How to Hack Your Motivation and Productivity Without Willpower

The hacks are easier to apply to your daily life than you thought. And anyone can do it.

Can you be productive without having motivation and willpower?

Nobody likes to hard work. I don’t, either.

Every time I heard someone says that you need to hustle to make it, I’ll just smile in acknowledgment, but deep within me, I know that blind hustle is not the right answer to getting things done and achieving the success you want.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t use your willpower or work hard, but I’m saying that your direction is more important than speed.

You don’t want to be running around the field and never score. You want to put your work to good use and produce 10X results.

There is no point to work 18 hours a day if all you do is low-impact work that never gets you the results you want.

My friend, you want to focus on getting the most out of your day and out of the effort you put in.

And this is what this guide is all about.

You will discover the 5 simple hacks that can make you more productive and have more motivation even without the use of your willpower. Here are the 5 hacks…

1. Building a Supportive Environment

There is no way you can become productive without the right environment. And most people get it wrong by thinking that their environment doesn’t play an important role.

“When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.” - Alexander Den Heijer

In my blog post, I shared a study conducted by Anne Thorndike, a physician at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Thorndike and her team did a study on a hospital cafeteria called ‘choice architecture’. She and her team changed how the food was displayed in the cafeteria.

And by simply changing the location of bottled water across the cafeteria for convenience, the sales of bottled water increase by 25.8%. Without using any willpower or the customer’s motivation.

The conclusion? When you change your environment, you change the way you make a decision, and hence, your life will change too.

This is why if you want to be productive and get more things done, one of the best hacks is to change your environment to support the habit you want to form.

For example, if you want to run 5 miles every morning, just place your running shoe at your house entrance and put your sports attire next to your bed.

This way, you create a visual cue to remind yourself of what you want to do, and at the same time, you have also made the action (running) easier to perform.

Similarly, if you want to floss your teeth every morning, just place the floss next to your toothbrush. This way, every time you brush your teeth, you can easily proceed to floss your teeth.

Think of a way to simplify your surrounding and create a supportive environment.

When your environment is enticing for you, you don’t need motivation or willpower, you will get the work done automatically.

2. Create Positive Influence

The second hack you can use is to create a positive influence. Meaning, you want to network and spend time with those who can positively influence you.

“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” - Jim Rohn

The above quote is one of the most famous quotes from the late Jim Rohn. And yes, who you spend the most time with will influence you.

Therefore, the key is to always network and talk to people who you want to become.

For example, if you want to learn how to invest in stocks, then go and network with people who are already doing that and who are passionate about stock investment.

When you make friends with like-minded people, the conversation will revolve around investment and the economy. Hence, this will influence the way you think and act.

No wonder people always say that ‘birds of the same feather flock together’.

Imagine what will happen if you spend most of your time with people who always complain and blame everything except themselves?

You will eventually join the conversation and start complaining too. You will become one of them.

Thus, if you want to be productive, mix and network with productive people.

When everyone around you is successful, you will be influenced and want to do better in life as well.

3. Eliminate Distractions and Interruptions

This is an easy hack and a common one. If you want to maintain your productivity, just eliminate all possible distractions and interruptions.

“An addiction to distraction is the end of your creative production.” - Robin Sharma

When you work, you want to make sure you can focus and get things done before you get distracted or switch to another task.

The key is to build a bunker so that you will never get distracted.

Most people are unconscious about the effect of distractions, but when you think about how much time you spend scrolling Facebook, checking emails, or watching unnecessary funny videos on your phone, you will realize that you spend a lot of time getting distracted.

These are according to WorkplaceTrends.co:

• An average of 2.1 hours are lost daily as a result of distractions
• The average time spent on a task before we get distracted is 11 minutes
• The amount of time it takes to return to a task after a disruption is 25 minutes

If only you can manage your focus, then you can absolutely get more things done.

