Speaker 1: Are you feeling stressed about the holidays? The pressure to
Speaker 1: make everything perfect, the tricky family gatherings, trying to keep
Speaker 1: everybody happy, and for some of you it's the opposite.
Speaker 1: It's the feeling of being alone. Either way, it's a lot.
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Speaker 2: Set to your goals, whether it's what you eat or
Speaker 2: the jolity you are going to have When you are
Speaker 2: in a cimilar situation to the situation that you will
Speaker 2: be it when you pursue that goal.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 3: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 3: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 3: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 3: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 3: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 3: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 3: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 3: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 3: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 3: podcasts is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 3: the right direction, how they feed their good woalth. Thanks
Speaker 3: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is il
Speaker 3: At Fishback, the professor of behavioral science and Marketing at
Speaker 3: the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. She's also
Speaker 3: the past president of the Society for the Study of Motivation.
Speaker 3: Il It has been published in many psychology and business journals,
Speaker 3: and served as associate editor of several journals, including the
Speaker 3: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and psychological science. Her
Speaker 3: research is regularly featured in the media, including Wall Street Journal, CNN,
Speaker 3: Chicago Tribune, NPR, and many others. Today, ial It and
Speaker 3: Eric discuss her book, Get It Done Surprising Lessons from
Speaker 3: the Science of Motivation.
Speaker 1: Hi, I, y Ella, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. Excited to be here today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm excited to talk with you about your book
Speaker 1: called Get It Done. Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation.
Speaker 1: But before we get into that, we'll start like we
Speaker 1: always do, with the parable. There's a grandparent who's talking
Speaker 1: with their grandchild and they say, in life, there are
Speaker 1: two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 1: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 1: looks up with their grandparents, says, well, which one wins,
Speaker 1: and the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you and your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do.
Speaker 2: It is such a great description of the work that
Speaker 2: they do as someone who is both a social psychologist
Speaker 2: and a motivation scientist, which you know is kind of
Speaker 2: surprising to me that it fits. Well. Let me explain
Speaker 2: how the idea in social psychology is that we are
Speaker 2: all the result of our circumstances, respond to our environment,
Speaker 2: their profession, that we pursue, the people that are our friends,
Speaker 2: how we choose to spend our life, our hobbies, everything
Speaker 2: is the result of the situation. And then what motivation
Speaker 2: science adds to this is that, yes, but we can
Speaker 2: change our situation. And you know the simple examples that
Speaker 2: we set in the land clock. So yes, we sleep
Speaker 2: when we are tired and there is a quiet chroom.
Speaker 2: But if we set in the land clock, then we
Speaker 2: are going together because it's hard to sleep in the
Speaker 2: noisy woom. If we set a goal that changes how
Speaker 2: we see our performance, that increases our motivation. If we
Speaker 2: create an environment in which there are certain floods, then
Speaker 2: this is what we are going to eat. And I
Speaker 2: think that this pu Wil basically take it to a
Speaker 2: very genuine level that if we that our lives such
Speaker 2: that it is easier and more natural to act on
Speaker 2: the good. Okay, if this is what we feed then
Speaker 2: this is what we are going to do. And in
Speaker 2: a way it kind of resolves this tension between that
Speaker 2: question of whether we respond to our situation or control
Speaker 2: our situation. We do both. Okay, we respond to what
Speaker 2: is out there. We can also manipulate what is out
Speaker 2: there so that we control our response. I would, however,
Speaker 2: change it to ask a grandmother and her granddaughter, or
Speaker 2: if I could.
Speaker 1: Yes, we have gone back and forth on genders, you know, grandparent, grandchild, grandfather, grandchild, grandmother.
Speaker 1: We just kind of mix it up. I see, You're
Speaker 1: welcome to have it be a grandmother and her granddaughter.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Early on in the book, you said, how do you
Speaker 1: motivate yourself? The short answers by changing your circumstances. You
Speaker 1: modify your own behavior by modifying the situation in which
Speaker 1: it occurs. And I think that for people who don't
Speaker 1: know much about motivational or behavioral science, that's the step
Speaker 1: that we miss the most often. We think it's just
Speaker 1: an internal thing. I just decide that I'm going to
Speaker 1: do something differently, and then I do it. And if
Speaker 1: I don't do it, it's a failure of my will.
Speaker 1: It's a failure of my willpower, it's a personal failing,
Speaker 1: whereas what we know is there's a whole lot of
Speaker 1: things we can learn about how to make changes in
Speaker 1: our lives a lot more effectively so that we have
Speaker 1: a better chance to succeed and we don't need as much,
Speaker 1: you know, willpower or self control, even though we do
Speaker 1: need some of those things right to the extent that
Speaker 1: we don't rely on them exclusively really says a lot
Speaker 1: about how likely we are to be successful.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. I think about the myths that people believe in
Speaker 2: in motivation science, death is the first one. I just
Speaker 2: either I didn't try hard and enough, or I didn't
Speaker 2: care enough. Okay, so I didn't do something because it
Speaker 2: wasn't important for me, or because I couldn't. Well, there
Speaker 2: is a third possibility that is probably the most likely explanation.
Speaker 2: You just did not set the situation right. You did
Speaker 2: not set yourself up for success. You know. I'll stick
Speaker 2: to the example of food. When we are hungry, we
Speaker 2: eat what is in front of us. So telling yourself,
Speaker 2: when you are full, I'm just going to try very
Speaker 2: hard not to eat that food that's bad for me. Well,
Speaker 2: when you are hungry, you're going to eat what is
Speaker 2: in front of you. So if you want to control
Speaker 2: what you eat, you want to make sure that what
Speaker 2: is in front of you are the foods that you
Speaker 2: would like to eat. You want to manipulate your situation.
Speaker 1: I love that idea. You know, do we react to
Speaker 1: our circumstances or do we control our circumstances? And the
Speaker 1: answer is both right, we have varying degrees of each
Speaker 1: in certain circum stances where we do each. You just
Speaker 1: said something there that was one of the things that
Speaker 1: struck me the most from your book. I've read a
Speaker 1: lot of these books, and yours is excellent, but something
Speaker 1: really stood out, and it's what you just said. And
Speaker 1: basically what you said in the book is try and
Speaker 1: set goals when you're in a state similar to the
Speaker 1: state you'll be in when executing them. And you just
Speaker 1: alluded to that with food, like, don't set the goal
Speaker 1: of what you're going to eat when you're stuffed, right,
Speaker 1: because you're going to feel differently. It's the reverse of
Speaker 1: that adage don't go grocery shopping when you're hungry. But
Speaker 1: so many of us set goals based on our very
Speaker 1: best version of ourselves, the me that got enough sleep
Speaker 1: you know, the kids were away for the weekend, so
Speaker 1: I had lots of extra hours. We set our goals
Speaker 1: in these idealized states, and then real life rolls around
Speaker 1: and we can't achieve them. And I was just really
Speaker 1: struck by how wise that is.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Thank you. Something that we know for a
Speaker 2: long time that people don't have much sympathy to they'll
Speaker 2: future yourself or empathy. Actually we call it that the
Speaker 2: lack of empathy to your future self. You see that
Speaker 2: where you know you are traveling to somewhere where it's
Speaker 2: very cold, but right now it's somewhere for you, and
Speaker 2: so you don't really pet a cold. We see this
Speaker 2: also in employment, and I've been teaching business students for
Speaker 2: a long time, and when you asked about their future jobs,
Speaker 2: they plan their future job for someone who's basically a robot.
