# The Motivation Hacker - Type: #book - ASIN: B00C8N4FNK - Authors: [[Nick Winter]] - Highlights - More motivation doesn’t just mean that we’re more likely to succeed at a task, but also that we’ll have more fun doing it. (p9) - By increasing Expectancy or Value, or decreasing Impulsiveness or Delay, you hack motivation. (p12) - When you see low Value in what you’re doing, either because the end reward is not important or because the process is not enjoyable, motivation is scarce. It can be hard to tell whether something actually isn’t Valuable to you versus when your motivation is too low from other factors, so it’s easy to mistake a bad motivation environment for not caring and vice versa. There (p16) - Regardless of what model of willpower the motivation hacker uses, she will structure her goals so that she doesn’t need to rely on willpower to achieve them. (p20) - If willpower comes into play—if it’s hard for her to resist a cookie or focus on work or wake up for a run—then this is a sign that she needs to do more motivation hacking or goal adjustment until that discipline isn’t needed. (p20) - The converse is true, too: success begets confidence and motivation, which begets more success, and pretty soon you’re fearless on wheels or look forward to crushing spelling tests. (p22) - When you’ve climbed high enough that you can’t even see the ground—when you’ve accomplished goal after goal without fail—then each new goal will be familiar, even if it’s harder than anything you’ve ever done before, and there will be no fear, no doubt, just confidence. And with a little planning and a lot of motivation, you can climb as high as you want. (p22) - You don’t have to shoot for 100% daily adherence, but you should have a definite cutoff, like 95%. Your goal also needs a completion date. You can’t succeed at doing something forever, even if it’s easy; eventually, life changes. You can avoid candy for one month, or keep the dishes clean for two months, or meditate every day for two weeks, but then the goal should be completed. You can always re-up your success spiral on that goal if you’re still interested, or make it harder or easier. Often, though, your interests will move on, and you don’t want to be stuck doing something of low Value just to strengthen your Expectancy. (p23) - An intermediate success spiral might start with a goal defined like this: “I will run 57 out of the next 60 days, even if it’s just for two minutes, although I’ll aim to run for twenty minutes. I will set a recurring reminder to run at 5:30pm. I will place a run-tracking notebook by my bed to mark whether I ran that day, and to remind me to do it before bed if I still haven’t. If I become sick enough to call off work, or if I am injured to the point where running would be unhealthy, then I don’t have to run.” A beginning success spiral might look very similar, except with something easier than running, like brushing one’s teeth or reading books. (p23) - The tip which worked for me was to focus on input-based process goals (write for five minutes) rather than output-based results goals (write one page), and to keep the required inputs minuscule at first. (p27) - As my success spirals grew stronger, I experimented with adding different goals, and found most of them just as easy to habitualize in this way. (p27) - Investor John Templeton once said, “The four most expensive words in the English language are, ‘This time it’s different.’” (p31) - To precommit is to choose now to limit your options later, preventing yourself from making the wrong choice in the face of temptation. (p36) - Publicly announcing your goal is a common form of precommitment. (p36) - Instead of choosing between a cigarette now and good health years later, you have to choose between a cigarette now and being able to tell your friend you’re still clean. Or you can easily resist the temptation of a short-term reward by removing it as an option in advance, like not keeping any junk food in your house. (p37) - Or you can max it out and use a commitment contract: bind yourself to give your entire bank account to The Church of Scientology if you are discovered by any member of a team of private detectives to have knowingly eaten any foodstuff with more than 10% of calories from sugar between now and your cousin’s wedding on July 18, unless the wedding is called off (and not because of any plot on your part) or two doctors judge that the sugar becomes medically necessary for your survival. (p37) - both so that you don’t fall a little short, and so that you have more fun. If the thought of losing $100 can motivate you to go to the gym three times a week for a month, then bind yourself with $1000 and watch yourself run cheerfully to the gym through the cold rain that you hadn’t planned for. (p38) - Everything I can think of! 1.  I’ll give away $7,290 if I don’t do it on or before August 25, 2012. (I put another $7,290 on finishing the first draft of this book by then.) 2.  I’ve already told Chloe, her friends, all my Human Hacker Housemates, and a bunch of people at a party. I’ll tell my startup cofounders, and I’ll post it on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. (I don’t like using social networks, but I haven’t set up an appropriate public blog yet, and I need to do this right now.) 3.  