How to Motivate Yourself in 2026 (PART 5)

Want support putting this into practice? Get personal help from Dr. Finn inside Six Habits Live 👉 here

In this episode, Dr. Jon Finn continues the How to Motivate Yourself in 2026 series by focusing on a critical but often overlooked step: measuring and strengthening your foundation.

As AI rapidly displaces procedural, medium-charge work, humans will increasingly be valued for high-impact, high-charge thinking. But that kind of performance isn’t possible without strong daily foundations. This episode zooms in on the bottom of the iceberg — the habits that quietly determine your energy, focus, confidence, and consistency.

Guided by Chapter 18 of Train Your Brain for the AI Revolution, Dr. Finn walks you through how to assess your current patterns using a practical Brain State self-assessment. Rather than trying to fix everything at once, you’ll learn how to identify the areas that need the most attention and why starting with super habits (like the 3-to-1 reflection) creates positive change across multiple foundations at the same time.

This episode is designed to help you move from insight to action — showing you how to measure what matters, simplify your focus, and build a foundation that supports motivation, clarity, and performance in the AI era.

If you haven’t listened to Parts 1–4 yet, Dr. Finn recommends starting there before diving into this episode.

Transcript

Series Context And Step Two

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Hello, habit mechanics, Dr. John Finn here. I hope everyone a great week so far. So we're back with part five of how to motivate yourself in 2026 uh series. And we're we're being guided by training your brain for the AI revolution, and we're diving into step two of the success cycle. So far, we covered creating your future vision, creating your fam story with the task director, breaking down your fam journey, the step-by-step action plan, building your foundation for success. Today we're moving on to part five, which is um measuring and strengthening your foundation. So this is about the bottom of the of the iceberg. So if you haven't listened to the previous four episodes of this series, I'd encourage you to go back, and this will get you then this episode will get you to focus on the bottom of the of the iceberg. Just a couple of things that I've been seeing just in the last few days is that again, you know, we've we've heard many um stories that AI is a myth and it's kind of a it's not real. Well, the data's very clear is that it's displacing jobs faster than anyone predicted. And if you look at what came out of Devos last week and we did a podcast about this, uh, which is the next one down in the feed, um the predictions are very aggressive in terms of how AI is essentially changing what human beings get paid to do. So humans are not going to get paid much longer to do busy work, as we call it, the kind of work where you don't really have to think where it's procedural, where um it's medium charge work because it's something you've learned how to do, you've learned the process, and you repeat the process on a daily basis. This is what agents can do super quickly, and interestingly, today what I see um is a report I think from um one of one of the big four, which is or maybe one of the big banks, which is showing that the UK is being disproportionately impacted by um AI right now in terms of job displacement. Um so it's absolutely real, but it's and it's an opportunity. We can use AI and the AI era as an opportunity to improve our health, our happiness, and our performance if we understand brain states and if we get brain state intelligent, and that's what this is all about, and that's the mission that we're on. We want to help people to become more brain state intelligent so they can thrive in the AI era. So, what's coming up is uh chapter 18 of Train Your Brain for the AI Revolution, and I'm gonna talk you step by step through how to how to really think about your the your super habits or what you might want to become your super habits. And if you're thinking this is good, it's making sense, I understand it, but I need some help putting this into practice. This is why we've created Six Habits Live, which is our new um program where every week we're running live sessions to actually help you to put this into practice so you don't just know it, you actually do it. Um, and there's lots of other components to Six Habits Live, you got access to all of our content, you got access to a private community, you can get your AI proof professional um certification as part of the programme, and your brain statelligen practitioner and your uh foundation uh human eye performance psychology certificate all through all through the programme. So if you're on our mailing list, you'll be seeing some messages about that. But I'll also put the the link to Six Habits Live below the video as well, so you can learn more about it. So let's get into it then. Let's get into chapter 18 of Train Your Brain for the Air Evolution, which is measuring and strengthening measuring and strengthening your foundation. Remember, if you haven't listened to the previous four episodes in this series, go back and listen to them. Um then this will all make much more sense. Enjoy.