Speaker 2: Here is someone who really cares about how much money
Speaker 2: they will make, but cares less about doing something. It's
Speaker 2: interesting with the people that they like about being challenged
Speaker 2: about being curious. Not that they don't care at all,
Speaker 2: but in a way they say this future self, the
Speaker 2: mean few months from now, that person would really prioritize
Speaker 2: their future earnings about everything else. And guess what, that's
Speaker 2: just lack of empathy to your future self, because then
Speaker 2: you will love to get up in the morning and
Speaker 2: going and do that job. And we know that what
Speaker 2: predicts are being able to do your job, being able
Speaker 2: to stick with employment is the immediate gratification that you
Speaker 2: get from interacting with people that you like over solving
Speaker 2: problems that are interesting for you. And so yes, set
Speaker 2: your goals, whether it's what you eat or the job
Speaker 2: that you are going to have when you are in
Speaker 2: a similar situation to the situation that you will be
Speaker 2: when you pursue that all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think that leads us nicely into talking
Speaker 1: about intrinsic motivation, because you just sort of mentioned it there, right.
Speaker 1: It's one thing to say, I'm going to go to
Speaker 1: work and I'm going to work in this situation and
Speaker 1: I don't care if I like it, I don't care
Speaker 1: how good it is, because I want to get this money.
Speaker 1: That's the extreme of extrinsic motivation. I'm doing this thing
Speaker 1: only because I'm going to get this other thing out
Speaker 1: of it, whereas intrinsic motivation, at the far other extreme
Speaker 1: would be I'm doing this thing only because I love
Speaker 1: doing it. It seems to me that most of us,
Speaker 1: with most things, you know, there's going to be a
Speaker 1: middle ground between those two, and the closer we are
Speaker 1: to intrinsic motivation, the more likely we are to continue
Speaker 1: to stick with it. But would you agree that for
Speaker 1: a lot of things we do, we end up sort
Speaker 1: of between pure intrinsic and pure extrinsic motivation.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, intwinsic motivation is doing something as its own end.
Speaker 2: It's a stroll in the park, it's a nice meal
Speaker 2: with a friend. And many of the things that we
Speaker 2: need to do in life are not purely intrinsically motivated.
Speaker 2: They are not something that we do only because it
Speaker 2: feels good while we are doing it. Extwensic motivation is not.
Speaker 2: And the extrinsic motivation is what gets us to do
Speaker 2: our annual medical checkup, is what gets us to sell
Speaker 2: for retirement. It's basically doing something that doesn't feel good
Speaker 2: right now, but we will benefit in the long run.
Speaker 2: In terms of motivation, is doing something because it feels
Speaker 2: right at the moment, because doing it is like achieving
Speaker 2: the goal. And when people are intrinsically motivated, they are
Speaker 2: going to really engage in the activity they're going to experience.
Speaker 2: What sometimes people refill to is the flow that it
Speaker 2: feels white, It feels right at the moment. Now, let's
Speaker 2: take employment ideally, it's not one or the other, or well,
Speaker 2: it's not just extrinsically motivating. You're not only walking for
Speaker 2: some future benefit. You're actually enjoying what you're doing. You
Speaker 2: actually get some immediate benefits from it. But you also
Speaker 2: want to walk thinking about your future, yourself and thinking
Speaker 2: about supporting that person in the future. So it's somewhere between.
Speaker 2: We often need to stick with relationship in bad times
Speaker 2: because we know that in good times we are intrinsically
Speaker 2: motivated to be in the relationship because there is nothing
Speaker 2: that feels better than being with this person that I love.
Speaker 2: But right now we are in an argument, and so
Speaker 2: most calls are somewhere in between, And that's fine. If
Speaker 2: you can increase the intrinsic motivation eventually, that predicts persistence
Speaker 2: better than extrinsic motivation. That is that the immediate feeling
Speaker 2: that feels right, that predicts how much people exercise, how
Speaker 2: much they eat healthy food, how much they stick to
Speaker 2: their employment. Basically, everything that we measured in our staties,
Speaker 2: was better predicted by that immediate intrinsic motivation than twins
Speaker 2: of motivation.
Speaker 1: So as you're saying that intrinsic motivation is the best
Speaker 1: predictor of engagement in just about everything, well, I think
Speaker 1: is interesting is not only might a goal have a
Speaker 1: little bit of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, as you sort
Speaker 1: of alluded to, even the same thing can slide along
Speaker 1: that GAO. I think about playing guitar. For me, I
Speaker 1: used to play guitar because I loved it and I
Speaker 1: was hoping something was going to come out of it,
Speaker 1: like I was going to be a guitar player. I
Speaker 1: was going to make a living doing it. Well, that
Speaker 1: became obvious it wasn't going to happen, and I had
Speaker 1: to work really hard to reclaim playing the guitar just
Speaker 1: because I like to do it, Because every time I
Speaker 1: started to play, I'd think, oh, well, maybe I could
Speaker 1: record that. So I got back to I do it
Speaker 1: because I like it, but I also know that in
Speaker 1: order to like it, I like to get better at it.
Speaker 1: So I try and practice each day, even if on
Speaker 1: that day I don't feel extrinsically motivated to do it,
Speaker 1: I know that the thing overall is extrinsically motivated. Or
Speaker 1: take this podcast as an example. I'm fortunate enough now
Speaker 1: that this is what I do for a living, and
Speaker 1: I am very intrinsically motivated, but there are some days
Speaker 1: that I simply don't feel like doing it, because as
Speaker 1: a humans, we just have days where we don't feel
Speaker 1: like doing anything, and so I think it's just kind
Speaker 1: of interesting to look at that. What are some ways
Speaker 1: of making things more intrinsically motivating. So if we've got
Speaker 1: a job that's you know, okay, I've got some intrinsic motivation,
Speaker 1: but it's also the way I have to make a living,
Speaker 1: you know, I feel like I need to be here.
Speaker 1: What are some ways to make it more intrinsically motivating.
Speaker 2: Well, a lot of your question. First, you're absolutely right
Speaker 2: that many activities that will be intrinsically motivating or are
Speaker 2: sometimes intwinsically motivatings, might not be intrinsically motivating right now.
Speaker 2: The one example that I have was learning to do
Speaker 2: stand up comedy and we actually walked. We walked with
Speaker 2: a Second City here, which is an improve club, and
Speaker 2: it was interesting because we got into classes of people
Speaker 2: that just want to learn improvisation for the sake of
Speaker 2: feeling more confident as they interact with the people around them.
Speaker 2: So they're not really trying to be a stand up comedians.
Speaker 2: They just want to feel a little bit more comfortable.
Speaker 2: And they get to these improve classes and they feel horrible.
