Life Learning In Progress: Ikigai

Grab a cozy beverage and get comfortable, because this week we're having a chill, unstructured chat about finding one's ikigai - the Japanese concept of discovering your life's purpose or motivating force.

Shawn covers the basics you need to know about this process and personal insights from practical application. There are some real challenges around self-reflection and this is very much a "work in progress" episode with a little more meandering and frank conversation on life interwoven with personal discovery. 

I'm really curious to hear from listeners who have found their motivating life purpose and what that journey was like. Let's get cozy and have an open discussion about the quest to discover what makes you tick.

Transcript

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[00:00:00] Hello, I'm Shawn Carter, and this is the Grind XP podcast, a casual coffee chat that explores leveling up in life and creatively engaging with others to share in that process. This week, I'm going to be talking about motivation and what helps me get and stay motivated with some advice that I hope might help you as well.

So grab your coffee or tea and let's dive right in.

Now I say coffee or tea, that's just part of my normal intro, but this week we are actually not doing coffee or tea and instead I have some sujeonggwa, which is a Korean persimmon punch. [00:01:00] It doesn't actually have any persimmon in it. This one was mostly just cinnamon. But it is really good and I've had a few bottles stashed away.

I think I'm down to my last bottle now which means I'm just going to need to make some more at some point in time along with another batch of barley tea which I found really does hit the spot sometimes. Sometimes when you wake up early in the morning you just need like a really good hit of hydration.

Barley tea, cold barley tea, iced barley tea is really really good straight out of the refrigerator. So take that for what you will. Last week's podcast was super, super long. Not quite as long as the week before. So we always, I always comment on timing of the podcast at the top of the podcast, a little updates here and there.

But this week we're going to do something a little bit different again, as well. I've decided instead of doing a full [00:02:00] outline, I am just going to talk about. motivation and discipline and how to approach these things productively. Some things that have helped me get to where I am with motivation at the moment.

So I've got like some high, very high level pieces that I want to talk about, but I'm really ditching the super, super detailed

outline that I normally have. I usually go very in depth with the outline. I want to have all of the different points that I want to cover. I really want to give myself some structure and I've liked that, but I've also found that it can really get me hung up on sorting through what I've already done, making sure that I'm not repeating myself and I wind up repeating myself a lot.

So I'm gonna try a different tactic this week and see what happens with that. Be a little bit more casual, take a little slower, be less rigid. and see what [00:03:00] happens. I'm hoping that I can actually focus on speech. I really want to improve how much I say or, if you're following us on Instagram, you'll notice that some of my recent, creative outlet projects have been lettering projects where I was working on taking words that I struggle with or words that I repeat on a regular basis.

And turning those into a focal point for my art as a way of kind of exercising those demons. So I'm spending this week really focusing on not saying not saying, trying to be a little more intentional with what I'm saying without putting in too many crazy pauses. Because I really want to get to a point where I can deliver a good podcast episode, especially when I'm solo casting.

And not have to do a ton of editing to make sure [00:04:00] that I'm cleaning up the parts that are a little bit slower, a little bit more unfocused and making sure that, you know, I have a good, solid, casual conversation kind of just flowing naturally. So that's what we're focusing on for this week. As always, this podcast is very much.

An exercise in learning how to podcast, learning how to speak, learning how to stay on topic, learning how to discuss things that I'm interested in, the things that I'm learning in my life and hopefully doing it in a way that makes people want to listen and want to engage and take part in what I'm trying to share.

So let's go ahead and jump right in. We'll talk about motivation this week. The title of this episode is fuck motivation, cultivate discipline, which is something that I heard a long time ago. So And it really clicked for me because I've struggled. I think everybody struggles with motivation. I don't think this is a new thing for anyone.

And given the [00:05:00] amount of self help books that are out there on motivation, staying motivated, I'm assuming this is a large problem for a lot of people, not just me, but I can only speak from my own experience. So with the discovery of this phrase, I had a shift in my life where I stopped waiting for motivation to happen and started looking at my own routine, looking at some of the momentum that I had in my everyday and started finding times that would really help propel me into the things that I needed to get done that maybe I just wasn't wanting to do.

And if we go from like the, you know, the list of things that you sometimes just don't want to do, or at least sometimes I just don't want to do, they can sometimes be things that I want to do, like originally wanted to do. Let's say it's working on a piece of art that I really am invested in. [00:06:00] I have times where I have no motivation to do that.

