The Motivation Hacker

Nick Winter wrote The Motivation Hacker in three months while pursuing seventeen other missions at once, and he uses that experiment to show how to summon extreme amounts of motivation. His list included running a startup, skydiving, launching an iPhone app, learning to throw knives, training from scratch for a four-hour marathon, learning 3,000 new Chinese words and learning to lucid dream, all while planning to sleep eight hours a night. Winter rejects moderation as a goal for the individual. The techniques he covers range from rejection therapy to precommitment, and he calls the result a field guide. He also tracked his happiness on a 10-point scale, hoping to lift his average from 6.3 to 7.3.

SupportNinja chief executive Cody McLain found it well written and to the point, and said its idea of success spirals changed how he thinks about building habits.