How to Force Brain to do Hard Things

Science shows there's a hidden motivation switch located deep in the brain that unlocks a level of motivation more powerful than money, praise, or fame, one that practically forces your brain to crave doing the hard work you keep putting off. I'm Rian Dorris, co-founder and CEO of the Flow Research Collective, and along with my partner Stephen Kotler, we've taught thousands of professionals how to access flow states at will. Now picture this, you've set your alarm early, determined to start the day right, but when it rings you hit snooze repeatedly, last night's enthusiasm has already evaporated and the blanket weighs you down like a concrete slab, the day ahead feels like an enemy to avoid instead of a challenge to conquer. At your desk the cursor blinks and your to-do list stares back at you, you know you should work but something inside you just won't cooperate. Lunch comes and goes, you tell yourself you'll start soon but the afternoon finds you lost in distractions chasing trivial tasks while the important ones loom large and untouched. And the day ends and the weight of what you didn't accomplish settles in, as you put your head on the pillow you feel the sting of disappointment, having fallen short of the potential you know you're capable of one more day. If you experience this sort of depletion in drive, know this, you're not lazy, procrastination isn't the problem and there's nothing abnormal about you, the problem is more than a lack of motivation, rather the issue is that you lack a specific type of motivation, which we're going to cover in a moment and we're going to cover a number of science-backed solutions for how to create limitless motivation to do even the most difficult, laborious work and it starts with upgrading your fuel source. So there's really two types of motivational fuel, one far outperforms the other, the trouble is most of us are stuck relying on the weaker of the two, extrinsic motivation comes from the outside, like money, status and praise, if your fuel is extrinsic you act for the sake of a reward, extrinsic fuel works but wanes, that's because for the brain anticipation is more rewarding than attainment, dopamine which enhances focus and motivation surges as we anticipate something and plummets upon that thing's attainment, think of extrinsic rewards like fossil fuels, they come from forces outside your control offering only a temporary boost and unfortunately they eventually run out. Intrinsic motivation on the other hand comes from one's inside, it's made up of elements like curiosity, purpose and mastery, if your fuel is intrinsic you act for its own sake and win with or without an external reward, you listen to the song to enjoy the song not to finish listening to it. So think of intrinsic motivation more like fusion energy, the dominant source of energy for the stars within our universe, it's self-sustaining and long-lasting and incredibly efficient. Intrinsic fuel works better than extrinsic fuel and it compounds, it makes hard work easy leading to an upward spiral of skill development and access to flow state, that optimal state of consciousness where we lose ourselves in deep immersion within our work. Extrinsic motivation can get you started but it's intrinsic motivation that keeps you going. Think of it like this, a rocket needs an extra booster engine to launch but once it hits escape velocity the booster falls off and it can cruise on its remaining engines. So how do you upgrade your fuel source? Well it starts by focusing on the five intrinsic motivators, curiosity, mastery, auditilicity, purpose and autonomy and I'm going to show you how to dial up each of these intrinsic motivators for profound unstoppable levels of motivation. Now I first felt the deep pain of a lack of intrinsic motivation in my early 20s. Back in Ireland I was on the academic path wanting to pursue a PhD in neuroscience researching optimal states of consciousness and in my first few years on this path I had enormous insatiable drive but as time went on something began to shift, my drive started to wane wildly. Some days I was reasonably driven but more commonly the days started to feel like an endless grind and I scratched my head wondering what the hell was going on here and one day while doing some research with my current business partner Stephen Kotler he sent me a breakdown of the intrinsic motivators, the first one being curiosity. Curiosity is the insatiable itch to learn everything you can about your work, without it work ends when you leave the office, with it work is like reading a book you can't put down. For me on this academic path to this PhD in neuroscience my curiosity was actually really high, it was all I could think about, I was gobbling up podcasts on the topics of peak states of consciousness, I couldn't stop reading about them and couldn't stop talking about this stuff to my friends. So when I read about this intrinsic motivator in Stephen's breakdown I was confused about why my drive was so flat and I read about the next intrinsic motivator which is purpose. Without purpose you're in the proverbial rat race, trading your life for a paycheck in some faceless company that exists just to make money. When purpose is present you're willing to make sacrifices because the work is a cause you care about and this resonated with me tremendously. On the