Not only that you will have more time to work on a task, but you will also allow more concentration and get yourself into the flow zone.

Meaning, when you are focused, it will be easier to enter the flow state. This is a state where you are fully immersed in the work.

When you are in the flow state, time slows down, your senses are heightened, you become one with the task, and it allows you to work faster, better, and at a more efficient rate.

This is why if you want to become productive without the use of your willpower, you need to enter the flow state more often.

And how can you do that? Get rid of all possible distractions and interruptions.

4. Work with Optimal Condition

Motivation comes and goes, and we all know this. There are times when you feel so driven that you feel like you can take on the whole world. There are also times when you feel lethargic, tired, and have no motivation at all and you just want to do nothing.

This is very normal. And we can learn something out of this motivation pattern.

“Going with the flow is responding to cues from the universe. When you go with the flow, you’re surfing life force. It’s about wakeful trust and total collaboration with what’s showing up for you.” - Danielle LaPorte

When you feel motivated, go all in and play it full out. Take massive action and do the high-impact tasks that give you the most results.

On the contrary, when you don’t feel motivated, you can either take a short rest or do something easier that doesn’t require much of your motivation or willpower.

The key is to play with your natural motivation flow.

When you are feeling driven, you strike when the iron is hot. You do whatever you can to get the most out of your peak moment.

But when you don’t feel ‘so hot’, do something that is easier and takes less energy. This way, you will keep yourself in the action loop.

And when you take action and execution, the motivation will come. Hence, you are also leveraging the “make the iron hot by striking” principle.

The key is to understand when you feel the most motivated throughout the day. Nobody can stay motivated all the time.

Thus, it is better to find out the moment you feel the most motivated. And when the moment comes, play it full out.

For instance, I’m more productive in the morning. Hence, I create content and write articles in the morning.

And in the afternoon, I prefer to do something that requires less of my attention, like reading other people’s blogs, leaving comments, participating in groups’ conversation, creating social media images, etc.

Understand your natural rhythm so that you can work in optimal condition and bring out the best in you.

5. Build the Right Habits

The last hack to get more productive without the use of willpower is to build the right habits.

You want to transform what you do daily into a habit that doesn’t require much of your motivation and willpower.

“We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.” - John Dryden

As a blogger, one of my main tasks is to create content. And that means I need to write and publish articles on my blog. And I must say that I have no problem coming up with fresh content weekly because I have developed it as a habit.

Each morning, at the same time, I will sit in front of my laptop and start chunking out words.

Maya Angelou was one of the most renowned authors in history. And do you know that Angelou has developed the writing habit that made her spectacular at her work?

In this article on BusinessInsider.com, Angelou always worked in hotel rooms. She also regularly wrote in a hotel room, even when she lived in a house. As of 2013, she still kept a hotel room in her hometown, which she paid for by the month. And she insisted on keeping the sheets unchanged and taking all the art off the walls.

This was how Maya Angelou described her daily routine:

“I have kept a hotel room in every town I’ve ever lived in. I rent a hotel room for a few months, leave my home at six, and try to be at work by six-thirty. To write, I lie across the bed, so that this elbow is absolutely encrusted at the end, just so rough with callouses. I never allow the hotel people to change the bed, because I never sleep there. I stay until twelve-thirty or one-thirty in the afternoon, and then I go home and try to breathe; I look at the work around five; I have an orderly dinner — proper, quiet, lovely dinner; and then I go back to work the next morning.”

You have to be the same if you want to succeed and become the best at what you do — be consistent.

Extraordinary people don’t work when they feel like it. They developed productive habits that keep them going.

Your habits will shape your life.

And when you have developed the right habits, your success is almost guaranteed.

When a behavior becomes a habit, you don’t need willpower or motivation, you will just do it on autopilot.

Conclusion

These are the 5 hacks to help you become more productive without relying on willpower.

Once these 5 hacks are put together, your life becomes smoother, and taking action will become effortless.