- James Manos, the creator of Dexter

I hear people talking about the sacrifices one has to make to succeed in achieving their dreams. 

If you are thinking of something as a sacrifice, you are differentiating what is work and what is pleasure. And you are identifying things that fall in the 'pleasure' category that can be given up so that more can be accommodated  in the 'work' category. 

The moment you start thinking this way, you set out goals (dreams?) to achieve and try to minimize the time spent doing 'work' that is needed to get to the goal, and maximize the time spent doing 'pleasure', 

To me, this is a poor motivator. Every time I have to make a trade off decision on whether to pick an activity in the 'work' column or one in the 'pleasure' column takes away some of the joy in doing that activity as a bit of guilt/regret creeps in of not choosing the other.

When I read what James Manos had to say about success, I felt that is how I have been living my life for the past few years. 

When there is no distinction between work and pleasure, when everything you do is part of a routine that you look forward to, that is when there is the highest level of motivation for every activity irrespective of which column it falls in and that is when there is negligible guilt or regret of not doing something else.

When you are highly motivated, nothing will prevent you from claiming success.