I’m writing this whole chapter about it in advance, and it would be terribly inconvenient to have to rewrite it with a weaker example, and to fail at something when I’m writing a book about how to do the opposite. (Every little bit helps.) 4.  I already paid for it. 5.  Chloe is counting on me. 6.  I’ll nonchalantly email my twin brother, who went skydiving no problem, and tell him that I’m going to go skydiving as if it’s no problem, too. 7.  I’ll fix the date of the skydive now, so that there’s no chance of scheduling problems. (Friends’ schedules dictate August 19.) Some of these things will motivate me less, and some more. I feel most nervous about binding all that money, so I’d better do it right now before I talk myself down… done, and I’m no longer nervous. I’ll set up the other things now, too. It’s important to commit now, not later. Hyperbolic discounting makes it easier to commit the further in advance you do it, and you also want to avoid the habit of putting off commitment (as Chloe always tells me). If you can’t do something now, then set a specific time at which you will decide to either do it then or to never do it. Now that I’ve precommitted far more than necessary, I’m so sure that I’m going to successfully jump out of the plane that I’m not afraid any more. I’m excited. See my smile! If only fourteen-year-old Nick cowering before the kiddie coaster could see it—now there’s a guy who could have used some hope. (p39) - You list possible distractions, and then you make it so that it’s impossible to do those things when you want to be working toward your other goals. Then instead of having to use willpower to prevent yourself from going to go grab a snack, you realize that there are no snacks available, and you get on with your flow. (p44) - or make a 30-second delay before your browser loads any page to stop that compulsive typing of reddit.com whenever you blank out for a second. (p45) - I did a one-week timelapse of my screen[48], with my face in the corner, and showed it to some friends, figuring that it might be fun but that they would eventually skip through it. But every one of them watched the whole seven minutes and exclaimed to me afterwards how inspiring it was that I never checked Facebook! (p45) - Why had this taken me so long to do? I had read countless times that I should eliminate distractions, and the first example was always to turn off the internet. (The second and third were usually to put on headphones and to set up a place to work where only work was allowed, and nothing else.) Maybe the answer is just that addiction is hard to admit. Or maybe it’s easy, and there are other books, like this one except about addiction hacks instead of motivation hacks. I don’t know where you get the spark to start, only how to fan it into an inferno once you have it. (p46) - I had to use success spirals, precommitment, burnt ships, and a new environment. I was missing something which I needed and thought I could never have. I (p48) - Life without it was a combination of shame, fear, despair, and years spent escaping into books and video games. I lacked social skills. Social Zero I was eighteen, and I had no ability to talk to people. Outside my immediate family, I had no friends my age any more—I’d lost them years ago after I couldn’t muster the courage to ask them to hang out. (p48) - When you have private writing assignments like Write to yourself about your life path: what do you know about where you are coming from and where you are going?, it gets tough to keep pretending that your life isn’t a disaster heading for a catastrophe. I had to admit my terror at the thought of always being that way, of going to college in nine months, of being forever alone but for frequent visits from Shame. (p49) - Lifehacker Luke Muehlhauser has broken down social skills into a map of such skills[57], from handshakes to reading faces to hairstyle, which you can look through to find techniques to learn or to see how you might apply the technique to other areas. (p55) - “Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful, lest you let other people spend it for you.” (p57) - This makes it even more important for you to decide what life you want. Most of us spend our time coins doing jobs that other people have given us to do, saving the rest for entertainments that other people are trying to sell us. (p57) - if you’re 5’3”[59]. You’ll have to pay off most of your debt before you can start your own business. If you have tiny children, don’t run off on your own to the Shaolin Temple to master kung fu. (Bring them.) But most of these excuses are rationalizations borne from low Expectancy. (p57) - Spending time coins without a plan is expensive, but at least you have feedback mechanisms like boredom, stress, and depression to tell you when you’re living your life wrong. (p58) - When you hack motivation, you sever those nerves. You’ll need to instead rely on high-level planning and introspection to figure out what you should be doing. (p58) - “Pain and pleasure indicators cannot take the place of being strategic about one’s goals.” (p58) - A terrible way to pick your goals is to do what society wants you to do: to chase prestige. Don’t do things to win the respect of people you don’t know. Instead, do things that you and people whom you respect care about. (p60) - “Prestige is just fossilized inspiration. If you do anything well enough, you’ll make it prestigious.”