's like that's just the reality. It's like having that social support is important. It's why in a marathon, there's a lot of people on the sidelines cheering them on. Because even as a sideliner, you know, you have to cheer on people to do hard things. Well, here's the question. Have you set up a sideline of people to cheer you on, to do hard things, or to run next to you? You're not victim to that. You either set that race up in life or you didn't. And that's the hard part of motivation and discipline. The hard conversation is don't blame anyone else who didn't set up a structure for you to win. That's your job. You structure this. So if this is low, I'm just trying to keep dialing in. If I'm going to increase your motivation and discipline, we need to go. You're not victim to these things. You get to organize and regulate and reward yourself.