There's also times where I have things that I know need to get done. And I'm experiencing some severe executive dysfunction. And waiting until that goes away is really the only way to kind of help myself out of that. But eventually I do need to get back to that thing. And sometimes it can be really hard to get there.

And I found that having My pretty strict routine, the thing that kind of helps me plan out my day and make sure that I know what's happening when and keep that momentum going so I don't get derailed keeps my brain on track. I've noticed that being able to slot things in at different times of the day when I can either create some create a moment for that thing or I can create a ramp up to what might be that moment for me.

Those things have really helped. [00:07:00] And over the years, I've found that a lot of the fun, a lot of advice out there, that has been very, very helpful has kind of all boiled down into a few key points. And I want to kind of run through those and just kind of talk through them because I think everybody needs a little bit of, even if you've heard these things before, everyone needs a little bit of a reminder from time to time.

So it's kind of what I'm hoping you'll get out of this today. is maybe you're going to hear a lot of these points for the, you know, 50th time, but maybe it'll help solidify for you that, Hey, this worked for this person. Maybe it can work for me. Maybe I just need to implement this in my own life. So that's the goal.

So let's dive into the first one. The first one is the five minute rule. Everybody's heard of this one. I think hardest part about a task is just getting it started. This is where a lot of us stop and go, well, I'll wait for motivation to kick in. Motivation is never going to kick in. [00:08:00] This is why you say screw motivation.

Motivation is a fickle mistress, mistress. Discipline is the task master that will get you where you want to be. So starting that task, getting there, that is the hardest part. What has worked for me is setting a timer for five minutes. To work on something that I know that I've put off because we all get to that point where we're like, Oh, I should work on this.

What I've done is make a deal with myself that, Hey, you, you need to get this done and maybe you're not going to do it right now, but let's just try it for five minutes, psychological thing. So I set a timer for five minutes. You work on the, task or the thing that you were supposed to be working on, that you really just don't want to work on, that you're needing that motivation for you work on that for five minutes.

And then after five minutes, you can stop. You make that deal with yourself. You say, Hey, [00:09:00] if I'm still not feeling this after five minutes, I'm just not feeling that motivation. Then I'm just not going to continue. Now, 90 percent of the time, and this is not just me, this is studies that have been done with other people.

90 percent of the time, the momentum of just starting that task is enough to keep most people going. So this is probably the easiest thing. If you incorporate one thing today from this entire podcast, however long it may be, I promise we'll keep it short. This is the one that you should really do incorporate this into your daily life.

If you're struggling with motivation, try the five minute rule. Five minute rule will almost immediately help you improve in the things that you need to get done and finding that motivation. Now let's move on to the next one. Set limits on your learning time. Now we've talked about learning on this podcast before in a few previous episodes.

And you know that I'm a big learn all the [00:10:00] time, learn as much as you can and hack your learning, find ways to always be learning and always, you know, have something new to put into your brain. We even talked about like how that happens for the brain. So learning great, wonderful. The problem with too much learning.

Is that can turn into procrastination learning excessively where all you're doing is just ingesting and learning and learning and learning. And that is, you're essentially, you're kind of hooked on that dopamine rush of, Oh, I'm pulling a new information and you just keep doing it. Eventually that tends to turn into.

Procrastination, or putting things off, or stunting your overall ability to retain the information that you're trying to bring in. You really, your brain can only take in so much in a day. I was really bad about this, or I should say I noticed the impact of this when I was in college. I always wondered why I was so tired and so [00:11:00] worn out at the end of the day.

And I realized it was the amount of learning that I was doing. And I was really bad in my second semester where I packed so much of my classes in two singular days because I wanted to have days that I could just have off. Me being an idiot teenager thinking like, oh, I'm gonna have days off where I'm just gonna do anything.

In reality, I ended up spending those days either working or studying, doing a lot of schoolwork. So, it's college. But, the original issue that I created for myself was that I packed a lot. I think I had like four or five classes in one day on, I think, Wednesdays. And that was rough. It was really rough.

