It’s not a “motivation” problem.
If you’re anything like me, self-motivation looks something like this.
Day One: “I need to get my act together and make more money!”
Day Two: Bought $20 book on career advancement. Very inspiring.
Day Three: Lots of options out there for advancement. Take classes? Career change? Ask boss for promotion?
Day Four: Man, there are a lot of important decisions to make. I’ll think about it after a quick round of Angry Birds. *Motivation: Dead*
What happened to all that enthusiasm on days one to three?
It’s harder to lift a finger than you realize.
Researchers from University College London asked participants to watch tennis matches and play referee. They’d make calls on whether the ball bounced in-bounds or out-of-bounds. Sometimes it would be close and sometimes not.
But before each test, the researchers told them that either in-bounds or out-of-bounds was the “default” decision. And they’d have to decide if they wanted to reverse the default, by lifting their finger from a button they held down.
On the close calls, they ended up being more likely to stick with the default, whether it was in-bounds or out-of-bounds. The referee could go either way with the play based simply on whether the researcher had said one or the other was the standard answer.
So what does that mean for my poor resolution to get a raise? I was faced with infinite possibilities, and that meant I was most likely to do…nothing. Think about it next time you try to motivate your kid with the “possibilities are endless” schtik.
So pretend for a few minutes that you’re a rat…
Now’s about the time that the ranks of gym goers—inflated by New Year’s resolution newbies—start to thin out. I doubt those people woke up today and decided being healthy wasn’t as important to them anymore. It’s probably not even that going to the gym was too “hard.”
Truth be told, if they could have gotten through it just a few more months, they might have achieved a healthy pattern for life.
But to help me explain let’s back up a little bit. Pretend you’re a rat.
Stay with me here. You’re a rat. I put you in a maze.
When you get started, you don’t know what to think. There are these white walls that lead you down various paths. There’s a bright light shining in your eyes. There are seemingly random noises and smells. But after some exploring, you find a piece of chocolate.
I make you do the maze several times. Over time, you start to realize that the sounds are leading to the chocolate. So eventually, you’re following the sounds almost automatically out of the gate.
It’s not what we’d traditionally call a “habit”, but that’s what a couple researchers did to a bunch of poor rats at MIT while monitoring the rats’ brains’ neurons to see what happened as the habits formed.
When the rats were just learning the ins and outs of their environments, their neurons fired like crazy—each sight, smell, and sound seemed like possibly relevant information. But once the habit formed, the rats neurons calmed down, only spiking at the very beginning of the task and when they found the chocolate.
In effect, the researchers think the “learning” of the habit replaced the constant evaluation and re-evaluation of what to do next.
Then, the researchers tried to break the habit. They removed the reward altogether. At first, the rats still followed the sounds, but after a little while, they realized the rewards no longer came and “forgot” to follow them. But when the researchers put the chocolate back, the old habits came back immediately, without the previous learning time.
What does that mean? In short, old habits die hard. Reintroduce yourself to why you enjoyed the task in the first place, and those old neural pathways reignite faster than when you first developed it.
Using defaults and habit forming to your advantage
Last night, I listened in on a great talk hosted by Ramit Sethi with B.J. Fogg, a Stanford psychologist who’s done a lot of work on how technology can be used to influence our behaviors.
He and Ramit spent a bit of time talking about motivation, and how Fogg thought people could get over inaction and establish the good behaviors they “know” they should be doing but can’t seem to motivate themselves to do.
One of Fogg’s favorite strategies? Baby steps. He commits to do something regularly, no matter how seemingly insignificant.
For example, Fogg wanted to start flossing regularly. First, he kept the floss right next to the toothbrush to make sure the two activities were connected. But more interesting was his “commitment.”
He would floss at least one tooth per day. That’s it. If he flossed that one tooth, he considered it a success. Before long, he just started flossing his own mouth out of habit, and now, he doesn’t even have to think about it. Flossing’s just part of the routine.
But remember the rat. Now that the habit’s developed, even if Fogg runs out of floss one day or forgets to bring it with him when he travels, it will be easy to slip back into the routine again later. He’s hopefully greased those neural pathways for all time and will be reaping the benefits of a healthy mouth into old age.
The lesson there? Small…extremely small…habits, developed over time, can turn into unstoppable forces. Even more unstoppable than our tendency to default to laziness.
{ 85 comments… read them below or add one }
I have always been a fan of the baby steps concept. I have found in my own life that I am much more productive when I set reasonable small goals that I can reach quickly. Having the quick wins keeps me motivated to try something else. Eventually you reach the big goal without even realizing it.
Really interesting post here. One question I have relates both to my personal experience and one I’ve pondered in general:
Have researchers looked at the relationship between ramp up time and the amount of time between when the habit ended and when the subject attempts to initiate the habit again? I would be really interested in seeing a study on this. I used to work out 1.5 hours a day for 5 days a week. I did this for 2-3 years. I couldn’t even imagine NOT working out. Then I got badly injured and was forced into surgery and then recovery (6 months). Since then I haven’t been able to recoup this great habit I had. Michael Phelps once said that if his conditioning level is X and he takes Y months off, then it will take 3*Y months just to return to conditioning level X.