academic path my purpose felt really high, I was so passionate about what I was researching knowing that if we could figure out more about consciousness itself we could elevate the quality of the human experience for so many people on earth. But I kept reading about the other intrinsic motivators, wondering at this point why my drive was flat, if curiosity and purpose were high for me. The next one was mastery. Mastery is the pursuit of excellence and continuous improvement. Without this drive you do just enough to get the job done. With it you're like a musician who keeps practicing even after the concert's over. And here I realized, wait a second, my mastery drive is low. I can't endlessly improve my ability to do the activities within my academic work. As I read about the mastery motivator I thought, hmm, maybe this is why my drive is low. Then I came across the fourth intrinsic motivator, auditlicity, which is the love for the activities you do at work. Auditlicity is derived from Greek words meaning self-purpose, it refers to activities they're rewarding in themselves, done for their own sake rather than for an external reward. With it you're like one of those programmers you see in the movies who just cannot stop programming because they love the activity of coding in and of itself. Without it you're like an attorney who can't stand the actual activity at the core of their work. Reading trial cases. That was me within academia. I didn't like designing studies. I didn't like crunching spreadsheets of data that was gathered from participants. And I realized that even though I loved the topic I was studying with my curiosity drive being high and I found plenty of purpose in it with my purpose drive being high, the actual activities that I did day to day, hour to hour, I hate it. It's one thing to love the idea of a field, it's another to love the daily work it involves hour to hour. So my auditilicity was low too and it was now becoming clear why my drive was sapping down. Lastly, the fifth intrinsic motivator that I read about is autonomy which is the feeling of being in control of the when, the how and the what of your work. Without it you feel trapped like someone else is pulling the strings. With it you choose what project to work on, how to work on it and what time of day you do the work. Your work is truly your own. And in academia for me autonomy was basically at zero. So I was stuck on the academic hamster wheel with three out of my five intrinsic motivators flatlining and the other two, curiosity and purpose, being confined by the lack of autonomy that I felt. Realizing this clarity was incredibly useful because I could then look for a different pursuit that had just as high a level of curiosity and purpose but also had high autonomy, mastery and auditilicity. So I used this framework to identify a critical career shift for me which was moving from academia to business. I co-founded a neuroscience based research and training business with my partner Stephen Cutler where my curiosity and purpose were still just as high with the study of consciousness and flow state at the core of what we do. But mastery, auditilicity and autonomy also went through the roof with this career shift. In terms of mastery I was reading books, learning how to use financial spreadsheets and figuring out how to recruit people. The skill development and mastery possibilities within business had no cap and any improvement I made improved the business with immediate feedback occurring. I loved the startup hustle, the creativity it permitted and the clear results of the work I put in which supercharged the auditilicity intrinsic motivator. And finally, I was in charge of when I worked, what I worked on, how I approached it and how I designed the whole business as we built it. There were no academic guardrails to constrain me, I had full unbounded autonomy. And within this business my love for researching optimal states of consciousness found a new expression, one where curiosity, mastery, auditilicity, purpose and autonomy were finally aligned and dialed up to their maximum degree. Now why are these intrinsic motivators so powerful, so potent for our drive? Well first, having high levels in each releases performance enhancing neurochemicals like norepinephrine, dopamine and acetylcholine and they also lower cognitive load. Both of these mechanisms enhance focus and drive flow state, this optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and function at our best. And within flow you get an additional cascade of neurochemistry, endorphins, serotonin, anandamide and even oxytocin in group flow states flood the brain. Now here's the crazy part, the intrinsic motivators get you into flow, they do, but flow itself then compounds your intrinsic motivation. This means that a virtuous cycle can begin where the more motivated you become, the more flow you get. And since flow is the epicenter of intrinsic motivation, it compounds your motivation even further leading to more flow. And on and on the cycle goes, once you can get in the vice grip of this virtuous cycle where intrinsic motivation is feeding flow and flow is feeding intrinsic motivation, you become unstoppably driven. This is why titans of industry like Elon and Bezos can sustain extreme motivation for multiple decades straight. You see this in every field though, Einstein's lifelong curiosity