What motivates you?

I’ve wrestled with this question for as long as I can remember.

For years, I told myself familiar stories.

That I’m driven by passion for technology.

That I’m motivated by solving customer problems.

That I want to help people access better healthcare.

That I want to help people have less stressful home renovations.

That I want to help people live longer through personalized nutrition.

That I want to make the world a better place.

But those are bullshit.

They’re safe answers. Programmed through years of societal conditioning.

What actually motivates me is fear and frustration.

I fear whether I’m a good spouse, friend, colleague, or manager.

I fear whether I’m thinking deeply enough or falling into bias.

I fear whether I’m a net contributor or just a consumer.

I fear whether my competence is growing fast enough, or fading.

I fear becoming irrelevant.

I fear working on the wrong problems.

I fear my ego blocking the truth.

I fear the fears I don’t want to name.

That fear pushes me forward, and the motion turns into frustration when it hits constraints, tradeoffs, and complexity.

Why can’t we move faster for our customers?

Why aren’t others as paranoid about the details?

Why can’t we get more resources?

Why do we still understand our customers so poorly?

Why am I still bad at things I should be good at?

Why can’t I think more creatively anymore?

Why can’t I communicate it better?

It locks me into a loop of thinking, pushing, questioning. Over and over.

Fear and frustration feed each other and keep me shackled to that loop.

Here’s what surprised me.

Once I accepted this, the frustration softened. Not because it disappeared, but because it made sense.

Clarity didn’t remove the tension. It gave me the resolve to live with it.

Hope this year forces you to be honest with yourself.