Speaker 2: They like the decree is, oh, I'm supposed to like
Speaker 2: move my body in a funny way and like be spontaneous,
Speaker 2: and I can think of that and what we call them.
Speaker 2: How about you set your goal for the first class
Speaker 2: is not feeling good. It's a challenging yourself as a
Speaker 2: struggling Okay, so your goal is actually to feel a
Speaker 2: little bit bad. Try to make it difficult, and you know,
Speaker 2: with that goal in mind, Yeah, today I'm going to
Speaker 2: embarrass myself. Hey, today I'm going to feel not so
Speaker 2: great about what I'm doing. People are able to overcome
Speaker 2: the first initiation. So today that's going to feel bad,
Speaker 2: and in the future I will learn to enjoy day.
Speaker 2: I will learn to get the intrinsic motivation in the
Speaker 2: sense of enjoyment. But how to increase interns and motivation,
Speaker 2: So you know, one thing is the embrace the fact
Speaker 2: that intrinsic motivation might not happen the first time you do. So,
Speaker 2: if you haven't been running for a while and you
Speaker 2: go and run exactly right, you can already complete my centers,
Speaker 2: So you know, give yourself a chance. It might take
Speaker 2: a while. Other ways, well, you could bring some immediate
Speaker 2: benefits there. You can try to make something more intrinsically
Speaker 2: motivated by the way you do it. Some people like
Speaker 2: to walk while listening to music. I personally cannot do that,
Speaker 2: But when I went and study with high school students,
Speaker 2: it turned out that when you played music during math class,
Speaker 2: they were actually more engaged in the math, They were
Speaker 2: more motivated. Overall, the whole thing became more pleasant for
Speaker 2: them because music was playing. This is the same thing
Speaker 2: that we did. We bring music to exercising or TV
Speaker 2: to exercising. We do something that is difficult that might
Speaker 2: not be in meately pleasant with some other things that
Speaker 2: make it more immediately pleasant. You know, healthy food that
Speaker 2: is tasty, that is colorful, that is beautiful, is you
Speaker 2: know another example. Another strategy is to focus on what
Speaker 2: is immediately pleasant. They focus on the experience, or try
Speaker 2: to be in experience. Think about how you feel about
Speaker 2: it right now. It requires some practice, It requires some awareness.
Speaker 2: If you meditate, that could help, but really learning to
Speaker 2: observe how you are feeling right now and to focus
Speaker 2: on the positives. And then a third strategy that I
Speaker 2: would offer is just when you choose what to do,
Speaker 2: whether it's your profession or your exercise routine, or the
Speaker 2: food that you are going to eat, or the people
Speaker 2: that you are going to interact with, while take into
Speaker 2: account terrans and motivation, ask yourself how much I will
Speaker 2: enjoy that, how much it would feel right while I'm
Speaker 2: doing it, not after I'm doing it. I would give
Speaker 2: it another example for that. This is a study where
Speaker 2: we offer people choice between two tasks. One was to
Speaker 2: listen to the song hey you would buy the Billers,
Speaker 2: and the other one was to listen to a loud
Speaker 2: alarm box. Do you know what you would choose? Right?
Speaker 1: It's pretty yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: But we offered more money for the alarm clock.
Speaker 1: How much more money.
Speaker 2: You think, like thousands of dollars ten percent over the
Speaker 2: base pay really not much. We got about seventy percent
Speaker 2: of the people in this experiment to choose the loud
Speaker 2: alarm because it paid ten percent more, and they wanted
Speaker 2: the money, and they regretted their choice. The majority of
Speaker 2: them said that they wish they made a little bit
Speaker 2: less money and had the nice soundless.
Speaker 1: So that's interesting because we hear all the time in
Speaker 1: the workplace that money is not what motivates people, right,
Speaker 1: and yet I think that that may ultimately be true
Speaker 1: in the long term. In the short term, I think
Speaker 1: people are often lured by money because it's easier to quantify.
Speaker 1: It's easier to go, oh, this new job is going
Speaker 1: to give me twenty thousand dollars more. Okay. It's a
Speaker 1: lot harder to quantify all the intangibles that go around it.
Speaker 1: It's a lot harder to know, well, as the company
Speaker 1: culture better will, I like the people, and so we go, Okay,
Speaker 1: twenty thousand dollars. I just want the money. Similar to
Speaker 1: the alarm clock, it's like, well, I don't know how
Speaker 1: unpleasant listening to the alarm clock is, but I know
Speaker 1: I'm going to get ten percent more. So I could
Speaker 1: sort of fix that in my brain in some way.
Speaker 2: Yes, as a decision scientist, I can tell you that
Speaker 2: if you want to influence people's decisions, give them some numbers.
Speaker 2: People like to use the numbers right. And so we
Speaker 2: know that when people seek employment, when they go to work,
Speaker 2: they are looking forward to doing something that pays, and
Speaker 2: money is important, but they're also looking to do something
Speaker 2: that is interesting with people that they like. And as
Speaker 2: you said, it's hard to measure interest. It's how to
Speaker 2: measure the liking of the people that wanting them to
Speaker 2: walk with these people on whatever it is that we do.
Speaker 2: It's very easy to say that next job is going
Speaker 2: to be a ten percent increase what I'm making now.
Speaker 2: It's easy to put too much emphasis on money. It's
Speaker 2: not the money is not important, it's really important. We
Speaker 2: also know that money is important for other people, and
Speaker 2: we think that other people care much less than us
Speaker 2: about doing something that is interesting with people that they like. Yeah,
Speaker 2: guess what they also care about? It not just me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it makes me think of something that you say
Speaker 1: in a different section, and maybe we'll get to it.
Speaker 1: But you're talking about self control, and you say, a
Speaker 1: problem isn't about self control If it isn't clear that
Speaker 1: one choice is a temptation when both choices have potential,
Speaker 1: it's simply a difficult decision. And I think that speaks
Speaker 1: to what we were just talking about, that deciding between
Speaker 1: two workplaces is a difficult decision. You know, it's easy
Speaker 1: if it's like, well, this place will pay me one
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars a year and I work twenty hours
Speaker 1: a week and everybody I met seems lovely, and this
Speaker 1: other place will pay me fifty thousand dollars a year.
Speaker 1: I've got to work forty hours a week and the
Speaker 1: people seem awful. Like, okay, that's easy, right, It's when
Speaker 1: it gets harder, And I love that fact or that
Speaker 1: idea that you know, numbers make it easier to make
Speaker 1: a decision. We're drawn to numbers because we can quantify it. Yes,
Speaker 1: So let's go back to nearly the beginning of the book.
Speaker 1: I've been hopping all over the place. There's been no
Speaker 1: chronology to this. But one of the things that you
Speaker 1: say about choosing a goal is you call it choosing
Speaker 1: a powerful goal, and you describe a powerful goal as
Speaker 1: something that feels exciting and not like a chore. So,
Speaker 1: you know, assuming we're picking a goal like health, right,
Speaker 1: like I want to be in better health, how do
Speaker 1: we frame that goal? How do we choose that goal
Speaker 1: in a way that makes it a powerful goal, feel
Speaker 1: like something that's not a chore.