[64] (p60) - If what you’re clutching is no longer a dream but a memory of one, then drop it. (p61) - You can’t quite guarantee that effort will lead to success, but you can guarantee effort, and that almost always leads to success eventually if you just don’t quit. (p62) - We end up with bad goals that don’t make us happy while we’re achieving them and which give only fleeting satisfaction when we’re done. (p63) - Whenever you override instincts with higher cognitive processes, you’d better do it well, because otherwise you’ll hurt yourself. (p63) - raising it whole point to 7.3 / 10. To hit a 7 on my scale, I have to visibly look happy: smiling, rocking my head to music, or staring determined at my work with fire in my eyes. I knew that I’d need goals that kept me burning all day to pull it off. The goals you choose should do the same: they should drench you in Value and then ignite you. (p66) - For me, the best thing about doing a startup wasn’t the financial freedom I achieved, but the lesson in how it feels to love what you’re doing. After finishing that first ¾ lifetime[74] of work, I’m aiming to work at least a few more lifetimes. It’s more fun than simply having fun. (p67) - We committed to at least a year for the $30K grant, we didn’t have any other fallbacks, and we told everyone we were doing it. With your goals, do the same: don’t leave yourself any safe ways to fail, and you’ll be more confident of success. (p70) - just don’t die, and you’ll succeed eventually. He was right in our case. If you never give up, you’ll make it, even if you have to try many different approaches. We didn’t know whether our startup would make money, but we did know we would work hard and not disgrace our families. Many goals are similar: don’t worry about winning, just ensure that you’ll keep going. (p70) - When I was building a huge new feature that no one was trying yet, that was when I struggled with motivation. (This is part of why they say you should launch early.) Find a way to get people counting on you and appreciating your struggle. (p71) - Everything is more fun when you’re awake. To ensure focus, optimize your energy (p72) - Steve Jobs said that you should stay hungry[80] in order to do great things. If your life is full, you won’t have the same drive as a desperate man. (p73) - This doesn’t matter for many goals, but watch out if you’re trying to compete with those hungry desperados—they want it more than you do, so you’ll have to be extra smart about structuring your motivation in order to work as hard as they will. (p73) - waking up early and doing app development first while I wouldn’t be distracted, and trying to cut back on the other things I was pursuing until only the coolest remained. (p77) - “Aren’t you going to shower?” “I just showered.” “What? Really? But you just… that was fast!” This conversation is as reliable as a “fine” after a “how are you?” with every test subject who has witnessed one of my speed showers. I often shower lazily, lost in thought for fifteen minutes. But sometimes I’ve got something to do, and I want to shower quickly so I can go do it. Telling myself to shower quickly leads only to daydreaming. Making it a challenge to see how fast I can shower, however, leads to glory. My best shower time used to be 1:54 from entering to exiting the bathroom, clothed. While writing this chapter, I was tired and dirty from hours of working out this morning, but I showered in 1:37—new record! If you have a Valueless task you need to do, then make a game out of it so that it challenges you. Get into flow. In The Hobbit, Bilbo’s dinner dwarves did hundreds of dishes in no time by turning dishwashing drudgery into a dish-tossing song. Face boring tasks by imagining yourself as a badass Viking samurai who is called to fight chores. Fill in tax forms with serif handwriting. Timebox laundry. Use your non-dominant hand to take out the garbage, with your other hand behind your back. Floss blindfolded. Send a pesky email on only one breath of air. Clean a room while wearing a gi and listening to Dethklok. Challenge yourself to finish every overdue task today so you can go out and set something on fire tonight. Do some dwarf dishes. (p94) - Deathbed regrets are like Hollywood films: they stir passions for a couple hours, but are poorly connected to reality. They are not good criteria for a well-lived life. (p97) - Whatever goals you pick, you should have some way of measuring the results. Many goals are intended to make you happier, so measure your happiness and see what is effective. (p99) - Don’t rely on willpower, don’t fall prey to overconfidence, and don’t think that overbuilding your motivation structure somehow means that you’re incapable of doing what you want to and should be able to do naturally. (p102) - I have recorded my experiential happiness using this scale for the past two years, randomly each day an average of three times. This has taught me much about what makes me happy and unhappy. (p134) - Notes -