I always love a good Tony Robbins quote. @brandonwilson shared one the other day which caught my eye:

There are 2 different kinds of motivation: Push requires willpower, and willpower never lasts. What will last is pull – having something so exciting, so attractive, something you desire so much that you have a hard time going to sleep at night, you get up so early in the morning and take it to the next level. That’s what you’re looking to get. –Tony Robbins

I commented that I still have some ways to go, being more pushed than pulled when it comes to my daily writing, even now, even after a 490 streak. I don’t jump out of bed dying to write. Many times each week, I have to grind my teeth through the day’s requirement of 200 words (yes, I’m old school, I still adhere to the 200-word limit). 

Tiny saving grace though, is that the pull aspect had been growing an inch a time. Slowly but surely. How it feels like on a mundane, day-to-day level is this: 80% push (by streak mechanism, willpower, etc) and 20% pull. Oftentimes, there’s little immediate gratification from writing my 200 words, and whatever feeling of satisfaction often feels more like relief - “Phew, glad I got that out of the way.” 

That’s because the deep pull reward from writing everyday isn’t immediate gratification. The rewards are lagging, and happen outside of the writing window, in the midst of my daily life, when I’m least expecting the reward. Writing about my goals today will help me be more productive the next day. I inch closer to my goals through my actions, but my actions originate from the clarity, conviction, and focus that writing confers. Second to third order consequences, therefore harder to attribute causation.

So my point being, perhaps we need both push AND pull, like actors coming onto stage at different scenes throughout the play that’s your life. Like yin and yang flowing alongside and enfolding into each other. Tonight, and tomorrow night, I probably need a push, but the other times when I think back at how daily writing had benefited me and as I look ahead to my next post as night falls, the pull seems more pre-dominant. Perhaps for people starting out on the writing journey, push will figure more in their motivation wellspring, while for folks who had been writing longer, the pull will have grown enough for it to pull its own weight. But then again, at the end of a long, exhausting day, even masters who write due to pull factors will need some push to get them going. I thank push factors for immediate, extrinsic utility, and pull factors for long term, intrinsic satisfaction.

Push AND pull.