Speaker 2: Yes, A few things, Okay, First, we want to define
Speaker 2: the goals such that it is connected to in a captivity,
Speaker 2: but it's sufficiently upset. It's sufficiently general so that it
Speaker 2: doesn't feel like a means say, the goal is not
Speaker 2: something that I will do so that I can do
Speaker 2: something else. It's the thing itself is. So the goal
Speaker 2: is not maybe to lose weight, which, by the way,
Speaker 2: I don't like that goal at all, so I can
Speaker 2: always use it as a bad goal. The goal is
Speaker 2: not to lose weight so that I can be attractive
Speaker 2: over summer. The goal is to feel comfortable to feel attractive.
Speaker 2: Now I ask myself, what do I need to do
Speaker 2: in order to feel that I am an attractive person?
Speaker 2: When I in the min order that I like myself
Speaker 2: powerful goals. I also usually approach goals and not avoidance goals.
Speaker 2: So it's usually it's something that you want to do
Speaker 2: and not something that you want to avoid. Losing weight
Speaker 2: is problematic because it's usually about not doing it's about
Speaker 2: not eating. If you set your goal is exercising as
Speaker 2: doing something is eating certain foods, that's easier that is
Speaker 2: less likely to bring to mind the thing that you
Speaker 2: are trying to avoid. One reason why it's so hard
Speaker 2: to overcome addiction is because the goal is usually an
Speaker 2: avoiding school. You tell yourself that you should not be drinking,
Speaker 2: and now you ask yourself, how good I am at
Speaker 2: sticking to this goal? Well have I been drinking? Well,
Speaker 2: you know, now you are thinking about drinking. It's like
Speaker 2: trying to end a bad relationship, and you ask yourself,
Speaker 2: do I still think about this person? And by checking,
Speaker 2: you bring to mind that person that you are trying
Speaker 2: to push off of mind. And so avoidance goes are problematic.
Speaker 2: Putting a number is often useful. We talked about the
Speaker 2: power of numbers. We like numbers. If you set your
Speaker 2: goal target is, let's say, exercising five times a week,
Speaker 2: you are going to be disappointed if you only exercised
Speaker 2: four times a week. So you kind of created the
Speaker 2: motivation to do this last thing because it will complete
Speaker 2: the goal in your mind. And then the last thing
Speaker 2: we set a goal is that it has to be
Speaker 2: intrinsically motivating. That is, it's a goal that doing it
Speaker 2: would feel a little bit or a lot like achieving it,
Speaker 2: and pursuing the goal and achieving the goal out fuse together.
Speaker 2: It means that like, you do this and you feel
Speaker 2: it's right, Can you feel like you're achieving the goal?
Speaker 1: Yeah, As we were talking about intrinsic motivation. You know,
Speaker 1: another strategy that you write in the book that's been
Speaker 1: really helpful for me is to shrink the distance as
Speaker 1: much as possible between the activity and the reward. Right.
Speaker 1: It's why it's saving for retirement so notoriously difficult. Right,
Speaker 1: it's so far away. It's the same way like if
Speaker 1: I'm exercising so that I don't get a heart attack
Speaker 1: in twenty years. It's different when I reframed exercise for
Speaker 1: myself and went, I may enjoy it while I'm doing it,
Speaker 1: but even if I don't enjoy it while i'm doing it,
Speaker 1: very shortly thereafter, I'm going to feel much better in
Speaker 1: my body. I'm going to feel better about myself. And
Speaker 1: so all of a sudden, the distance between the activity
Speaker 1: and the goal was shrunk. Maybe I can't get all
Speaker 1: the way to I'm exercising because it feels good, because
Speaker 1: sometimes it doesn't. But I've been able in my own
Speaker 1: mind to shrink that distance down to you know ten
Speaker 1: minutes ten minutes later, I know there's going to be
Speaker 1: a good feeling with you.
Speaker 2: Example, she basically highlighted that by the fact that I
Speaker 2: set the goal, that already means that it's not one
Speaker 2: hundred percent intrinsically motivated.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: All right, Like watching TV is intrinsically motivating. It's fun.
Speaker 2: It feels as good as you do that. No one
Speaker 2: sets their goal to watch more TV or it's more
Speaker 2: ice cream. Hey, we set the goal to exercise because
Speaker 2: exercise it requires that at least when you've started, you're
Speaker 2: going to feel a little bit uncomfortable. It will take
Speaker 2: a while to kick in. But if you feel good
Speaker 2: towards the end of your work cut or immediately after,
Speaker 2: then you have a much better chance. And if you're
Speaker 2: counting on filling good in ten years from not what twenty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or even if you're working out to look good like,
Speaker 1: that's a goal that's coming over time. It comes, but
Speaker 1: it's not as immediate. So you just mentioned that approach
Speaker 1: goals are broadly speaking, better than avoidance goals. It's better
Speaker 1: to say I want this positive thing, then I want
Speaker 1: to avoid this negative thing. Obviously, in some circumstances. I'm
Speaker 1: a recovering alcoholic and heroin addics, so I needed an
Speaker 1: avoidance goal at a certain point, right, There was no
Speaker 1: getting around that, although there is certainly a way of
Speaker 1: even with that, focusing on what good things come into
Speaker 1: my life as a result of that, you know, so
Speaker 1: that it's not only not doing You know often talking
Speaker 1: with people who are early in recovery about yeah, it's
Speaker 1: what you're giving up, but we also have to be
Speaker 1: looking at what you're going to get. But you also
Speaker 1: see in the book for some people avoidance goals work
Speaker 1: better than approach goals, that there's a personality element to this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so two things you know. First, you're right that
Speaker 2: avoidance schools are common, and they also have some sense
Speaker 2: of urgency. If you think that you should not do something,
Speaker 2: it sounds like you should not do it starting.
Speaker 1: Now, h I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like if you say I should not smoke, you
Speaker 2: don't mean I should not smoke in a month from now.
Speaker 2: You mean I should not smoke starting today, Versus if
Speaker 2: you say I should eat more green vegetables or bring
Speaker 2: more water, Well, this sounds like something that maybe I
Speaker 2: can start tomorrow, next week, and that's fine. So avoiding
Speaker 2: schools have the element of urgency, and then there are
Speaker 2: individual differences. So some people we spawn more to avoidance schools.
Speaker 2: Some people are more in the mindset of avoiding danger,
Speaker 2: of avoiding sickness. Basically they respawn to warning more than
Speaker 2: others that are more to approach goals. There was also
Speaker 2: something that I wanted to say as you were talking
Speaker 2: so openly about overcoming addiction, which is about framing. Okay,
Speaker 2: Often we have a choice about whether we want to
Speaker 2: think about our goal in terms of avoidance or approach.