I think part of the problem might be that I lack chocolate
Certain activities pay dividends far in the future. So how does one create the rewards in the near term? More importantly, if you’re a naturally competitive person that sets lofty goals, how do you retrain your perspective in order to ALLOW for baby steps?
I use the small tasks as a technique to reach my goals. I look at a problem and part of my problem solving process is to set goals with milestones to achieve the goals. For example, I wanted to add an extra day of exercise per week. I use a stationery bike for a half hour. I read while using it to make it more tolerable. I made small changes to create a habit. I like it so much that I plan to add another day.
@Miles: Thanks for the question. I have no idea on the ramp-up time question. As for the “chocolate” question, I’ve referred to a tool that I’ve used in the past called Stickk.com that lets you create a near-term penalty for not adhering to a goal. It’s kind of the opposite tack of “chocolate”…more like a “shock” to keep you from giving up. I’d like to see somebody come up with a similar scheme that uses positive incentives instead of penalties, but don’t know of one yet.
Baby Steps. Reminds me of the movie “What About Bob?” I’m not a slacker!!!
Awsome website! I am loving it!! Will come back again. I am bookmarking your feeds also
There is clearly a bunch to realize about this. I feel you made certain good points in features also.
wow… what a great blog, this writter who wrote this article it’s realy a great blogger, this article so inspiring me to be a better person
They’re produced by the very best degree developers who will be distinguished for your polo dress creating. You’ll find polo Ron Lauren inside exclusive array which include particular classes for men, women.
I am lucky that I observed this website, just the right information that I was looking for! .
I really wanted to post a simple comment so as to thank you for the magnificent guidelines you are giving out on this website. My considerable internet lookup has at the end of the day been compensated with professional strategies to write about with my visitors. I would believe that most of us website visitors are rather endowed to exist in a perfect community with very many outstanding professionals with helpful suggestions. I feel truly happy to have encountered the webpages and look forward to tons of more entertaining moments reading here. Thanks once more for all the details.
I just wanted to send a quick remark to be able to appreciate you for these wonderful tricks you are posting here. My time intensive internet investigation has now been honored with reasonable details to write about with my company. I ‘d mention that most of us visitors actually are very endowed to live in a wonderful website with many outstanding professionals with beneficial secrets. I feel truly fortunate to have come across your web page and look forward to tons of more awesome moments reading here. Thanks a lot again for a lot of things.
I have read some good stuff here. Certainly worth bookmarking for revisiting. I wonder how much effort you put to make such a wonderful informative site.
I’m not sure where you are getting your info, but good topic. I needs to spend some time learning much more or understanding more. Thanks for excellent information I was looking for this information for my mission.
I am also writing to make you be aware of of the perfect experience my child obtained viewing your site. She came to understand numerous issues, with the inclusion of what it’s like to possess an excellent helping character to let other individuals clearly learn about specified extremely tough subject areas. You truly did more than visitors’ expected results. Thanks for rendering the beneficial, dependable, educational as well as fun tips about that topic to Tanya.
I think other web site proprietors should take this web site as an model, very clean and magnificent user genial style and design, let alone the content. You are an expert in this topic!
Some genuinely wonderful work on behalf of the owner of this website , utterly outstanding subject matter.
Simply want to say your article is as surprising. The clarity in your post is just great and i can assume you are an expert on this subject. Well with your permission allow me to grab your feed to keep up to date with forthcoming post. Thanks a million and please carry on the rewarding work.
obviously like your web site but you have to check the spelling on quite a few of your posts. A number of them are rife with spelling problems and I find it very bothersome to inform the truth on the other hand I will definitely come back again.
Interesting page. I really like the topic covered here. I’ll come back every now and then for more postings like this one.
hey there and thank you in your information – I have definitely picked up something new from proper here. I did on the other hand experience some technical issues the usage of this web site, as I skilled to reload the site a lot of instances previous to I could get it to load properly. I were puzzling over in case your web hosting is OK? Now not that I am complaining, however sluggish loading circumstances occasions will very frequently impact your placement in google and can injury your high-quality score if advertising and ***********|advertising|advertising|advertising and *********** with Adwords. Anyway I’m including this RSS to my email and can look out for a lot extra of your respective interesting content. Make sure you replace this once more soon..
This is one of the best postings I’ve read in quite some time. Good work.
Hello this is kind of of off topic but I was wanting to know if blogs use WYSIWYG editors or if you have to manually code with HTML. I’m starting a blog soon but have no coding expertise so I wanted to get guidance from someone with experience. Any help would be enormously appreciated!
