From Stuck to Motivated 3 People, 3 Transformations, 1 Powerful Pattern

What if motivation isn’t something you find—but something you create? 

In this powerful episode, Juli breaks down the real science behind motivation and why waiting to “feel ready” is actually keeping you stuck. Through three real-life transformations, you’ll discover a simple but powerful pattern: action comes first, motivation follows. Learn how small, consistent steps can rebuild confidence, restore clarity, and create unstoppable momentum—even when you feel burned out, overwhelmed, or completely stuck. If you’ve been procrastinating, lacking energy, or waiting for the perfect moment to start, this episode will flip your mindset and give you a practical path forward. It’s time to stop waiting—and start moving. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Are you ready to finally break free from overwhelm, procrastination, and burnout? If you're ready to focus on what truly matters and create momentum to reach and exceed your goals in business and in life, then this podcast is for you. Welcome to the Efficiency Advantage, the podcast where clarity meets action and purpose that fuels your progress. So here's world-class productivity expert and your host, Coach Julie.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

Welcome to the Efficiency Advantage Podcast. I'm Julie Shulem and welcome to the show. I'm going to dive right into this episode. From stuck to motivated, three people, three transformations, one powerful pattern. So let's talk about what motivation actually is. Motivation is the set of internal and external drivers that initiate, direct, and sustain goal-oriented behavior. In psychology, it's often framed as a combination of intrinsic motivation, which is doing something because it's inherently satisfying, we get you know feel good feelings from it, and extrinsic motivation, which is doing something for an external outcome. It might be rewards, money, whatever it is. At a functional level, motivation answers three questions. One, why start? Two, why keep going? And three, why this goal over others? So the way that motivation affects productivity is that productivity is essentially output per unit of input. The input is time, energy, and attention. Motivation directly influences the quality and consistency of that input. Now, when motivation is high, you initiate tasks faster. You sustain effort longer. You engage more deeply by having better focus, thus creating a higher quality output, and you're more resilient to setbacks. Now, when motivation is low, procrastination increases. We never like that. Task switching and distractions tend to rise. Cognitive effort feels more difficult, and output becomes inconsistent or minimal. In short, motivation determines how much of your available capacity actually gets deployed. Now, the way that productivity feeds back into motivation is bi-directional. Productivity also shapes motivation through these feedback loops. There are three loops. The first, the progressive loop. That's completing meaningful work, which yields a sense of progress. Progress brings about increased self-efficacy, where you know you say, I can do this. Self-efficacy leads to higher motivation. Now, this is closely tied to the psychological principle of competence, which is from the self-determination theory. The second loop is the reward loop, whereby finishing tasks create a dopamine hit or that reward response. Yeah, we feel really good about that. The reward reinforces behavior. And this reinforcement increases the likelihood of repeating those productive actions. And then there is the last, the identity loop. This is where consistency or consistent productivity breeds confidence, where you feel that, hey, I'm actually someone that follows through. Okay, that's a great feeling. And this identity shift strengthens intrinsic motivation. Now the flip side are the negative feedback loops. So the same system can work to can work against us. Low productivity may produce guilt and frustration. Negative emotion can tend to create avoidance behavior. You know, we're just gonna not do that, we're gonna do something else. And we have wonderful reasons or excuses for doing that. And that avoidance brings about even lower productivity. So this creates this downward spiral where motivation and productivity both kind of go down. Now, here's the insight here motivation and productivity are not linear, they form a dynamic system. So rather than waiting for motivation, productivity itself can be used as a lever to create the motivation. I'm gonna repeat that. Productivity itself can be used as a lever to create motivation. So if you want to influence this system, don't try to feel motivated first. That's not gonna get you anywhere. You want to engineer small, guaranteed little wins. And then let those completed actions bring up your motivation. So that's why in real-world case studies, what work is often not a burst of inspiration, but structured action that's create that actually creates the momentum. Motivation isn't something you wait for, it's something you generate through action. And productivity is the mechanism that creates it. People stay motivated when they feel competent, autonomous, and purpose-driven. So if motivation isn't something you wait for, but something that's created through action, what does that actually look like in real life? Well, let me show you how this actually played out with three real clients. I'm gonna talk about client A. Client A was, I'm gonna try that again. Client A was a successful business owner, but completely burned out. They didn't want to get up, didn't want to get dressed, and were doing the absolute bare minimum just to maintain a few existing clients. No new business, no energy, no drive. We didn't start with motivation, we started with structure. We completely restructured their days. We built a realistic and balanced calendar, color-coded. If you want to remember to see