Speaker 2: Am I trying to end a bad relationship or start
Speaker 2: a healthy relationship? Am I trying to avoid certain substance
Speaker 2: or approach others that are healthier for me? How do
Speaker 2: I think about my leisure time? Are the activities that
Speaker 2: I should not engage in? Or are the activities that
Speaker 2: I should engage? And we do have a choice in
Speaker 2: how we think about our goals.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was just thinking as you were talking about
Speaker 1: TV and how nobody needs to set a goal to
Speaker 1: watch TV, but people will often want to set a
Speaker 1: goal to watch less TV. And what's interesting though in
Speaker 1: doing that is why, right, why do you want to
Speaker 1: watch less TV. Generally, it's because there's something else that
Speaker 1: you want to be doing, there's something else that you
Speaker 1: think is more valuable. But if I've not gotten clear
Speaker 1: on that, then it's very difficult to do because not
Speaker 1: only will I be uncertain of why this goal is important,
Speaker 1: it will be entirely in avoidance and it won't be
Speaker 1: an approach goal. Whereas if I go, okay, well, what
Speaker 1: I want to do is practice guitar two more hours
Speaker 1: each week. What's getting in the way, Oh it's TV. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: now I know why I'm giving up two hours of TV.
Speaker 1: It's for this positive it's for this good thing. It's
Speaker 1: not just something I'm denying myself, you know. And so
Speaker 1: with anything with eating differently, the more I'm able to
Speaker 1: frame that choice as not a self denial but a
Speaker 1: self gift, almost you know, I'm eating healthy because I'm
Speaker 1: not denying myself bad food. I'm giving myself healthy food.
Speaker 1: I'm giving myself the chance to feel better. Like you're
Speaker 1: saying it's a total framing question.
Speaker 2: I absolutely agree. I would say that this is unso
Speaker 2: a nice example of overestimating willpower, and you know, making
Speaker 2: the mistake of thinking just a matter of wanting this
Speaker 2: strongly enough. If I just be determined not to watch TV,
Speaker 2: then I will not watch TV. But that's not going
Speaker 2: to work. If I schedule time to play my guitar,
Speaker 2: either in my mind or with a friend or you know,
Speaker 2: with a teacher, well then I'm not watching TV because
Speaker 2: I'm playing my guitar.
Speaker 1: Then I want to come back to something you just
Speaker 1: said there, which was with a friend or with a teacher,
Speaker 1: both of which things are social support, and how important
Speaker 1: social support is in all this, and I want to
Speaker 1: get back there. But I want to hit what you
Speaker 1: just said because you said, well, I don't play guitar.
Speaker 1: Now I'm assuming the reason you don't play guitar or
Speaker 1: another instrument is not because you're intrinsically lazy. It's because
Speaker 1: you have the same problem we all have, which is
Speaker 1: that we only have so much time, so we have
Speaker 1: to choose what we do. And so this really gets
Speaker 1: into the idea of competing goals. We have these competing goals,
Speaker 1: and if we're not clear about them, we will often
Speaker 1: end up kind of going in circles. You know, just
Speaker 1: I'm doing this, but then then this starts to get
Speaker 1: in the way. So I stop doing that and then
Speaker 1: I do this for me. The more I've been able
Speaker 1: to acknowledge competing goals, like, Okay, these two things, I
Speaker 1: want to do them both, I can't do them both.
Speaker 1: I mean, a great example for me was when I
Speaker 1: started this podcast, I also wanted to be in a
Speaker 1: band again, and I kept feeling bad that I wasn't
Speaker 1: in a band, and I finally went and I looked
Speaker 1: at it and I went, my job makes me travel, and
Speaker 1: I'm trying to do this podcast, and if I want
Speaker 1: to do this podcast really well, then I can't do both.
Speaker 1: And so I chose the podcast. I made a decision
Speaker 1: which you would call prioritizing versus compromising. So talk to
Speaker 1: us about goal competition and prioritizing versus compromising.
Speaker 2: You know, a very good friend this usually gives the
Speaker 2: best advice. Once gave me a really dumb advice, and
Speaker 2: the advice, if you want to do something and you
Speaker 2: don't have time, just wake up an hour earlier. And
Speaker 2: you know, I always thought that this is a really
Speaker 2: dumb advice, because you know, if you wake up one
Speaker 2: hour earlier, then you go to sleep one hour earlier
Speaker 2: because you still need you full night and so that
Speaker 2: really doesn't work. There is really only twenty four hours
Speaker 2: in a day, and some of them you will spend sleeping,
Speaker 2: So you have to start with that. There is so
Speaker 2: much that you can do and except it and be
Speaker 2: willing to work with This is the first step. And
Speaker 2: then you know, we all want to do many things,
Speaker 2: and the first thing to decide is whether we are
Speaker 2: trying to create balance, we want to do a little
Speaker 2: bit of this and a little bit of that, or
Speaker 2: are we trying to prioritizely are we trying to put
Speaker 2: something ahead of other things? Okay, So do I want
Speaker 2: to create a balance between staying late in bed and
Speaker 2: reading a book in the morning and exercising in the morning,
Speaker 2: or do I want to put exercising ahead of this
Speaker 2: hour or in bed in the morning with social media
Speaker 2: hour book or what's not If we decide to prioritize,
Speaker 2: then it's a matter of self control. Okay. So now
Speaker 2: we have something that we want to do more than
Speaker 2: another thing, and we can talk about the strategies of
Speaker 2: self control, which is not about willpower. Okay, It's not
Speaker 2: about saying I really need to do it. It's about
Speaker 2: changing the situation. So you have a better chance. But
Speaker 2: if I want to strike the right balance, it's really
Speaker 2: about planning. It's really about thinking, well, on some days,
Speaker 2: I'm going to be waiting in bed. On other days,
Speaker 2: I'm going to get up early and exercise, and maybe
Speaker 2: it's a week day versus we can And it's really
Speaker 2: a matter of how I'm going to organize my life
Speaker 2: so that I can do all the things that I
Speaker 2: enjoy doing or the things that are important for me.
Speaker 2: And the strategies that involve monitoring multiple goals which we
Speaker 2: all have all the time, start with asking this simple question,
Speaker 2: am I trying to find the compromise or prioritize one
Speaker 2: over the other.
Speaker 1: So an example of this would be, if I want
Speaker 1: to prioritize my career, then I am probably going to
Speaker 1: spend more time on my career than I am. Let's
Speaker 1: say I have a family, with my family versus the
Speaker 1: compromise would be you know what, I really want to
Speaker 1: strike a balance between those two or going the other direction,
Speaker 1: I'm really going to prioritize the family, which means that
Speaker 1: I'm going to spend less time on career and we'll
Speaker 1: get the results accordingly, right, I mean, again, we can't
Speaker 1: control external results. But generally speaking, if I spend more
Speaker 1: time with my family in an intentional way, is probably
Speaker 1: going to be better. And if I spend more time
Speaker 1: on my career an intentional way, it's probably going to
Speaker 1: go better. And I think that making that decision is
Speaker 1: so important. I don't know if you're familiar with the book.
Speaker 2: I think it's called.
Speaker 1: Ten Thousand Weeks by a guy named Oliver Berkman. It's
Speaker 1: a book about time management. The book comes down to
Speaker 1: him basically saying, you have to face the existential fact
Speaker 1: that A you're going to die. B you only have
Speaker 1: so much time, and that when you continue to think
Speaker 1: you can do all these different things, you're just deceiving yourself.
Speaker 2: You have to choose.