I will right away take hold of your rss as I can’t in finding your email subscription hyperlink or e-newsletter service. Do you’ve any? Kindly permit me recognise in order that I may just subscribe. Thanks.
http://www.arttree.com.au is Australia Popular Online Art Store. We sell Canvas Prints, Handmade Canvas Oil Paintings, Customer Artwork, Handmade Canvas Portraits. We Offer Year Round Sale and Get Up-to 70 Percent OFF Discount. We give FREE Delivery Australia, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Hobart and all regional areas. We ship Worldwide at many international locations.
Thanks for the strategies presented. One thing I also believe is that often credit cards supplying a 0 monthly interest often bait consumers together with zero interest, instant authorization and easy online balance transfers, however beware of the main factor that will probably void the 0 easy road annual percentage rate and as well as throw anybody out into the very poor house quick.
I do agree with all the ideas you have presented in your post. They are very convincing and will definitely work. Still, the posts are too short for starters. Could you please extend them a bit from next time? Thanks for the post.
I just visited a post similar to this one, but the content wasn’t as engaging as what’s here.
Thanks for your post made here. One thing I would really like to say is that often most professional areas consider the Bachelor Degree like thejust like the entry level requirement for an online diploma. Whilst Associate Qualifications are a great way to get started, completing the Bachelors opens many entrances to various jobs, there are numerous internet Bachelor Course Programs available via institutions like The University of Phoenix, Intercontinental University Online and Kaplan. Another concern is that many brick and mortar institutions make available Online variants of their qualifications but usually for a greatly higher price than the providers that specialize in online degree plans.
I am typically to blogging and i actually recognize your content. The article has really peaks my interest. I am going to bookmark your website and keep checking for new information.
Hello there, I found your website via Google while searching for a related topic, your web site came up, it looks good. I have bookmarked it in my google bookmarks.
I’ve observed that in the world these days, video games are definitely the latest popularity with kids of all ages. Periodically it may be unattainable to drag the kids away from the video games. If you want the best of both worlds, there are numerous educational gaming activities for kids. Good post.
There may be noticeably a bundle to learn about this. I assume you made sure nice points in options also.
Can I just say what a aid to seek out someone who actually knows what theyre talking about on the internet. You definitely know methods to convey an issue to gentle and make it important. More individuals have to read this and understand this facet of the story. I cant consider youre not more popular since you definitely have the gift.
very nice publish, i definitely love this web site, keep on it
Fantastic blog! Do you have any tips and hints for aspiring writers? I’m planning to start my own site soon but I’m a little lost on everything. Would you propose starting with a free platform like Wordpress or go for a paid option? There are so many options out there that I’m completely confused .. Any suggestions? Thank you!
Great post. It’s very well thought out and quite informative. Keep it up.
Hiya! Quick question that’s entirely off topic. Do you know how to make your site mobile friendly? My blog looks weird when viewing from my apple iphone. I’m trying to find a template or plugin that might be able to correct this issue. If you have any recommendations, please share. Many thanks!
I like this post, enjoyed this one thanks for posting.
This is undoubtedly one of the best articles I’ve read on this topic! The author’s thorough knowledge and zeal for the subject are evident in every paragraph. I’m so thankful for stumbling upon this piece as it has enriched my comprehension and ignited my curiosity even further. Thank you, author, for dedicating the time to create such a phenomenal article!
I just added this blog to my feed reader, great stuff. Cannot get enough!
اکنون می توانید با استفاده از خدمات وب سایت شوپی احراز هویت صرافی های ارز دیجیتال را با استفاده از مدارک فیزیکی و معتبر بصورت نامحدود انجام دهید
Thank you for another informative web site. Where else could I get that kind of info written in such an ideal way? I’ve a project that I’m just now working on, and I’ve been on the look out for such info.
My partner and I absolutely love your blog and find almost all of your post’s to be exactly what I’m looking for. Does one offer guest writers to write content available for you? I wouldn’t mind writing a post or elaborating on a lot of the subjects you write regarding here. Again, awesome blog!
A further issue is that video games usually are serious in nature with the primary focus on understanding rather than leisure. Although, it has an entertainment aspect to keep your sons or daughters engaged, each game is usually designed to focus on a specific group of skills or program, such as numbers or technology. Thanks for your publication.
Normally I do not read post on blogs, but I would like to say that this write-up very forced me to try and do so! Your writing style has been amazed me. Thanks, quite nice article.
Thanks for the sensible critique. Me and my neighbor were just preparing to do a little research on this. We got a grab a book from our local library but I think I learned more clear from this post. I’m very glad to see such wonderful info being shared freely out there.
Wow, amazing blog layout! How lengthy have you been running a blog for? you make blogging look easy. The entire glance of your web site is excellent, as neatly as the content material!
My brother suggested I might like this web site. He was entirely right. This post truly made my day. You can not imagine just how much time I had spent for this information! Thanks!
Its like you read my mind! You appear to know so much about this, like you wrote the book in it or something. I think that you can do with some pics to drive the message home a little bit, but other than that, this is great blog. A great read. I will certainly be back.
{ 1 trackback }