led to groundbreaking discoveries like the theory of relativity and Marie Curie's curiosity and purpose led to pioneering radioactivity research and two Nobel Prizes. Van Gogh's Auditellicity created iconic and celebrated works of art and athletes like Michael Jordan and Serena Williams were driven by mastery and autonomy, earning Jordan six NBA championships and 23 Grand Slam titles for Williams. So what do all these peak performers have in common? Well, their intrinsic motivators are locked in and maxed out consistently with intrinsic motivation feeding flow and flow feeding intrinsic motivation back, the cycle compounding on itself decade after decade, ratcheting their drive up and up and up over time. So let's dive into these five intrinsic motivators and untangle them a little bit more for you in a way that allows you to start thinking about how you can dial each of these five up within your professional life to access unstoppable motivation. So curiosity, what you explore, you've likely had times when you're supposed to be doing something else but your mind keeps wandering to that one fascinating topic, wherever your mind drifts is a compass to your curiosity. Curiosity is not just wanting to know, it's a feeling of needing to know and in fact as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the godfather of flow put it, the flow concept itself was developed as a result of sheer curiosity. It was the fruit of pure research motivated only by the desire to solve an intriguing puzzle in the mechanism of human behavior. From a neurological perspective, curiosity activates the brain's reward system, releasing dopamine which increases attention and pleasure in learning. Mastery, what you improve, this is the ability to endlessly improve at what you do. If you've ever gotten really into a sport, one of the things that wrapped you up within it was likely the thirst to be better today than yesterday. That's mastery. Ever rewatch that killer presentation that you absolutely crushed just to analyze your craft or spent an evening journaling, breaking down a recent project's successes and failures? You don't just want to relive the win, you want to understand how to make the next game even better. Mastery is about skill acquisition and it releases dopamine and endorphins, the biochemical markers of progression. These neurotransmitters set up a feedback loop that enhances focus. As skills improve, we seek out greater challenges, leading to an upward spiral of growth and engagement. This involves the challenge-skill balance, a trigger for flow state, with flow being the pinnacle of intrinsic motivation. Auditilicity, the third intrinsic motivator, what you love. You know the feeling of working late, not because you have to, but because you want to. That's auditilicity. The line between work and play starts to blur. Auditilicity is also at the heart of flow state. Indeed, in the original research back in the 1970s, flow is the stand-in word for auditilic experience or activity. As Csikszentmihalyi observed in the flow state subjects that he studied, with high auditilicity, you behave as if what you're doing is the most important thing in the world. The fourth intrinsic motivator, purpose, is what you impact. Purpose takes auditilicity and applies it to a bigger cause or mission beyond yourself. It's the belief that what you do with your work, within those activities that are auditilic for you, contributes to something bigger, something outside of yourself. You've probably had jobs that you were good at, maybe even passionate about, but something felt missing. You found yourself in a role where you questioned if any of it really mattered. Without a sense of purpose, your job is just a collection of tasks. The meaning found in purpose leads to greater persistence despite challenges. It makes your job not just a paycheck, but a mission. It's a neurochemical game changer too, ramping up levels of oxytocin and serotonin, key players in social bonding, mood stability, and long-term well-being. Autonomy, the final intrinsic motivator, is what you choose. Autonomy is that feeling of ownership, that sense of, this is mine. Remember the freedom of tackling a project your way without someone micromanaging or controlling or even influencing every step. Think about that side project at your job where there were no strict guidelines, just an objective. You could design it, delegate, decide, the approach, and suddenly work felt like play. Well, that's autonomy, being engaged. It's the agency to pursue your curiosities, auditilic activity, and purpose, which all drive up your focus and increase positive emotion. Our brains are wired to thrive when we have a say in our actions. Now, let's explore exactly how to max out each of your intrinsic motivators so you can harness this kind of power. First, you want to identify where you currently stand with each intrinsic motivator. With your work in mind, consider how many of these five intrinsic motivators are built in and to what extent. Let's take each motivator one at a time again here. So curiosity, how many times over the last 30 days did you have the desire to read, watch, or listen to content related to your work outside of your formal work hours? To boost up your curiosity motivator, if it's low or if you know it could be higher, you need two things. Number one, leverage from learning. This