Over the past 11 years, I have been working 60 to 100 hours a week, studying full-time, graduating medicine, starting my own business, working as a learning coach while working as a doctor.

And most people think I am highly motivated, but honestly, I think I'm a pretty lazy person and I've been demotivated and burnt out more times than I can count.

But by using this four-step method, I've been able to stay productive and work towards my goal in a way that is actually sustainable and mentally healthy.

I call this four-step method DEFUSE because by following each of these four steps, you're able to activate something called Thought-Action-Defusion, which is a cognitive technique commonly used in clinical psychology.

Being able to activate Thought-Action-Defusion is almost like a superpower and virtually anyone can learn to do it.

I'll go over each of the four steps of DEFUSE in more detail, but before that, we need to understand that there are actually two different ways that we can use motivation.

One of them is healthy and productive, but the other, much more common way, can actually ruin our productivity and lead to burnout.

And once we understand the right versus wrong way of using motivation, you'll see why the DEFUSE method works so well.

So let's say that we have a goal for the day and that goal might be to go for a run, it might be to do some study or whatever other tasks that you have on your mind.

Naturally, in order for us to accomplish this goal, we first need to want to accomplish it and that's where we have intention.

And after that, we take a series of actions to help us reach that goal.

Now, if our goal was to go for a run, it might be putting on our shoes.

If it was to study, it might be going to our desk, opening up our laptop, getting our textbook out, starting to read and write some notes.

These are the actions that help us achieve the goal.

But in reality, what actually happens when we try to reach the goal?

What happens is that we get distracted.

We procrastinate or maybe we start feeling lazy or tired.

So between the intention and our first few actions, all of these barriers start forming that stop us from achieving our goal, which means no running, no studying, task incomplete.

That is where motivation comes in.

Motivation gives us that extra energy, the extra incentive to overcome these barriers, to peel our eyes away from those distractions, to persevere and push through even though we feel lazy or that we feel tired.

At the end of the day, motivation is this feeling that allows us to push through and overcome these barriers.

This is the first and most common way that people use motivation.

And that is a major problem because this way of using motivation is something that I call motivation dependent.

And before I go through the defuse method, you have to understand why this is such a problem because I genuinely believe that if you are motivation dependent, you will struggle to get stuff done for most of your life.

Because here's the fundamental flaw with motivation that you need to know.

There's a lot of research around motivation, what it is, where it comes from, what influences it.

If you want me to go deeper in this, let me know in the comments.

But what we know is that motivation originates from many different sources.

We can be extrinsically motivated by things like money, a reward, social status, or even fear of punishment.

But we can also be intrinsically motivated, which is where the motivation comes from within our own mind.

This includes things like a sense of satisfaction from fulfilling something or a sense of purpose and fulfillment from doing something that feels aligned to your values and sense of identity.

And it includes also just simply enjoying the task itself.

And here is where being motivation dependent becomes problematic and therefore why the defuse method is so much better.

See, extrinsic motivators tend to be out of our control and they go up and down.

For example, what happens if we get paid less or more or we're around different people to compare ourselves to or we're around different people who value different things and so they judge you differently.

When we are motivated by those extrinsic things, then our motivation fluctuates wildly.

It feels unstable and insecure because they depend on things that we can't control.

On the other hand, intrinsic motivators tend to be more stable.

For example, our values or the things that we enjoy don't tend to fluctuate so rapidly.

But even intrinsic motivators can fluctuate.

For example, how much sleep we get and how energized we feel, our mood on that day or our physical health.

All of these things affect our level of motivation on any given day.

So why is that actually a problem?

Well, what all of that means is that our motivation is always going to go up and down.

It's always going to fluctuate.

And if your ability to get stuff done depends on your motivation, then your ability to be productive is also going to fluctuate.

And if what you do depends on how you feel, then the only way to be consistent is to feel consistently great.

That is not a realistic or a reliable way to reach our goals.

In fact, there's even some research around something called willpower depletion, which says that if we consistently rely on our motivation and willpower to get stuff done and resist temptations, then eventually we'll sort of run out of willpower.

And some researchers think that this is actually what burnout is.

They call it the burnout cycle where you constantly try to do something and then you have to have more and more effort and willpower to get it done.

And then you're constantly overcoming barriers until there's no more motivation or energy left to give.

So what is the alternative way of using motivation?

The alternative, much healthier and more consistent way of using motivation is something that I call motivation enhanced.

And becoming motivation enhanced rather than motivation dependent is what the entire defuse method is based on.

Being motivation enhanced means that you can be motivated, but you don't need to be.

Personally, I don't feel motivated most days.

I don't feel demotivated, but I just don't live every day like full of hype.

I keep that motivation in reserve on the days that I really need to use it.

Instead of just using it to get through my daily tasks.

Then how am I overcoming those barriers of laziness or being distracted or feeling tired on a daily basis?

We do it by following the four steps of the defuse method.

The first step of defuse, the D, is for distinguish.

Distinguish means to recognize the difference between feelings, thoughts, and actions.

For example, think about when you feel hungry.

Hunger is a physical sensation.

It's a feeling.

And when we feel hunger, we have the thought, I must eat.

And then we perform the action of eating.

And normally, all three of these are actually fused together, but they don't have to be.

We could feel hunger as, okay, I just feel this sensation in my stomach that tells me that I am hungry.

We just notice it.

We don't have to act on it.

We just notice it, just like how we might notice that there's a breeze touching our arm.

And by doing that, we can see hunger as a physical sensation that isn't always connected to the thought, I must eat.

And that actually makes the feeling of hunger not bother us as much because we no longer have to do something about it.