And I think I learned the value of not cramming too much learning into one day. Because what inevitably happens is you spend all of that time learning and trying to pack all of that in there into your brain. [00:12:00] And then you get to the end of your day and you're like, I'm just, yeah, I'm doing nothing with this and I, my, my two Wednesday classes I struggled a lot with.

It didn't help that I had English at the end of the day and oh my God, I did not appreciate English until much later in life. Like now. So yeah, so step or point number two, I would say set limits on your learning time to truly grow as a person. Through learning you need to be able to learn and then apply and then learn and then apply because you're essentially giving yourself breaks In previous episodes, we've talked especially about the one about hacking your brain.

We're not hacking your brain I hate that word sometimes in previous episodes. We talked about the brain and how it works when it comes to learning we talked about having a Well, we talked about the two different modes that you can be in So there's the, focus mode and then there's diffusion mode. And focus mode and diffusion [00:13:00] mode really are what you want to kind of bring in here with the, with this particular points and setting limits on your learning time.

You want to be able to learn and ingest, but then you want to be able to apply or let your, let the information settle a bit, you know, go into that diffusion mode. Yeah, or diffusion mode in your brain and let that information kind of sink in, do some things that will help either cement that or maybe distract you enough that your brain can process it and then go back.

I'm really bad about this right now with language learning. I have days where I want to spend the entire day. doing nothing but language learning. And those are weirdly some of my least productive days. Where I am the most productive is when I do a little bit every day at a time. That can be like 20 minutes to 45 minutes to an hour where I just focus on language and then I drop it for the day.

And a lot of times I don't even go the full 45 minutes. Sometimes I will just do 15 to 20 minutes and that's enough. I am better at at [00:14:00] retaining that information and actually putting it into everyday practice when I keep those things short and spend the other or the rest of my day focusing on applying that where I can.

So take it for the, take that and do with it as you will. I will say it helps to figure out what your own rhythm is. Some people are really, really good at doing a lot of learning. The one key rule of thumb here that I would say is make sure that your learning period and your application periods are equal.

So if you're going to learn and apply and learn and apply, make sure that those are equal and you're not overdoing it on the learn. More so than the apply.

All right, let's go ahead and move on to the third one. Action. leads to motivation. A lot of people think it's the opposite. We talked about this a little bit before about, you know, sitting there waiting just to start the task and wanting that task to, to just start on its own or waiting for that mysterious [00:15:00] motivation to show up out of nowhere and get things rolling.

Turns out action is actually the thing that gets it going, which is why that five minute rule is such an important tool for keeping yourself motivated. It's kind of like, it's about building up momentum, really. The key thing here is, small actions will get you rolling and get the wheel kind of rolling down the hill and then motivation comes in, kicks in there.

It's like that momentum that keeps things going. And then more actions will follow from that. The wheel is the wheel going downhill is literally the best analogy that I have for this. It's how I picture it in my head. It's that little nudge at the beginning just to say, Hey, let's start rolling in that direction.

It's downhill. So like the momentum will help us eventually, but we need to do a couple of things to get going. So start with something simple. It can be, the two minute rule. I like to use this one as well. So you have the five minute rule and the two minute rule. [00:16:00] The two minute rule is if something takes less than two minutes, just do it.

And I like to sometimes break up the things that I need to do in order to get motivated to do a bigger task. I have to break that down into smaller things. So. When it comes to your actions, take those actions, break them up, get a few small actions going and let those actions turn into larger actions and momentum in the form of motivation.

And it will, it'll help get you there. And then the two minute rule, like I said, if something takes less than two minutes, do it now. I do this all the time with the trash Replacing the trash can liner is one of those things that I just cannot seem to do Like I have let trash sit in one spot Neatly, neatly, you know, like tidied on my counter just sitting there all in little boxes or you know, little bags, whatever Nothing gross, but I have just had the biggest block Put, you know, putting a [00:17:00] trash can liner back into my trash can after having taken the trash out.

And when I started using the two minute rule, I do that a lot less now because I can look at it and go, this will take two minutes and I do it. It turns out there are a lot of things that will only take you two minutes, especially when you start breaking up larger tasks into smaller tasks. So if you can just do it, you can get those things done and out of the way.

