Perhaps a distillation is that you can build intrinsic motivation in three ways: [...]
That’s a good distillation of half of the point I’m making. The other half is that, tasks are more or less intrinsically motivating because of traits they have. You can make guesses at these traits based on your understanding of yourself and past data, and then make future tasks be more like the good traits and less like the bad traits.
I think this is worth emphasising because “create your own intrinsic motivation” feels obviously reasonable to me, but doesn’t feel very actionable. So I was trying to also give a concrete starting point, with some prompts based on my personal experience (where I’d expect some to generalise, some to not)
This seems inauthentic, or else it just shifts more burden on the individual to make intolerable situations feel tolerable. Not only do you have hoops to jump through, you have to like it.
I think it’s a stable equilibrium to feel like I have a burden to make intolerable situations tolerable, and a stable equilibrium to find it fun to make intolerable situations tolerable. The first equilibrium sucks, the second one is great. But they’re both stable equilibria that it’s hard to escape from. I find I can sometimes pull off jumping to the good one, but not always, and definitely agree that it sucks to end up in the bad one.
I think being in the good equilibrium often happens because I feel a spark of whimsy to make things better and run with it, and the bad equilibrium is when I don’t feel that spark of whimsy and it instead comes from a place of obligation. So I think part of the skill is to notice those whims and nurture them. But I don’t have a great model here.
Are you sure that the excitement you feel is as strong and lasting as you claim? Are you sure it’s deriving from the activities you’ve listed? Why do you think these activities would help other people?
I’m pretty confident? I find excitement one of the easier emotions to introspect on. And a good chunk of this comes from looking back on my life and thinking about things where I’m really satisfied that they happened, so it feels obviously tied to the activity.
I don’t think it’s at all obvious that these activities would help other people—they were intended more as prompts and to give the flavour of what I was talking about, and I trust people to see what sounds like them and what doesn’t. The important part is noticing the traits that are common in worthwhile activities and the traits that are not. Eg, I’m extraverted and get a lot of joy from meeting cool new people, but that obviously doesn’t generalise.
Is it better to take time to optimize for excitement, or just to slog through as efficiently as possible and carve out more time to do thinks that you find exciting without having to artificially generate that emotion?
I feel a bit surprised at your framing of “artificially generate that emotion”. If I can successfully generate excitement, then it doesn’t matter that it’s artificial. If I can’t, then it’s not artificial, it’s just not there.
My logic is that, if I have to do the task anyway and it’ll take a fair amount of time, then it’s much nicer to feel excited when doing it. And, in practice, tasks I find fun often get done faster because I procrastinate less on them, even if I’m a bit less efficient. If you procrastinate less, that one doesn’t obviously generalise though.
I also think that “make the nonsense things you need to do anyway” into something fun is a skill—which is initially high effort, but can become much closer to a reflex (eg, make a checklist of what you need to get done, do it with a friend and joke about it the whole time, etc). And so you’re both investing time for short-term happiness and for long-term happiness, making it a much better trade
Are you sure that these practices aren’t just part of your normal workflow? Are you discovering something that is new and helpful to you, or just noticing an experience you’ve been having all along?
I’m a bit confused by this question—it feels like you’re pointing to a dichotomy between “did naturally” and “did artificially”, while I’m arguing more for “nudge yourself towards the things that you expect to work”. These are things I’ve tried over time, common trends I’ve noticed, and decided to double down on. Eg, I know from past experience that I find editing and being a massive perfectionist unpleasant, so for my month of daily blogging I had a rule of “publish a first draft ASAP, no editing”. This is a rule I might have come up with anyway without explicitly thinking through this process, but these thoughts nudged me towards it. And, in hindsight, it’s definitely made the project far better.
Thanks for all the questions, I found it interesting to think through answers!
My overall reaction to your post is that it’s obviously true once you’re in that good stable equilibrium, and that 90% of just about anybody’s challenge with akrasia is in getting there! Of course, probably the answer to the question of how to get to that good place is something like “don’t be depressed and anxious, do enough right things to maintain your emotional health, and have a life that has a manageable level of stress.” A notoriously hard problem...
That’s a good distillation of half of the point I’m making. The other half is that, tasks are more or less intrinsically motivating because of traits they have. You can make guesses at these traits based on your understanding of yourself and past data, and then make future tasks be more like the good traits and less like the bad traits.
I think this is worth emphasising because “create your own intrinsic motivation” feels obviously reasonable to me, but doesn’t feel very actionable. So I was trying to also give a concrete starting point, with some prompts based on my personal experience (where I’d expect some to generalise, some to not)
I think it’s a stable equilibrium to feel like I have a burden to make intolerable situations tolerable, and a stable equilibrium to find it fun to make intolerable situations tolerable. The first equilibrium sucks, the second one is great. But they’re both stable equilibria that it’s hard to escape from. I find I can sometimes pull off jumping to the good one, but not always, and definitely agree that it sucks to end up in the bad one.
I think being in the good equilibrium often happens because I feel a spark of whimsy to make things better and run with it, and the bad equilibrium is when I don’t feel that spark of whimsy and it instead comes from a place of obligation. So I think part of the skill is to notice those whims and nurture them. But I don’t have a great model here.
I’m pretty confident? I find excitement one of the easier emotions to introspect on. And a good chunk of this comes from looking back on my life and thinking about things where I’m really satisfied that they happened, so it feels obviously tied to the activity.
I don’t think it’s at all obvious that these activities would help other people—they were intended more as prompts and to give the flavour of what I was talking about, and I trust people to see what sounds like them and what doesn’t. The important part is noticing the traits that are common in worthwhile activities and the traits that are not. Eg, I’m extraverted and get a lot of joy from meeting cool new people, but that obviously doesn’t generalise.
I feel a bit surprised at your framing of “artificially generate that emotion”. If I can successfully generate excitement, then it doesn’t matter that it’s artificial. If I can’t, then it’s not artificial, it’s just not there.
My logic is that, if I have to do the task anyway and it’ll take a fair amount of time, then it’s much nicer to feel excited when doing it. And, in practice, tasks I find fun often get done faster because I procrastinate less on them, even if I’m a bit less efficient. If you procrastinate less, that one doesn’t obviously generalise though.
I also think that “make the nonsense things you need to do anyway” into something fun is a skill—which is initially high effort, but can become much closer to a reflex (eg, make a checklist of what you need to get done, do it with a friend and joke about it the whole time, etc). And so you’re both investing time for short-term happiness and for long-term happiness, making it a much better trade
I’m a bit confused by this question—it feels like you’re pointing to a dichotomy between “did naturally” and “did artificially”, while I’m arguing more for “nudge yourself towards the things that you expect to work”. These are things I’ve tried over time, common trends I’ve noticed, and decided to double down on. Eg, I know from past experience that I find editing and being a massive perfectionist unpleasant, so for my month of daily blogging I had a rule of “publish a first draft ASAP, no editing”. This is a rule I might have come up with anyway without explicitly thinking through this process, but these thoughts nudged me towards it. And, in hindsight, it’s definitely made the project far better.
Thanks for all the questions, I found it interesting to think through answers!
My overall reaction to your post is that it’s obviously true once you’re in that good stable equilibrium, and that 90% of just about anybody’s challenge with akrasia is in getting there! Of course, probably the answer to the question of how to get to that good place is something like “don’t be depressed and anxious, do enough right things to maintain your emotional health, and have a life that has a manageable level of stress.” A notoriously hard problem...