Business
Persuade Yourself: How to Self-Motivate
Lesson time 05:34 min
Learn what it takes to persuade yourself.
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Topics include: Self-Motivation Checklist · Employ Deadlines (Cautiously)
Teaches Sales and Persuasion
NYT-bestselling author Daniel Pink shares a science-based approach to the art of persuading, selling, and motivating yourself and others.
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[00:00:00.00] [MUSIC PLAYING] [00:00:06.78] INSTRUCTOR: One thing that we sometimes overlook is that in many cases, we have to persuade ourselves. And we can use these tools on ourselves. Remember the tool about make it easy. If you want someone to do something, make it easy for them to do something. Build an off-ramp. Build an off-ramp for yourself. [00:00:23.73] And one of my favorites if you're searching for motivation, you really can't get started, is the Just Five More technique, the Just Five More technique. Let's say that you're a salesperson and you need to reach out to many prospects and you're just not in the mood. It's been a bad day. You don't want to send out any more emails. It's been really frustrating. Here's a trick to persuade yourself, just five more. [00:00:49.56] Say I'm just going to do five more emails. And you know what happens? You end up sending 15 more. I use this myself as a writer. I get to the end of my rope, and I'm like, oh my God, I just can't write anything else. And I'll say, okay, you don't need to do much more, just five more sentences. Or I'm reading some really boring study, uh, I just can't do this anymore. All right, Dan, here's what you're going to do, just five more pages. [00:01:19.32] And this technique is important because you're not necessarily trying to change your mind. You're just giving yourself a very simple off-ramp to do a little bit more. But once you get that momentum, you end up doing a lot more. Something else you can do. There's a lot of research on goals. And in some cases we tend to overvalue goals. But there's a kind of goal that we undervalue. And that goal is an interim goal. [00:01:44.73] Sometimes it's extremely daunting to have a huge goal. So for me as a writer, my goal is to finish a book. That takes me a long time. It's hard for me to see that goal all the way. So what you want to do is set an interim goal. And so for me it might be something like I'm going to finish this particular chapter in the next two weeks, an interim goal. That's easier for me to see. It's easier for me to get to. That gives me the motivation to reach that interim goal. Than I set another interim goal. Setting super-duper long-term goals all the time often doesn't motivate you because it's too hard and it's too far away. [00:02:22.83] A third idea, make a public commitment. Let's say that you are a great designer of decorative mugs. And you want to get them into retailers all over your town. And you are going to make sales calls to retailers. And, you know, it's difficult to constantly go knock on doors and constantly be rejected. So on your social media feed, say, you know what guys? This week I am going to visit 30 retailers in my town. Whoa, you've just promised the whole world you're going to do that. It's going to make it more likely that you will actually carry that forth. [00:02:58.86] But there's another secret of self motivation that we often overlook, especially when we're feeling burnou...
About the Instructor
With four NYT bestsellers, Daniel Pink is an influential voice in the evolving landscape of sales and motivation. Now the author of To Sell Is Human teaches you science-backed principles for effective and ethical sales and persuasion. Learn tactics for achieving better outcomes in any interaction—at home or at work—and tools for framing your message, navigating cognitive biases, and pitching ideas, products, or yourself.
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Daniel Pink
NYT-bestselling author Daniel Pink shares a science-based approach to the art of persuading, selling, and motivating yourself and others.
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