And the minute you get those done and out of the way, other things start to kick in. And you know, become a lot easier to do. Another area that I use this a lot is in cleaning the house. When I'm going through a really rough period of depression, it can be very tricky to clean my own house. And I am typically a very meticulous, clean individual, but when my brain is just not braining and I can't get up the oomph.

to really do what I need to do, like keeping my apartment clean. [00:18:00] Sometimes that, that can turn into a much bigger problem, a much bigger issue. And what really helps me is taking that and going, okay, I know that I'm tackling this depression thing. I know that I'm getting myself back to where I need to.

The biggest thing that I need to tackle right now is getting those dishes done, cleaning the kitchen up, wiping down those counters.

So what I'll do is I will find a way to break those up and into small two minute tasks that might be as simple as I need to move all of the dry dishes off of my little drying rack into the cupboard. That'll take me two minutes. I'll do that. And then I'll do something else. You know, if I'm not feeling like doing anything else, I'll move on to do something else that I want to do, like sit on the couch and scroll.

Tick tock something that I feel is going to help me feel better in the moment. And I'll get the dishes put away and the little drying rack is all cleared off and I'll go, okay, cool. [00:19:00] Now I can wipe down that counter. I, that's a two minute task and wipe down the counter and get that all ready to go. Maybe lay out a towel so that I'm ready to take, you know, wash some of these big pots, let's say.

So I do that. Takes two minutes. And most of the time that, those small actions give me enough momentum to where I'm like, well, you know, I could just keep going. And weirdly enough, most of the time that momentum will keep me going through a big cleanup, specifically with dishes, until I get to a point where the drying rack is full.

So I use my dishwasher as a drying rack sometimes. So my dishwasher is full cause there's a big bunch of dishes and my counter drying rack is full. It can, I can derail that is one area that I derail consistently every single time. And I don't have a great way to handle that yet. What I've done in the past is say, I'm going to take a break.

I'm clearly like I've hit a point where I [00:20:00] need to let some things do their thing. I need to let things dry. But I'm going to take a break. So I take a break and sometimes I come back from that break. A lot of times I don't. What will sometimes get me back into it is if I've left, let's say some wooden spoons for last, and I need to wash this up.

I can't let those sit in water because that'll deteriorate the spoons. I don't want to have to buy all new spoons because they're sitting in water. So I will sometimes motivate myself with that. A lot of my stuff is not super destructible when it comes to water, so it doesn't work for everything. So only if I have wooden spoons, but I do little things like that.

I'm the same way with like laundry, like laundry, you can't leave it for too long in the washer. Otherwise it'll mildew. And that's a whole extra effort to clean it up. So little things like that. And I'm putting some consequences on to delaying starting the next half of whatever the task is that I'm [00:21:00] doing that sometimes works for me.

But generally the two minute rule is the thing that will get me going. And it's one of those things that I can subconsciously subconsciously, I'll be like, you know, you should be doing this, you know, you should be getting this done. But my my brain, , the part of me that's concerned with what's happening right now is like, I just don't want to, I really don't want to, I, this is the last thing that I want to do right now.

So I'm conscious that I can be like, well, it's okay, just do that two minute, do the two minute rule, see what happens. It's like a conversation between two different people in my head. But it works. So, the next one is eat the frog. And I don't know who, who termed this, but I've seen this labeled as eat the frog for Years now, I think it's been probably the last 10 years.

I've seen this labeled this way and it makes sense. And it's a great way to remember this. You will not forget eat the frog. We all love some frog's eggs. It [00:22:00] tastes like chicken. But eating the whole frog, it's a little difficult, a little difficult. I don't particularly love the idea of eating a whole frog.

And what this translates to is do the hardest task first. So if you're looking at your day and you're saying, here are the things that I need to get done today, the first thing on your list realistically should be the trickiest one. And I do this all the time at work. If I have a big thing, if I typically look at my day and I have meetings, I have everything that I need to get done kind of scheduled.

It's all in my calendar for the most part. And I use time blocking to knock out specific things that are not dependent on other people or things that are. my work. I need to sit down and need to get this done. I know that from two o'clock until five or six, I am not going to get anything done. It is a rare day and they do happen, but it is a rare day when I hit the afternoon slump and I want to get anything done.[00:23:00] 

Typically my afternoons are for meetings or for tasks that don't take a lot of brainpower, things that I can just kind of grind through without really thinking about it. The things that I need to be creative that I need to use a lot of brainpower on. Those are the things that need to happen in the first part of the day.