how to do that, go back to a previous episode on calendaring. I'll show you. And most importantly, we prioritized their life, not just their work. And then we kept it simple. One small, manageable start each day. Now the result was pretty wonderful. As they followed through on those small actions, something started to shift. They started to feel more in control, and that led to more clarity. And from that clarity, they reconnected with their why. Why they started their business in the first place, what they loved about it, what they missed by not doing it. And once all that happened, the energy came back, the drive came back, and they landed a brand new account. So in this case, motivation did not come first. We started with some structure, we built in some small action steps. The person gained a better sense of control. Again, they'd had it in the past, they just needed to get it back. And they reconnected with the love of their work and their purpose, and then the motivation came back. And this ended up being sustainable, and they felt amazing, and they had their balance back in their life and their joy. Client B. Client B came to me after a major shift in family. They had an addition, I'll say that. Their routines disappeared, structure was gone, and work had pretty much slowed down to almost nothing. They were really feeling discouraged. And on top of that, they didn't like that their spouse was carrying most of the financial load. So we did a full reset. We clarified priorities, both personal and financial. We rebuilt structure into their day and created a clear system for tracking and prioritizing their tasks. Again, nothing extreme, just consistent small steps that built on one another. Within a few weeks, they weren't just trying to work. They had momentum. They restarted their marketing, they knew how to do this. This wasn't something that they didn't know what to do about. They actually had that skill and they were excellent at it. They reached out to past clients, and more importantly, they started to feel confident again. Before the end of our time together, they landed a major account well into six figures and had more opportunities in progress. It was a huge win. So what changed wasn't just their results, it was their identity. Consistent productivity rebuilt confidence, and that confidence fueled the motivation. Now I'm going to share about the last client in this little study here. They went from stagnation to reinvention. So client C was in a real different place than the prior two. They were home every day, pretty much hanging out in their pajamas, with no real structure, very little enthusiasm, and no real clear direction since their previous role had basically ended, which many people I work with have had the unfortunate experience of having. So on the surface, it looked like lack of motivation, but really it was kind of loss of identity and energy. So we didn't start with work. We started with self-care. I asked them to do one simple thing: get dressed and go to the local coffee shop and spend a couple of hours each morning reading. And this was something that they loved to do but had stopped doing for quite some time. And they missed it. So we put it back into their life. And that small shift created some serious movement. First of all, they now had a reason to get up and a reason to engage with the day. They could literally see the change. I could see the change. I started seeing smiles that replaced the flat, kind of disengaged energy that was on their face more often. From there, they started reflecting and thinking about what they really wanted to do. They started reaching out to colleagues and reconnected with what they actually enjoyed doing. And step by step, they connected the dots and within a short period of time, they launched their own business in a space they were already connected to. So this is the perfect example of how action, even unrelated to work, can reignite motivation. The energy created the engagement, which led to the clarity, which led to the direction, which brought about the productivity. So tying it all together. If you look at all three of these cases, the pattern is clear. Motivation didn't come first for any of them, it followed action. Consistency doesn't come from motivation. Motivation comes from consistency. And what we're really seeing is when people experience progress, regain a sense of control, and reconnect with something meaningful, they just naturally become motivated. Simplified, small actions create progress. Structure created consistency, and clarity created purpose. All those three things: progress, consistency, and purpose are what builds motivation. You don't need to feel ready. You need to create the evidence. Start small, take action, and let motivation catch up with you. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Efficiency Advantage podcast. Please, please, if you haven't done so already, subscribe down below so you are the first to know when the next episode episode, yeah, I'm having issues with my talking today. Please subscribe so you are the first to know when the next episode goes live. And if you have a topic, a question, an idea, a thought that you would like to share, something that maybe you would like to have answered on an episode here, please go to Askcoach Julie and Julia Spellj-U-L-I.com, and you can actually record a message to me. I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you again for listening. Have a productive day.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

So that's it for today's episode of The Efficiency Advantage. Head on over to Apple Podcasts iTunes or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week that posts a review on Apple Podcasts or iTunes will win a chance in the grand prize drawing to win a private VIP day with Coach Julie herself. Be sure to head on over to the EfficiencyAdvantage.com and pick up a free copy of Coach Julie's gift. And join us on the next episode.