#69: Three Things that got me thinking

💵 accountability on steroids + 😥 This Is Us + 🎯goals revealed

Bonjour tout le monde,

Last week I published my first discussion thread, inviting you to share your questions about motivation. Some of you have already commented with your own challenges—thank you, this has given me a boost of motivation! Feel free to add your own questions or ideas to the discussion here.

Also, don’t miss my second post this week: a Q&A with Ayelet Fishbach, motivation researcher and author of Get It Done. I’ll send it on Wednesday and it will be full of practical suggestions. (The cool kids say ‘actionable advice’.)

Now, onto the Three Things that made me think about intrinsic motivation in recent days:

1. Public goal-setting

2. That This Is Us scene

3. Gentle goal-setting exercises

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1. Sticking to it

I’ve seen the idea of “commitment contrats” to reach a personal goal mentioned in three books: in Fishbach’s Get It Done; in Nir Eyal’s Indistractable; and in Daniel Pink’s Drive (more on Pink’s work next month!).

Two of the authors mention an online service called stickK, where users define a target and put down money; if they don’t reach their goal, the money will go to a friend or a charity they despise. (The website has bright colours and upbeat testimonies. They lost me with the no-pain-no-gain weight-lifting imagery.)

stickK.com screenshot

In Indistractable, Eyal describes his own “price pact”: He committed to paying his friend Mark $10,000 (!) if he didn’t finish the first draft of his book by a set date, which he says “worked like a charm” for him.

I get how stating intentions out loud, being accountable to an accountability buddy or internet strangers, and putting money on the line can help to clarify and solidify goals. Okay for a finite project like writing a book, but what if your goal is to stop smoking? What happens after the first deadline elapses? And how do you recover if you don’t reach your goal and end up paying a fourth of your July wages to the NRA?

Pink advises considering a quick experiment with stickK “if you’re really struggling”. Eyal warns that these scary contracts only work in specific circumstances—short tasks, and circumstances where you actually are able to tune out distracting triggers if you so decide—and aren’t for people who tend to beat themselves up. 🙋🏽‍♀️

Would you try it?

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2. Yes Ma’am

I’m watching season 6 of This Is Us, and I’m not ready for the series to end. 😥

*SPOILER ALERT*

That heartbreaking quote from matriarch Rebecca Pearson, in episode 7 (and the rest of season 6), as she summons her adult children and lays out the law for the upcoming years of her life with Alzheimer’s:

Ron Batzdorff/NBC

My last request is less of a request and more of a demand, actually. […]

I need you all to hear my voice right now, your mother’s voice, with all of her faculties.

You will not make your lives smaller because of me.

This thing that’s happening to me will not be the thing that holds you back. So, take the risks. Make the big moves, even if they’re small moves. Forge ahead with your lives in any and every direction that moves you. I’m your mother and I’m sick, and I’m asking you to be fearless. And if that seems like that is a tall order, well, guess what, it is. But the only acceptable response is a resounding, “Yes, ma’am.”

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3. Bottom of the barrel, but good

In January, I spent a day out with a group of local woman freelancers, mapping out and discussing our goals for 2022. Two exercises stood out for me:

1. The opening exercise was a brief visualisation. Nothing too woo-woo: we sat down, closed our eyes, and one person voiced instructions to gradually imagine ourselves in January 2023, and then to sum up what we saw/felt in a drawing.

2. Later in the day, we filled out a workbook that included, among other things, two A4 sheets where we could list 10 goals for the year.

Half a year later, I have not met half of those goals, and that’s Okay. If you read #22, you’ll know that I approach goal-setting exercises with healthy skepticism. But workbooks I can fill like nobody’s business! This one included common-sense, encouraging prompts and blank spaces and what can I say? Forms and questionnaires get my inner straight-A student raring.

Here is what I learnt that January day:

1. The image I conjured in the first exercise—in just a few minutes—was more honest and memorable (and realistic) than the workbook pages I filled up painstakingly.

2. The juicy goals started to appear at the bottom of the 10-goal list.

I don’t need to think much about the should goals, like growing this newsletter or saving money, because they’re on the top of my dutiful mind. There are also some obvious want goals: things that may be hard to organise in practice, but that—bar a tragedy—I know I’ll make happen eventually, like travelling with my family.

At the bottom of the second page, when I felt I was running out of ideas, that’s where the less expected, more ‘selfish’, intrinsically motivated goals popped up—like dancing or playing music—the things that I love and neglect. (Maybe if I make space and time for them, the other goals will get easier to reach, because I’ll feel more energised?)

Try it! List more goals than you think you need to write out. See what comes up.

Photo by Donald Giannatti on Unsplash