So before lunch, and I found that if I take the biggest, most difficult thing, or the thing that I'm really looking forward to doing the least. If I take that and make that the first thing of my day, there is a kind of thrill of like, oh my gosh, I'm going to get this done now. And then I don't have to worry about it for the rest of the day.

And my whole day suddenly just gets a little bit better. That may change. There may be other things that land on my plate. The day, the day is, is looking good at the start, but doesn't, you know, it's, it's all about getting that big thing out of the way. So eat the frog. Get that heavy weight off your brain at the beginning of the day.

The rest of your [00:24:00] day will feel so much easier in comparison. The last one, well, I shouldn't say the last one. The last one's kind of two things. So, the last, the last two are really about clutter. So, The first thing to do is remove any digital clutter. So digital clutter, I mean like distractions. Again, we've mentioned TikTok before.

TikTok can be part of that digital clutter. If your TikTok is too accessible, sometimes that can be too much clutter at your fingertips to allow you to really like do the thing that you need to do. So when you need to Get moated and get working on something. Let's say you've sat down at your desk and you know that you need to either work or let's say you have a project, a creative project, work project.

Maybe it's just something that you don't want to do for like yourself. Let's say a taxes and this is tax season. All of these things can be, you know, [00:25:00] things that you need to do that you may not want to do. Put your phone in airplane mode. I actually have an iPhone. And one of the things that Apple has in the iOS operating system, is the ability to set different focuses.

And I have a work focus that clicks on every day at 8am and shuts off at 5. There are certain apps that I have easily available on my phone home screen when I open it up. There are notifications that I do not get during work mode. I also have a podcasting mode, something that helps keep me one distraction free during a podcast.

But also helps to eliminate any noises or any disruptions that would kind of throw things off or create additional work for me later. All of these things, I mean, there's always the classic do not disturb, but all of these things give you the ability to kind of create an environment that is going to help you focus on what you need to get done.

You can also turn on [00:26:00] things like web lockers. Or limit yourself with software that puts restrictions either on your phone or on your desk desktop on the site type type of sites you can go to. So let's say there are social media sites. You wish you want to turn those off so you don't get distracted.

Those things help. I don't personally use those all that much. I will limit how available Tik TOK is on my phone during periods where I need to get things done. So it can I do utilize it in that sense. But I don't do things like put on web blockers or limit the sites that I can go to. Essentially put a parent filter onto, my browsing experience.

I'm generally fairly good with that. But some people may need that. Give that a shot. And then the last one that I actually do on a very regular basis that I recommend to everybody is keep all your tabs relevant. Bye. Bye. Bye. to what you're working on. So I actually have, [00:27:00] depending on what I'm working on.

So whether it's like my personal side projects, my side hustles, so like the podcast the guy or the, grand XP project, if it's that project, I have a separate profile with its own bookmarks, its own tabs, everything's set up in Chrome for my personal stuff. I have everything in safari. So if I'm Out of focus mode for whatever I need to be doing, I am on safari.

If I'm at work, I have a specific Chrome profile set up for work. I actually have an entire entirely separate computer user on all of my devices for work versus personal. That way I have everything focused on what I need to do for work in that one environment. So create the environment digitally for you.

That makes the most sense. Now let's move on to the physical clutter side of things because this for me is a big one.

[00:28:00] I,

I mentioned before that I like to have a fairly clean, tidied up, organized home. It drives me nuts when something is not the way, not where it's supposed to be, not the way that it's supposed to be, is not as clean as it should be. I'm not someone who's going to go nuts over some dust. Unless someone's coming over and then I will dust everything.

I want my place to look really welcoming. I don't want people to walk in and feel like they have to go. Is it clean? I get this from my mother. But when it comes to physical clutter, and I know for a lot of people, especially like in the arena that we're talking about where motivation is maybe a little bit limited.

A lot of that for me happens when I am not mentally in the right headspace. So I might be depressed. I might be just having an off day. I might be having an off month and off year, and I'm just struggling to get to where I need to, removing physical [00:29:00] clutter really does help. I think that is, is tied to some reading that I've done.

I think this is tied to a little bit of psychology around your home and the more. Messy your home is, or I shouldn't even say messy because some people actually work better in a mess. The more opposite your home is to the way that you know that you work best or you function best, the more of a problem it becomes.