means that the knowledge you gain as you learn something, it has a positive impact upon your work. You learn something new, implement it, and you can see tangible positive results from having done so. The second thing is immediate feedback from learning, which is a flow trigger. This involves seeing the direct consequences of your applied learning, ideally in real time. Back when I was in academia, I didn't read about study design because if I had, it wouldn't have made a difference. I wouldn't have gotten any better and I wouldn't have actually sped up my progression. However, when I switched to business, I consumed five business books a week. And this is because everything I learned and every single model or insight I had resulted in tangible breakthroughs in the business that day, often hours after reading, which then further compounded the curiosity motivator. So for the curiosity motivator to be high by learning something and applying it to your work, something meaningful has to happen. You need to see a direct coupling between cause, the learning, and effect. If this isn't happening now, change something within your work such that investing in learning results in the maximum amount of immediate feedback or positive impact and progression possible. Next up is mastery. Looking back at the last month, to what degree did you feel the desire to endlessly improve at the skill set that's required for your work? And to what degree will that make a difference to your ability to succeed at it? So here's how to crank the knob of the mastery drive up. Identify all the skills and sub-skills that will advance your long-term goals at work as a result of you mastering them. Then learn and practice those skills explicitly with deliberate practice, as if you're a professional athlete or musician. That is, practice the skill on the edge of your comfort zone and correct your mistakes continuously until you habituate new behavior on a neurophysiological level. And if you can't actually get better at the skills involved in your work, you may need to consider a career shift entirely, choosing something that has unlimited possibilities for mastery baked deep within it. Now, what a telecity. In the last 30 days, how often did you spontaneously dive into one of the core activities within your work without any obligation, without a deadline or formal work hours or a meeting pushing you? Just you deciding, I kind of feel like doing this now. Another way to assess your auditory telecity level is to ask, how often have you found that when you weren't doing one of the main activities within your work, you were craving to do it? In academia, my passion for the day-to-day research tasks was low. But as an entrepreneur, in and outside work hours, I kept working, learning how to do sales and marketing and figuring out how to manage and lead people. So here's the counterintuitive and simple way to boost auditory telecity. Don't focus solely on what you like to do in and of itself. Instead, consider a simpler question. What am I good at? Because here's the thing. You're naturally much better at some things than others. You have innate strengths that make certain tasks feel less like work and more like play to you uniquely. And it's easier to build a career around things you are uniquely good at, around strengths than things you happen to love doing. For example, if all you like doing is playing video games, it might be a little tough to make a viable career out of that. So the key here is to trust that if you do things you're good at, over time, you will forge auditory telecity within those activities. That's because the research shows that strengths are a trigger for flow. And the more time you spend in an activity while in flow, the more you come to love that activity. Now, purpose, the next one. So the first thing to do here is a gut check. Ask yourself at a basic level, does the organization I work within or the work I do have an obvious purpose attached to it at all? And secondly, is that a purpose I can get behind and feel good pouring my life force into? If so, it's a good starting point. If not, if you're stuck in a role or with a company that doesn't align with your values or anything you actually find meaningful, you may need to switch careers entirely. However, if there's even a glimmer of purpose that you can connect with in your current work, here's how to amplify it. Positive psychology research shows that a well-articulated purpose and a clear correlation between that purpose and your work drive up both motivation and job satisfaction. So start by distilling your life's mission into one laser-focused sentence. For instance, advanced technological innovation for global good. Then every day next to each work task, identify how it links to your purpose. And lastly, we've got autonomy. So think about over the last 30 days, the degree to which the how, the what, the why or the when related to your work felt like it was something in your control, something you chose. For example, could you decide whether to work on project A or project B or choose whether to start your day in the morning or later in the afternoon? Could you work on it in your own way without being supervised or micromanaged? Now there's two ways that you can increase autonomy. One way is perceptual, the other is literal. First, I want you to zoom out and swap the current context