Speaker 1: You have to really think about what's important, and then
Speaker 1: you have to choose, which is very much common sense,
Speaker 1: but not necessarily what a lot of us do.
Speaker 3: Why do you.
Speaker 1: Think that a lot of people are jumping from goal
Speaker 1: to goal to goal to goal. You know, like this
Speaker 1: week it's meditation practice, and then a month later it's
Speaker 1: working on my exercise, and then I think I need
Speaker 1: to take up journaling, and then I'm not like building
Speaker 1: on these things I'm sort of doing one for a
Speaker 1: little while, and I'm jumping ship and I'm picking up
Speaker 1: the next thing. Why do you think that's happening?
Speaker 2: So part of it is a healthy variety seeking. Okay,
Speaker 2: when we talk about exercising, it's actually for many people
Speaker 2: a good strategy to jump around well also quite literally,
Speaker 2: but also jumping between the you know, ladison on one
Speaker 2: week and yoga on the other and then running, swimming, whatever.
Speaker 2: That's actually often good for your body, that good for
Speaker 2: your spirit because you're more interested. So no problem with that.
Speaker 2: The problem with jumping between goals is, well, what if
Speaker 2: they undermine each other? So what if you are decided
Speaker 2: that you are going to save money and then you
Speaker 2: also go on like the shopping spray on the next week,
Speaker 2: because like it was a weekend before that you decided
Speaker 2: to save today you have something else in mind, or
Speaker 2: you know, you decide to eat certain foods on one day,
Speaker 2: but then completely under it on the following day or
Speaker 2: on the next meal, and then we say, well, here,
Speaker 2: balancing when your goals doesn't make sense. We also find
Speaker 2: in studies that sometimes people balancing advance. So because I
Speaker 2: think that I will be eating more healthily tomorrow. I
Speaker 2: feel that it's right to indulge now, And you know
Speaker 2: then it makes no sense because you basically use the
Speaker 2: future as an excuse. Okay, because I'm going to do
Speaker 2: what's good for me. Then I can spend money or
Speaker 2: lose my temper or eat unhealthy food right now. So
Speaker 2: these patterns of juggling between was unhealthy and require more planning.
Speaker 2: Now why people do that? Why people tell me on
Speaker 2: Monday that they are in a program of eating healthier
Speaker 2: food and on Tuesday that they are into baking cookies. Well,
Speaker 2: because we respond to the situation. This is where we started.
Speaker 2: Circumstances affect what we do, and you know, the people
Speaker 2: around us suggest some ideas and we want to try
Speaker 2: it out, and unless we are able to step out,
Speaker 2: okay and kind of look at what we do from
Speaker 2: some distance. The psychologist a stereopapist has these studies about
Speaker 2: teaching people to think about the temptations as ideas in
Speaker 2: their minds that you don't need to act on it. Hey,
Speaker 2: you can just acknowledge that you have this thought, okay,
Speaker 2: that this is something that courses your mind, and you
Speaker 2: can engage with them and think about as yourself how
Speaker 2: interesting it is that you have these ideas and you
Speaker 2: don't necessarily have to act on them in a way
Speaker 2: to counteract the effect of situational primesay of these cues
Speaker 2: that lead us to do things that then we look
Speaker 2: at ourselves and say, oh, well, that was completely inconsistent
Speaker 2: with the person that I want to be.
Speaker 1: The other reason we do some goal hopping is another
Speaker 1: point you make in your book. You call it the
Speaker 1: middle problem or the problem of the middle, which is
Speaker 1: that things are exciting in the beginning and they're exciting
Speaker 1: in the end. In between, they're oft and not. So.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of times we get off to
Speaker 1: a start and we're like, all right, I'm exercising and
Speaker 1: it's good. I'm making these changes that feel good. And
Speaker 1: then it becomes kind of normal and we're going along,
Speaker 1: and then somebody says, you know, boy, meditation really changed
Speaker 1: my life. And we're like, oh, well, that sounds good
Speaker 1: because we're in the boring middle part, and so we
Speaker 1: jump out and meditation in the beginning feels very exciting,
Speaker 1: and then we get into the middle, and so that
Speaker 1: insight that the middle is problematic. Talk a little more
Speaker 1: about that.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's the problem with middles or the middle problem,
Speaker 2: and the middle problem happens every time we have a
Speaker 2: goal that takes more than two seconds. There is a
Speaker 2: beginning and end in the middle, and our motivation is
Speaker 2: very high. At the beginning starting on something, we are excited,
Speaker 2: we proceed fast progress towards the end also that we
Speaker 2: are almost there okay, so we see fast progress and
Speaker 2: we want to get there. In the middle is when
Speaker 2: it's hard to see progress. Your actions feel like you're
Speaker 2: up in the ocean, and so it's just hard to
Speaker 2: stay motivated. We are sawing in one study that was
Speaker 2: a cute study. We went it in Israel around the
Speaker 2: Annoka holiday. If you're unfamiliar with the tradition, if you're
Speaker 2: observing Hanukah, the only thing that you need to do
Speaker 2: is light. Then we know our eight coxecutive nights. So
Speaker 2: it's really not very hard, except that around seventy eighty
Speaker 2: percent of our participants, the people that we serve it
Speaker 2: in the study, we're lighting them man nouea on the
Speaker 2: first day. More the majority of them we're lighting the
Speaker 2: manuea on the last day, and in the middle day
Speaker 2: we're not really doing it. Kind of forgot about their goal.
Speaker 2: We see that some interventions are directed to tackle the
Speaker 2: middle problems. Katie Milkman's the fresh start effect comes to
Speaker 2: mind as a way to think about Monday, is the
Speaker 2: beginning of the week, or the first day of the month,
Speaker 2: or your birthday or a holiday as a reset, as
Speaker 2: a start, so that it helps you to go back
Speaker 2: to the energy that you head at the beginning. What
Speaker 2: I often suggest is to have goals that use time brackets.
Speaker 2: Use these time brackets wisely, and exercise goal should be
Speaker 2: probably a weekly goals. So if you set yourself to
Speaker 2: exercise for one hundred and fifty minutes this week, then
Speaker 2: there is a beginning, there is end. There is not
Speaker 2: a long middle. If you think about exercise we now
Speaker 2: and you know the end of your life, then everything
Speaker 2: is a middle. Saving goals the same like it's really
Speaker 2: hard to save for retirement. We mentioned it because it's
Speaker 2: so far, But if we set it as a monthly
Speaker 2: saving goals or in annual saving goals, now there is
Speaker 2: a beginning, there is end. The middle is not so
Speaker 2: long so that you forget that you even have this
Speaker 2: columni plate.
Speaker 1: I think that's such wise strategy. Changing direction just a
Speaker 1: little bit I want to think about something like practicing guitar.
Speaker 1: These are things for me, meditating, exercising, that are things
Speaker 1: that I don't have an end point in mind. I'm
Speaker 1: not practicing guitar so that I can learn to play
Speaker 1: this one song then I'm done. I'm not meditating, you know,
Speaker 1: so that I can have twenty minutes of feeling happy.
Speaker 1: So these are things that go on and on and on.
