If you struggle to stay motivated, read this
Notes on gigants - Number 58
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The following letter is part of our “Notes on Giants” collection, in which we explore the thoughts and lives of humanity’s greatest minds.
🏷️ Categories: Motivation, Continuous improvement.
In the early 1970s, a young aspiring comedian began performing on small stages in New York to find out whether he could actually make people laugh.
In 1975, he tried his luck at an audition at the Golden Lion Pub. He had a joke about being left-handed. The audience burst into laughter, and something inside him changed forever: he felt that this was what he wanted to do for the rest of his life (Remnick, 2024).
But realizing your calling is not the same as mastering it. Work is still needed.
A year later, he tried to make his debut at a famous comedy club in Manhattan. The experience was disastrous: he completely froze (Britannica, n.d.). He barely managed to mumble a few words before stepping off the stage, discouraged and embarrassed.
He knew he could do it—he had already proven it before—but he still needed a lot of practice.
So he went back to work. Night after night, he refined his jokes in New York clubs. Over time, he saw the key: comedy is not about being funny in the moment; it’s about having written better jokes the night before. Try, erase, adjust, repeat. A great comedian is, above all, a great writer (Ferriss, 2020).
That slow process of trial and error gradually shaped him.
After years of effort, in 1981 he made his first major appearance on The Tonight Show. That was the breakthrough that launched his career nationwide. Later came his own TV series, and he became one of the most recognizable faces in American comedy.
And it all started with a few jokes in a small New York club.
His name is Jerry Seinfeld.
Seinfeld’s story invites us to reflect on the power of consistency.
Think about comedy. It is not a field for the timid. Is there anything more terrifying than standing alone under the lights, microphone in hand, and getting no laughs at all? Yet Seinfeld faced that fear night after night for years.
This leads me to a question that perhaps all of us have asked ourselves at some point.
Why are there people like Seinfeld who manage to develop that discipline and achieve extraordinary results, while most of us struggle so much to stay motivated?
The answer is more interesting than it seems. Here it is...
The “edge-of-challenge” rule
The human brain loves challenges.
But there is a catch: only when they are in the right zone of difficulty.
Imagine you are a football fan. If you play a serious match against a small child, you’ll get bored in minutes. Too easy. You win every point effortlessly. Now imagine the opposite: facing Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi. In seconds, motivation disappears. It’s too hard.
What if you play against someone at your own level?
The match goes on. You win some points, you lose others. You have a chance of winning, but only if you truly commit. Your attention sharpens, and you enter a state of flow (that moment when time disappears and only the game exists). This happens when the challenge is perfectly calibrated to your level (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Fong et al., 2015).
Jerry Seinfeld’s career is a perfect example of this.
He didn’t build his success with a single performance. He did it with thousands of shows, each one adjusting the level. He tested new material, read the audience’s reaction, kept what worked, and threw away what didn’t. There were enough wins to keep motivation alive, and enough failures to force him to keep improving.
That is exactly the edge-of-challenge rule.
Goal-setting psychology confirms it: when we work with demanding but achievable goals, we exert more effort, persist longer, and adjust our behavior to grow (Locke & Latham, 2002).
Measure your progress
If you want to learn how to stay motivated to achieve your goals, there is a second element you cannot ignore: measuring your progress.
It all comes down to finding the balance between effort and satisfaction.
Seeing that you are improving is what drives us most. Jerry Seinfeld saw it: he told a joke and immediately knew whether it worked. The audience’s laughter was his signal. That immediate feedback allowed him to adjust, keep the good material, or discard the bad instantly.
But in other areas, measurement takes different forms. The function is the same.
In dieting, when you finish a week and check your weight.
In writing, when you publish your article and see readers’ reactions.
In the gym, when you lift more weight than the week before.
You need to see your progress because you can only improve what is measured.
In addition, psychology has shown that when we are close to achieving a goal, our interest in it increases and we commit more intensely (Bandura & Schunk, 1981). Seeing a small win makes it much easier to keep going.
That is why measurement is so powerful.
The 2 keys to daily motivation
If we had to distill everything needed to maintain motivation, it would be this.
Seek the edge-of-challenge: Work on tasks that are manageable but difficult—right at the edge where effort feels necessary but not exhausting. That is the point where you can improve the most with each day of practice.
Make your progress visible: Measure what you do and seek immediate feedback from the data. To do this, use the goal-gradient technique; you will see yourself advancing, feel more motivated, and have data to improve precisely.
Everyone has goals. The hard part is continuing day after day when the initial excitement fades. If you want your motivation to be solid and lasting, start with a challenge you can master, measure every small step, and repeat the cycle.
Consistency is just knowing how to play the game.
Want to know more? Here are 3 related ideas to explore:
✍️ Your turn: What could you adjust today to move into that point where the required effort is optimal? For me, it was writing one article per month, then every two weeks, then every week, and now three per week. Think about your own case.
💭 Quote of the day: “Practice is not what you do when you’re good. It is what makes you good.” — Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers
See you next time! 👋
References 📚
Remnick, D. (2024). The scholar of comedy. The New Yorker.
Britannica. (s. f.). Jerry Seinfeld. En Britannica Kids. URL
Ferriss, T. (2020). Jerry Seinfeld—A comedy legend’s systems, routines, and methods for success (#485). The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience.
Fong, C. J., Zaleski, D. J., & Leach, J. K. (2014). The challenge–skill balance and antecedents of flow: A meta-analytic investigation. The Journal Of Positive Psychology, 10(5), 425-446. URL
Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: A 35-year odyssey. American Psychologist, 57(9), 705-717. URL