This is actually a strategy I used to use all the time as a doctor where I'd often not have enough time to have lunch or dinner, but I still needed to work effectively.

Now, of course, this is temporary.

You will eventually have to eat.

You can't just thought-action defuse your way to immortality.

Now, in clinical psychology, when what we do, our actions are directly tied to our feelings and our thoughts, that's called thought-action fusion.

And so being able to separate that is thought-action defusion.

This actually comes up a lot in anxiety therapy.

The feelings of anxiety are a physical sensation.

Our hands are getting clammy.

They're shaking a bit.

We feel that our heart racing.

We're actually feeling these physical symptoms of an adrenaline response, our body entering the fight-or-flight mode.

And it's actually the exact same response as if you were really excited about something.

The physical sensations aren't inherently negative, but if you have anxiety, you notice these symptoms and then you tell yourself, I am anxious.

And we enter an anxious spiral where realizing that we are feeling these things and therefore we're anxious makes us feel even more anxious.

So step one of defuse is to distinguish between a feeling and a thought, to recognize that we can feel something, but we can control the way we respond and react to that feeling.

And I actually used this method before my TEDx talk a couple of years ago where I was feeling really nervous beforehand.

I felt those physical sensations.

And instead of letting myself think, I feel this and therefore I'm anxious, I reframed it to be, hey, I'm getting this adrenaline response.

I'm excited.

I'm about to crush this thing.

And by reframing that physical feeling and changing the thought I had from it, it actually helped me to be a lot more confident.

And that TEDx talk ended up becoming one of the top 1% most viewed TEDx talks of 2022.

By the way, I've summarized the main points from that TEDx talk into my free weekly newsletter as well, where I try to impart the advice that will improve your learning efficiency every week through your inbox.

It's completely free.

And if you're interested in joining, I'll leave a link in the description for you.

So next time you feel tired or lazy, recognize that it's just a feeling.

You feel tired?

Cool.

Feeling lazy?

That's fine.

But we distinguish between that feeling and then what comes after that, which is the thought which we can control.

And controlling those thoughts is step two of defuse, the F which stands for fake.

You've heard of fake it till you make it.

Well, it's kind of the same for this as well.

Think about this.

When you watch a movie and you see an actor or an actress, you know that they're not actually that character.

You know that they are acting.

And if an actor arrives on set feeling tired or lazy, guess what?

They can still act like their character who is not tired or lazy.

So instead of I feel lazy and tired, therefore I must rest and then not do anything.

We can use fake to say I feel lazy and tired.

That's fine.

I'm just going to pretend like someone who's not lazy and tired, which means this feeling doesn't lead to the thought of I must rest.

We don't have to change how we feel.

We can keep feeling lazy or tired.

But by pretending and faking it, pretending and doing the actions of someone who doesn't feel that way, we are able to keep doing the actions that we need to do.

My old powerlifting coach put it the best when one day I asked him, hey, I'm feeling really tired today.

I don't think I'll be able to train very well.

How do you stop feeling tired?

And he replied back, just train tired.

What a man.

And the ridiculously powerful part of this relationship between feelings and thoughts and actions is that it goes both ways.

When we do the actions of someone who isn't lazy or tired, even if it's just pretending and faking it, then our mind observes the fact that we're taking these actions and starts thinking, hey, maybe I'm not so lazy.

Maybe I'm kind of productive.

And that actually makes us feel less lazy and tired in the first place.

And in doing that, we have actually made ourselves more motivated.

So feelings and thoughts don't just lead to actions.

Actions can also trigger us to have certain thoughts which change the way that we feel.

So by doing step one and step two of defuse and unlocking thought action defusion, we're able to act without feeling the need to act.

We're no longer a slave to motivation and that is a huge win.

But once we get to this point, we'll realize that we can only maintain this defused state for a short period of time.

And so now we want to maintain this defusion for a longer time period.

If we don't maintain it, we just end up being dependent on our feelings again, which brings us all the way back to motivation dependent.

And that's why we have step three of defuse, the U, which stands for uptime.

We want to gradually increase the amount of time we're able to activate that thought action defusion state and do those actions even if we don't feel like it.

At first, we might only be able to get through 10 minutes of studying.

Great.

That's fine.

Tomorrow, we try 12 minutes and then 14 and then 20 and then 30.

Gradually increase the uptime that we can maintain thought action defusion for.

And as we continue to expose our brain to this pattern of thinking and acting, thanks to this cognitive phenomenon called neuroplasticity, our brain will mold and adapt and eventually just get better and better at activating thought action defusion.

Now, some people, when I teach this to them, they say that it seems like we're kind of training ourselves to become mindless robots.

It doesn't really feel natural or right.

But it's important to remember that a lot of our modern day challenges and goals and pressures are not natural to begin with.

Back when we were living in caves and foraging for food, we didn't come back to our campfire every night to sit an exam on the herbs that we forage.

And cave person society probably didn't care which cave university you went to.

Most of our modern day goals and pressures are modern day creations.

And to meet these artificial demands while staying healthy, we need to use these deliberate frameworks and techniques to help overcome them.

Using strategies like defuse is what gives us the freedom to live our lives in alignment to how we want to live and spend our time.

Having said that, just because we are constantly exposed to and surrounded by these artificial distractions doesn't mean we just have to sit there and struggle through them.

After all, if there were just literally fewer barriers in place, then it will be easier to achieve our goal, which is why step four, the Z in defuse is so important, which stands for zone.

To maintain consistency and reduce our need for motivation, we have to create a zone of focus free from distraction and procrastination triggers.