Speaker 1: Is it okay to have things that go on and
Speaker 1: on and on or is it really helpful even with
Speaker 1: something like that to put some milestones in place to
Speaker 1: sort of keep it a little more interesting. Yes.
Speaker 2: So you know, the psychologist when they Wood talks about habits,
Speaker 2: and the idea with habits is that you don't really
Speaker 2: need to motivate yourself anymore. You just do it because
Speaker 2: this is who you are. You wash your teeth in
Speaker 2: the morning because you've been doing it for many years.
Speaker 2: You don't need to motivate yourself. You don't need to
Speaker 2: help your future self do with that. So you know
Speaker 2: to the extent that you can make something a habit.
Speaker 2: You get home, the guitar is there, and you play
Speaker 2: a few songs. Great, Maybe you don't need to motivate yourself.
Speaker 2: The thing is that for many of our goals, they
Speaker 2: are never completely a habit. They take exercise, and many
Speaker 2: of us, like so, I've been exercising for our entire life.
Speaker 2: They have been on and off, and some days more
Speaker 2: than others. But we are not new to exercising, and
Speaker 2: nevertheless it is never quite on the level of brushing
Speaker 2: out teeth. Okay, I still need to push myself to
Speaker 2: start every morning.
Speaker 1: Is that because the level of effort. I've wondered about
Speaker 1: this question a lot, because I exercise very, very consistently.
Speaker 1: Every time I'm done one hundred percent of the time,
Speaker 1: I'm like, that was a good decision. It seems like
Speaker 1: I should just do it. But it's not that way.
Speaker 1: Is that just simply because it takes such an amount
Speaker 1: of effort, and we're wired and not put forth that
Speaker 1: amount of effort without a very good reason, I believe.
Speaker 2: So we are really wired to just sit there and
Speaker 2: do nothing if the environment doesn't make us move, right
Speaker 2: like we are anymore like my.
Speaker 1: Dog's in the other room, They're not moving unless there's
Speaker 1: a good reason too.
Speaker 2: Exactly, Yeah, unless the male person is there, why move?
Speaker 1: That certainly makes sense. So something like exercise ends up
Speaker 1: I think being somewhere short of a habit, but more
Speaker 1: than I don't quite know what to call it, right,
Speaker 1: because like I always know that for me, there's some
Speaker 1: momentum to it, Like I'm exercising, it's you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I have to push myself a little bit, but not
Speaker 1: that hard Compared to if I were to stop exercising
Speaker 1: and three months take it back up, the initial amount
Speaker 1: of effort to get that going would be way more
Speaker 1: than the amount of effort it takes me to do it.
Speaker 1: The amount of it will take me tomorrow might be
Speaker 1: like a one on the effort scale to push through.
Speaker 1: If I were to quit and be starting cold, it
Speaker 1: might take like an eight level of effort to get
Speaker 1: me moving. So it's somewhere short of a habit, but
Speaker 1: get some of that habit momentum going.
Speaker 2: Yes, you just pointed out another reason why many goals
Speaker 2: don't become a habit, because at one point life will
Speaker 2: interfere with it. Yes, right, because you will be traveling
Speaker 2: and you cannot fit your exercising with tin to the travel.
Speaker 2: Because you know a parent and you now have children
Speaker 2: on summer break, and that really doesn't work anymore. Yes,
Speaker 2: because you move to a different state where you cannot
Speaker 2: quite do what you did before. Life interferes with our habits.
Speaker 2: We need to be agile, we need to be flex
Speaker 2: above and so we because of the need to motivate
Speaker 2: ourselves to adjust and do something different.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about incentives. So a little while ago we
Speaker 1: talked about how ideally intrinsic motivation, the more intrinsically motivating
Speaker 1: something is, the more likely you are to do it.
Speaker 1: If it's intrinsically motivating, you may not need incentives as much.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about the role of incentives. You lay
Speaker 1: this out in the book pretty clearly. There are good
Speaker 1: ways of incenting ourselves and there's ways that incentives sort
Speaker 1: of backfire on it. So let's talk about incentives a
Speaker 1: little bit.
Speaker 2: There is so much so that we can say about incentives. Okay,
Speaker 2: there is a field of behavior and economics that is
Speaker 2: basically obsessed with incentives, with monitory incentives, and were starch
Speaker 2: in psychologists starting by studying food incentives and how they
Speaker 2: work with animals learning, and so I would say the
Speaker 2: both psychology and economics have been obsessed with incentives for
Speaker 2: a really long time and what we have learned is
Speaker 2: that incentives usually work. Incentives are usually the small things
Speaker 2: that we get on the way to reaching our goal.
Speaker 2: It's the price on the way there. So there will
Speaker 2: reason why you exercise it because you want to be
Speaker 2: in good shape, you want to be healthy. But you
Speaker 2: can also incentivize yourself with a nice set type of
Speaker 2: flatter by the end of a difficult exercise. So it's
Speaker 2: a small thing that you get for pursuing your goal.
Speaker 2: Incentives work, but sometimes they have really unexpected funny effects.
Speaker 2: And in my book, I tell the story of Annoy
Speaker 2: in Vietna back at the beginning of the nineties century
Speaker 2: when French colonials were trying to get rid of the
Speaker 2: rest that were running the street of Annoy, and what
Speaker 2: they did was creating a bounty system where they paid
Speaker 2: residents of Annoy one cent pair or dead rat. So
Speaker 2: you can imagine what happened, right, I mean, the in
Speaker 2: Sandy walked people were giving ton of dead rats. They
Speaker 2: just had to bring the ton of dead right tales
Speaker 2: to claim that we would. But there were more live
Speaker 2: rights running the street of Hannoi. Because it turned out
Speaker 2: that live rights is a source of incat so Sometimes
Speaker 2: incentives have this funny effect where you would actually influence
Speaker 2: what people do, but in the wrong way. They will
Speaker 2: do what you did not plan them to do. Other times,
Speaker 2: incentives backfire. We pay kids to do something and they
Speaker 2: conclude that it's not fun to do. We did a
Speaker 2: study a few years ago when we told kids that
Speaker 2: eating certain foods will help them count to one hundred
Speaker 2: they or will help them learn how to eat, and
Speaker 2: they didn't want to eat these foods. In this case,
Speaker 2: what happened is that these kids, they were around ages
Speaker 2: three year to five, concluded that if the food is
Speaker 2: something that will make you learn how to count, then
Speaker 2: it's more like medicine than food. That it's not something
Speaker 2: that you will enjoy eating. And so incentives can lead
Speaker 2: to funny behaviors, often the opposite for what you're intended.
Speaker 2: They can also sometimes not work at all, and other
Speaker 2: times they do work. How to set good incentives will
Speaker 2: try to make them such a created justification without an
Speaker 2: over justification, so that the incentive is a good reason
Speaker 2: to do the activity, but not such a good reason
Speaker 2: that it overrides the original reason to do the activity.