And the more of us a physical sapping it becomes to your ability to get motivated or stay motivated. I've noticed this myself, where if my house is just looking like depression central. And I did a couple of little things to get myself motivated to work on something that I needed to work on whether that was work or creative project.

I got myself going for those things, got that momentum going. The minute that I get up and I lose a little bit of focus and I suddenly see all of the [00:30:00] mess around me, that can completely kill my motivation. So focus on physical clutter, like make sure that before you sit down to work in any capacity, whether that's your job or whether that's a creative You know, personal project, make sure that you clean everything up around you.

And for some people, this might be as simple as just make sure that your work area is clean. You can tackle the rest of your apartment later. For me personally, I like to keep my desk organized, ready to go. And I'd always know when I'm feeling a little bit down or like I'm not quite on my game when my office desk starts to get a little bit messy.

So. Make it a habit, have a block on your calendar, where before you go into work, before you start working on whatever you need to, you take a look at your desk and look at anything that's out of place, fix everything up, and make sure that when you sit down to do whatever it is you need to do, You are sitting down to that perfect [00:31:00] environment physically that you need to work in giving yourself a stable consistent physical environment to work out of really does help keep a lot of the distractions or Derailings that your brain can do When there's something happening, you know, when there's something's off in your physical environment, it can really help bring all of this into kind of like laser focus.

Like you suddenly will find it much easier to focus on what you need to focus on. And that's it. That's pretty much, that's pretty much everything. These, these tips have been things that I've applied at various times in my, or I should say the things that I've learned at various times in my life. and things that I've applied a lot more consistently in recent years.

And I honestly credit these regular practices or regular tricks, with [00:32:00] getting some bigger things done in my life, you know, knocking out some more aggressive career goals or finally tackling some of the, the bigger home improvement projects that I wanted to do or tackling some of those creative endeavors like starting a podcast or putting a website together.

I'm in the process right now of learning how to do Figma and while yes, I enjoy learning, I've spent a good chunk of my life just kind of ignoring some of the more technical web development pieces because it was just too much to get into and I wasn't motivated to do it. And now I know how to hack that motivation and I want to dive into it and I know that I need to dive into it.

I know that everything, you know, the, the availability of the channels that I am working on, the work that I am doing, all of that is made much easier with a solid website that I know I put [00:33:00] together and that I can feel a sense of pride and accomplishment at having put together. All of that now is a little bit more doable Having put some of these motivational things into play I do think that having these things readily available. And again, like I said, I'm sure a lot of people, maybe everyone who's listening to this has heard all of this before. My hope is that this reminds you that these tools are out there and they worked for me and that they might work for you.

The more you can test these out for yourself and find what works for you, the easier I think it gets to do the things that you want to do in your life. One of my affirmations recently has been, this idea that good things come to me. Time moves through me. I stand still in one spot and enjoy the present.

And let the good things come to me as time [00:34:00] moves them along its wheel. And they roll into me in, you know, when they need to. And making sure to pave the way for those things. Making sure to grease that wheel. and make those things come either in the time that they need to or sooner than I maybe would have expected or than they would have if I just hadn't put any effort into it.

Being able to take some of these things that I've learned to help keep me, keep me motivated through the rough times when you just don't feel like doing it. Being able to utilize these really does help with getting yourself over those humps, getting yourself out of that depression valley. So, I hope all of this helps.

This was a much shorter episode today, but I wanted to kind of go over these things. They're, it's, there's not, they're not super complicated. They've helped me a lot. And I [00:35:00] wanted to make sure that we at least had those out there. And yeah. Thank you for taking time out of your week to listen to this.

Hopefully you're all very happy that this has been a very short episode. I don't know. As I always say, time is our most precious commodity and it means a lot that you spent some of that time with me. Hopefully you enjoyed this enough to spend more time with me in the future. And if you like what you heard and want to see where this goes, please make sure you subscribe on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast fix.

Please feel free to share with a friend. You can also follow the project on Instagram at grind. exp. And most of my updates will happen easiest there, or you can visit the website, which is currently under construction at www. grindxp. art. And you can find all of our previous episodes there with an article version [00:36:00] of the episode for people who like that format more, 

and that is all for this week, gang. Get out there and grind one experience point at a time, and I'll see you all next time.