of your work into a context that you have owned and determined. That means making the kind of crappy low autonomy job or role that you may have right now one part of a key step within a broader life trajectory, a life trajectory you are choosing and designing. Because even if the thing you're doing right now is low autonomy, by you embedding it within a bigger journey that you're shaping and controlling yourself, you boost autonomy in the present by making it a stepping stone to a broader stairs that you've designed. This makes a low autonomy role like being a junior sales rep higher in autonomy at the macro level because all of a sudden you're learning the skills you need to start your business in three years time or whatever your life journey entails. Now another counterintuitive way to increase autonomy is through exercisable autonomy or we like to call FU autonomy. You've heard of FU money, same principle here. Gain FU skills and FU network and FU knowledge. This will create a backdrop of choice, a backdrop of optionality that allows you to pursue other options at any given moment and thus thrive as a result of it. You can stop what you're doing and exercise this autonomy anywhere at any time. This takes the edge off whatever lack of autonomy you feel at work because you know you can bounce and get something equally good or better at any moment. The best part is you don't need that much autonomy to boost this intrinsic motivator. Most of your work doesn't require autonomy but you need a high degree of autonomy within a narrow part of it so focus on the smallest part of your work life that you can control without question. And outside of work spend an afternoon per week on something you do fully own. It's really all the autonomy you need and it's doable to land that amount of autonomy. So start with whichever intrinsic motivator is lowest and then juice it up. Raising one motivator can give you the energy required to raise the rest. If you measure each motivator on a scale of 1 to 10 the goal is to boost each intrinsic motivator by five points per year until you hit 50 where you're maxed out on each of the five intrinsic motivators and then you want to sustain at that level. But you do want to know that these won't always remain in balance. You'll always be upgrading your motivational stack based on what your work requires or the natural ebbs and flows and shifts that occur within your working life. And as you upgrade your motivational fuel source from extrinsic to intrinsic you make it easy to pinpoint the reason for dips or surges in your motivation. If I ever find myself wanting to lounge in bed in the morning for multiple days in a row I know it's because something is off within my intrinsic motivational stack because even through illness grief and life's natural turbulence when my motivations are aligned I'm eager to engage with work every day. Eventually you'll be able to check in to each of these five intrinsic motivators as easily as you can feel your own heartbeat and course correct as needed. And when you upgrade your fuel source like this you end up going to bed so excited to wake up in the morning that you feel like a kid on Christmas Eve and working hard becomes irresistibly easy. Like a video game where you can solve complex problems for hours on end exerting like crazy yet feeling no conscious effort. On top of that as intrinsic motivation increases extrinsic motivation actually dissipates which is a good thing. That's when the magic happens because extrinsic motivation can make you a slave to arbitrary success metrics, external rewards, the fear of failure. You also fall prey to feeling like you never have enough. Extrinsic motivation makes the journey to success a constant grind turning every achievement into a short-lived high quickly replaced by a new craving or worry. But once intrinsic motivation takes over you become untouchable. The need for external sources of pleasure and happiness derived from outside variables starts to melt away which makes you less likely to be manipulated by external rewards or to behave and make decisions influenced by things like money, status and punishment. One way you can think about this is that you almost develop this zen warrior like trait where you have the detachment of a monk with the engagement of a warrior. You're detached from the trappings of the external world, money, status, fame but obsessed and engaged with the work itself without being swayed by what others think or expect from you. This is a sublime, imperturbable mode of consciousness where you want nothing but the desire to be in flow engaging in the work itself. As the godfather of flow Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi put it, this is autotelic motivation because its goal is primarily the experience itself rather than any future reward or advantage it may bring. This state of self-containment makes you increasingly immune to the types of suffering that derail so many lives. The intrinsically motivated monk-like warriors chase mastery over money, purpose over position, autotelicity over applause, curiosity over conformity and autonomy over approval. As you level up your intrinsic motivation you'll tap into flow state with way more frequency. But to cleanly enter and exit flow every day without burning out it also requires mastering the flow cycle. You can click here to learn how.