The Foundation Assessment Walkthrough

Understanding Scores And Sarah’s Story

Selecting One Or Two Superhabits

SPEAKER_00 5:27

Chapter 18, measuring and strengthening your foundation. Success cycle location step two progress sixty percent complete. Now that you understand how superhabits like the three to one reflection can enhance your foundational areas, let's measure your current patterns. To identify which areas need your attention, take the human AI readiness brain state assessment again. This time, rather than focusing on your overall score, pay attention to the areas where you score highest. These indicate which habits need the most work. Think of this assessment like running a diagnostic check on your foundational habits. Each statement reveals something important about how your brain is functioning across the foundational areas we discussed. Take a moment to rate yourself honestly on each statement below. You'll score yourself from one to ten, where one means never and ten means always. Write down your score for each statement. Here are the statements. Statement one. I find myself responding to urgent issues instead of having a plan or sticking to my plan. Remember, one means never and ten means always. You're probably somewhere in between. Write down your score. Statement two. I get interrupted by others, emails, phone, and my own self-doubt or negative self-talk, and it takes me longer to complete my work. Again, remember, one means never, and ten means always. You're probably somewhere in between. Write down your score. Statement three. I sleep poorly and it takes longer to complete my work to a high standard. Statement four. I waste time doubting my decisions, second guessing myself, and beating myself up. Statement five. My mind feels foggy and it slows down my work. Statement six. I put off important tasks even though I know they need doing. Statement seven. I feel overwhelmed and I make mistakes that take time to fix. Meaning it takes longer to complete my work to a high standard. Statement eight. I find myself scrolling social media when I know it is not a good use of my time or helpful for me being at my best. Statement nine. I sleep poorly and it makes it harder to spot and prevent mistakes in my work. Statement ten. My mind jumps between tasks instead of focusing on one thing. Meaning it takes me longer to complete my work. Statement eleven. I get distracted, including by my own self doubt and negative self talk. Meaning it takes longer to complete my work to a high standard. Statement twelve. I feel like I could achieve more if I felt more confident and focused. Statement thirteen. I waste time because I'm not thinking clearly. Statement fourteen. My diet choices leave me feeling sluggish and it takes me longer to complete my work to a high standard. Statement fifteen. Lack of regular exercise, for example, ten thousand plus steps and elevated heart rate reduces my mental energy and focus. Please note you can access a digital version of this self-assessment which shows you an overview of your scores at tougherminds.co.uk forward slash train your brain. Understanding your results. After completing the assessment, you might feel overwhelmed by all the areas that need attention. This is exactly how Sarah felt at first. Looking at my scores was daunting, she shared. But the task director helped me see something important. I didn't need to fix everything at once. By focusing on consistently using the three to one reflection, I started seeing improvements across multiple areas. This is why we start with super habits. Consider what happened when Sarah established a consistent evening three to one reflection practice. First week, she began noticing patterns in her sleep quality. Writing down positives helped calm her racing mind. The practice itself became a signal to her brain that the workday was ending. Second week, she started recognizing how different foods affected her energy. The impact of her exercise patterns became more apparent in her daily reflections. She could see clear connections between stress and productivity. Third week, her confidence grew as she documented small wins. Sleep improved as evening reflection became routine. Other positive habits started feeling more natural, creating your foundation. Based on your assessment results, choose just one or two specific habits to focus on this week. Remember Sarah's experience. Start with mastering the three to one reflection, then let other improvements follow naturally. Take a moment to identify. One which foundational area needs the most attention this month? Two How could consistent use of the three to one reflection help address this area? Three. What small step will you take today to establish your end of day reflection practice? The task director has a saying the foundation determines the height. Just as a lighthouse must build upward from a solid base to project its beam toward distant horizons, you can't achieve your fam story vision without first establishing strong foundational habits. But rather than trying to build everything at once, focus first on mastering the superhabits that make all other improvements easier. Moving forward, you might be wondering about specific strategies for better sleep, diet, exercise, stress management, confidence, focus, leadership, or other foundational practices. While these are crucial for your long-term success, diving into those details now would take us away from your most important immediate goal, mastering the success cycle itself. Think of the success cycle as the ultimate superhabit, the system that makes building all other habits easier. When you're ready to explore deeper insights into habit formation and superhabits, you'll find comprehensive guidance in Appendix C. For additional insights about building specific habits at individual, team, and leadership levels, please see my best-selling book, The Habit Mechanic, where I share over 30 habit building tools. But for now, let's focus on completing step two of the success cycle. In the next chapter, you'll learn how to organize your tasks into clear priorities, creating the foundation the day designer will use to craft schedules that optimize your brain states. As Sarah discovered, this simple but crucial step transforms how you use your energy each day.