Speaker 2: It's not the only reason that you do something also,
Speaker 2: uncertain incentives are often better than certain incentives because they
Speaker 2: add an element of surprise. It's a bit of a gain. Yeah,
Speaker 2: not if we tell my exercise, I will reward myself
Speaker 2: with a cup of flooded Okay, but sometimes I will
Speaker 2: so you know, I keep exercising thinking about this nice reward,
Speaker 2: which may be like once a week, I will leave
Speaker 2: myself and that works better than having the incentive every
Speaker 2: time you go from the activity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, You've got a couple of great questions to ask
Speaker 1: yourself when coming to incentives, and one of them that
Speaker 1: I love is what would be the easiest route to
Speaker 1: achieve these incentives? What potential shortcuts exist? If the easiest
Speaker 1: route doesn't pull you towards making progress on your goals,
Speaker 1: you're using the wrong incentives. And I assume with the rats,
Speaker 1: the problem was people concluded if they created more rats,
Speaker 1: they could kill more rats. So what's the easiest route
Speaker 1: to achieve the incentive? Well, the easiest route to achieve
Speaker 1: the incentive is breed your own rats versus going and
Speaker 1: chasing them down. And so I love that question because
Speaker 1: I think it's a really good one. And whether we're
Speaker 1: thinking about our own incentives or even when we're creating
Speaker 1: incentives for our children, or incentives in the workplace or
Speaker 1: anywhere that we're trying to incent behavior, it really is
Speaker 1: worth thinking through what ways could this go wrong? Because
Speaker 1: the number of different ways incentives can go wrong is
Speaker 1: genuinely usually pretty hilarious.
Speaker 2: Here's a personal example from a few years back when
Speaker 2: there was a period of time in history where we
Speaker 2: all thought that we needed to walk ten thousand steps
Speaker 2: a day, and you know, supposed to believe in it.
Speaker 2: I am absolutely sure that it's important for us to walk,
Speaker 2: and adding more steps is beneficial, but the ten thousand
Speaker 2: number is religious and motivational. Well, there is nothing specific
Speaker 2: about this number that is healthier than another number. Anyways,
Speaker 2: I found myself not biking to walk, but walking because
Speaker 2: biking did not give me steps. Right now, this is
Speaker 2: ridiculous because like biking is good for you, doesn't give
Speaker 2: you the steps, but it definitely works on a different
Speaker 2: group of muscles that worth and tending to. And so
Speaker 2: the risk in thinking that you need to walk ten
Speaker 2: thousand steps a day was that you cut out all
Speaker 2: other forms of exercising because ten thousand steps is too
Speaker 2: much time to allow for anything else, and so just
Speaker 2: think about how the incentives are going to influence your
Speaker 2: behavior and with some unintended consequences that you can't foresee.
Speaker 2: I would also say that it's often really hard to
Speaker 2: know in advance, in particular when incentivizing the people around us,
Speaker 2: and parents often incentivized kids. It's really hard to know
Speaker 2: without trying. We try to predict and now, maybe it works,
Speaker 2: maybe it doesn't. So just try an incentive system and
Speaker 2: if it doesn't work, just put it in the trash
Speaker 2: move to something else. You're just experimenting, and I'm all
Speaker 2: for running experiments. I'm a scientist. So run the experiments
Speaker 2: with yourself. Learn what works for you, what kind of
Speaker 2: incentives work for you, and what's the best way to
Speaker 2: get yourself to exercise thirty minutes a day or an hour.
Speaker 1: Interestingly, that ten thousand steps thing. I've got this fitness
Speaker 1: track around my wrist here. It's called a Whoop. And
Speaker 1: the reason I like the Whoop although it's not perfect,
Speaker 1: it's got a lot of work to do. The reason
Speaker 1: I like it is that it attempts to give you
Speaker 1: what it calls a strain score or an effort score.
Speaker 1: What it's trying to do is add up everything you
Speaker 1: do that day into sort of a total amount of
Speaker 1: effort you put out. So that means if you're swimming,
Speaker 1: if you're running, if you're biking, if you're cleaning the house,
Speaker 1: if you're going up and down the stairs. It just
Speaker 1: incentivizes movement. And I like that idea generally, right. I
Speaker 1: like the idea generally that all those different things add
Speaker 1: up and they all matter and they all count, and
Speaker 1: that each day what I'm able to do is going
Speaker 1: to be very different. But if I prioritize moving my
Speaker 1: body whenever I can, good things will come. So it's
Speaker 1: why I kind of like this thing. Now. The strange
Speaker 1: thing about this thing it loves house cleaning. So if
Speaker 1: I'm not careful, if I wanted to get a great
Speaker 1: Whoop score every day, I would just clean my house
Speaker 1: all day long and I would have the best Whoop
Speaker 1: scores ever.
Speaker 2: And a clean house, an overly clean house.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So again, incentives can go wrong, but I do
Speaker 1: like this because it gives me a broader score. And
Speaker 1: like you said earlier, I've always found with exercise for
Speaker 1: me that I do something for a while and then
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm kind of bored to that, Let me
Speaker 1: try something else. You know. So I've done a little
Speaker 1: of everything over the years, which turned out to be
Speaker 1: helpful in sticking with it. I'm like, I'm gonna do boxing,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do pilates, I'm gonna do rock climbing. You know,
Speaker 1: it just keeps things interesting.
Speaker 2: I agree. You know. The nice thing about your example
Speaker 2: is that it again illustrates the power of numbers. Yes,
Speaker 2: And the reason numbers are powerful is because they make
Speaker 2: it really easy to monitor progress, and that is to
Speaker 2: feel like you are making progress. Okay. Imagine running on
Speaker 2: a trademill without any progress kill. Okay, there is nothing
Speaker 2: like you don't know how many miles, you don't know
Speaker 2: how much time, Like you would feel lost after two minutes,
Speaker 2: like what am I doing? I'm not moving in space.
Speaker 2: I think the time is not moving right, Like, there's nothing.
Speaker 2: We need feedback. We need to feel that we are
Speaker 2: making progress, and we need to feel that we have
Speaker 2: made pogusts until now. Okay, So we need to be
Speaker 2: able to look back and say, well, this is how
Speaker 2: much I have done today, or this is how much
Speaker 2: I've done this week this year. And we need to
Speaker 2: also be able to look ahead and say like, this
Speaker 2: is how much I still need to do, and numbers
Speaker 2: make it very tangible. You can monitor pocust very easily.
Speaker 1: Yeah, tracking and monitoring progress is so important. Well, we
Speaker 1: are at the end of our time. You and I
Speaker 1: are going to continue in the post show conversation for
Speaker 1: a couple of minutes, and we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: a really important thing, which is how do we learn
Speaker 1: from negative feedback. We talk so much in our culture
Speaker 1: about failures. Good failure is good, but not if we
Speaker 1: don't learn from it. So you and I are going
Speaker 1: to talk in the post show conversation about how we
Speaker 1: actually can learn from our mistakes. Listeners, if you'd like
Speaker 1: access to the post show conversation. A special episode I
Speaker 1: do each week called a teaching song and a poem
Speaker 1: and the pleasure of supporting a show that you love,
Speaker 1: go to oneufeed dot net slash join. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for coming on the show. It's been such a pleasure.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed the book, and I've really enjoyed this conversation.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me Eric. That was
Speaker 2: a pleasure.
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