Get It Done: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation

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relationships: understand the aspirations of people around you; make your desires known; share interests Adam Grant, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of Think Again and host of the TED podcast WorkLife Whether starting a new diet, running a marathon, or gunning for a promotion, Get It Done illuminates invaluable strategies for propelling yourself in whatever direction you want to go—so you can achieve your goals while staying healthy, clear-headed, and happy. With fascinating research from the field of motivation science and compelling stories of people who learned to motivate themselves, Get It Done illuminates invaluable strategies for pulling yourself in whatever direction you want to go—so you can achieve your goals while staying healthy, clearheaded, and happy.

Break the goal down into smaller chunks and find milestones that are rewarding and motivating. The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. And after the first 100 miles, maybe reward yourself with a ice cream cone or something to celebrate your progress. Consider whether goals are "ought" goals—i.e., things you need to do—versus "ideal" goals—things you aspire to do, but aren't strictly necessary. Ideal goals are easier to frame as approach goals. Ideal goals are also more likely to tap into your intrinsic motivation. ( Read more about intrinsic motivation!) In addition, set your own goals. If you set the goal, then you have at least some amount of motivation toward achieving it! So how do you motivate yourself to pursue your dreams and desires when life is in full swing? It all starts with choosing the right goal. Find ways to make the activity fun. If something is more enjoyable, it becomes intrinsically rewarding and much easier to accomplish. For instance, finding exercise and foods that you enjoy that help you towards fitness goals. If you don't enjoy something intrinsically, you will eventually avoid it and give up on it. Even the most dreary tasks can be livened up somehow. uncertain incentives (ex: gambling) are more helpful; incentives that modify the goal are unhelpfulFishbach also suggests that incentives will undermine children's intrinsic motivation more so than adults', because children are still figuring out which things they're doing because they enjoy them versus because of some other incentive. That seems plausible enough. But we want to keep things exciting. And to do that, try to embrace uncertainty and hit pause on your incentives now and then. I’m just saying: take a break. Breathe. It’s not a sprint. It’s a marathon. Hitting pause will also help confirm that you’re pursuing your goal for your goal’s sake – and that you’re not doing it for the incentive alone.

be patient for the sake of others; it is much easier to accomplish things when they are for someone else I mean it wasn't as heavy on the theory part, but towards the end, there was a lot more examples of this type of motivation than this other one and they just became like a numeration and not quite a manual on how to get motivated. incentive structures: if the reward is incorrect, the outcome will be; adding incentives mainly dilutes the goal Social isolation is so unnatural to humans that it's considered a harsh and often cruel and unethical punishment." First, frame it as the end in itself rather than a means to another goal. For example, say your goal is “finding a job” rather than “applying for a job.” You want your goals to be exciting – not a chore.

great goals: are not proxies/means to other goals, are specific, have potential to fail, great incentives, intrinsic Fishbach presents a four-step process for changing behavior, with sections in the book devoted to each: set positive goals, as opposed to “do not do” goals; avoidance goals are chores that lead to thought suppression goals must be valuable and within reach (be on the right side of sunk-cost fallacy); action increases commitment Setting the goal in the first place is perhaps the most obvious one, but as Fishbach explains, there are many ways in which people tend to get it wrong. One step we can take in goal setting is to focus on aligning our goals to our own intrinsic motivation.

P88 dynamics of “commitment promotes consistency” i.e. Alcoholics Anonymous vs. “progress promotes balancing” i.e. most dieting programs Step number one is setting a goal. Second is monitoring progress, third is assessing and weighing it against the many other goals in your life, and fourth is leveraging social support. P62 “Do you think that you care about how interesting your work is much more than the average person, but that you care about how much you’re paid only somewhat more than the average person? Turns out, that’s generally the case. The tendency for almost everyone to see themselves as above average is more pronounced for intrinsic than extrinsic motivation.” P57 “If you only feel calm through meditation, you might struggle to keep your cool when you can’t fit meditation into your busy schedule. Flexibility, such as having more than one way to feel calm, can be important in reaching your goals.” You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead pursue the things you love doing and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off of you.”When you set a goal for yourself – especially if it’s one you don’t necessarily think is super fun to begin with, like work or exercise or vacuuming – you need to make sure you can find some fun aspect in it. Because if you’re having fun, then you’re intrinsically motivated, which in turn leads to success. There are, of course, exceptions. Like, what if you’ve been procrastinating on breaking up your relationship? It’s hard to find the fun in that. But keep in mind how it may make you feel in the long run. Maybe you’ll feel freer, maybe you’ll stop hurting yourself or your partner. So, in situations where it’s hard to find joy in a task, just remember why you want to do something and associate the positive outcomes with it in your mind. So if you had vaguely thought of something like “excelling at your new job” or “getting more sleep” as your goal, try swapping that out for: “complete a work project by the end of the week” and “get eight hours of sleep every night.” If you want to start running, set a target like “run the next Chicago Marathon in under five hours.” Dr. Fishbach has received several international awards, including the Society of Experimental Social Psychology's Best Dissertation Award and Career Trajectory Award, and the Fulbright Educational Foundation Award, and in 2006, she received the Provost's Teaching Award from the University of Chicago.

Here’s another example. Imagine you’re doing yoga. You’re at home, on your mat. And while you’re in downward dog you come eye to eye with a giant dust ball. Maybe that’s the last straw. Maybe it’s at this point that you realize it’s actually been forever since you’ve last cleaned. And so, you get up and whip out the vacuum cleaner. Right. Now. In this case, your sense of falling behind ended up motivating action. Self-control strategies counteract temptation, canceling out the influence of temptations on your goal. This works either by increasing your motivation to adhere to the goal or decreasing your motivation to give in to temptation."

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A great deal of ink has been spilled on the subject of motivating and influencing others, but what happens when the person you most want to influence is you? Juggling multiple goals can dilute and slow down motivation. But in a complex life, multiple goals are often a necessity, so a hierarchy of goals is essential. When dealing with multiple goals, we need to either find a compromise that gets them both done, or prioritize the main goal over all the others, at least temporarily. Fishbach argues that intrinsic motivation is decreased by extrinsic rewards because of how goals and activities are associated. At first, the goal of intrinsically motivated activities may be enjoyment or self-expression. When you add the reward, the activity becomes associated with getting the reward as well—a second goal. Fishbach argues that having multiple goals associated with an activity dilutes the importance of the activity in working toward the goal. She writes,