100 Ways To Motivate Yourself, Third Edition

65. Promise the moon

One frightening and effective way to motivate yourself is to make an unreasonable promise—to go to someone you care about, either personally or professionally, and promise that person something really big, something that will take all the effort and creativity you’ve got to make happen.

When President John Kennedy promised that America would put a man on the moon, the power of that thrilling promise alone energized all of NASA for the entire time it took to accomplish the amazing feat. In his book about the Apollo 13 mission, Lost Moon, astronaut Jim Lovell called Kennedy’s original promise “outrageous.” But it showed how effective being outrageous could be.

In his book Passion, Profit, and Power, Marshall Sylver recalls ...