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