Teach me how to motivate myself.
Motivation is easy. To boil it down, motivatoin is a process that guides and maintains goal-oriented behaviors.
To do this you're going to have to follow some
rules. They will make this way easier. You don't HAVE to, but you should because thinking is hard.
Rule #1: When you want to do something, don't try to "pump yourself up" or tell yourself "I can do it". Ask yourself if you will do it.
Might sound counter-intuitive, but "Will I?" is better for your brain than "I will".
Your brain craves pleasure. Have you ever switched through like 40 sites only to realize it's the same 4 and you're just waiting for new information? Go on facebook and just scroll scroll scroll scroll?
When you say "I will" you're daydreaming about your success and you're releasing all that dopamine early. You imagine yourself getting first place and BAM. Drive is gone because your brain considers it a done deal.
But you say "will I?" your brain anticipates that release. It
wants it. Craves it.
So say "Will I", ask yourself "can I do this? Will I do this?" and leave it open. Your brain will want to succeed.
If you want to read research on this you can find it in the April 2010 edition of the Psychological Science journal.
Rule #2: No negativity
Negativity is the motivation killer. If you tell yourself you're going to fail, you will lose, it will hurt, whatever, you're going to not look forward to succeeding. If you don't look forward to succeeding you won't want to DO it.
Saying "that's boring" is a death sentence. **** boring. Nothing's boring. Doing anything is awesome or can be awesome. You just have to MAKE it awesome.
If you gave a kid 100 envelopes and said "stuff these envelopes, lick 'em, seal 'em" he'd hate it after #2.
If you gave two kids 50 envelopes and said "stuff these envelopes, lick 'em, seal 'em. Person with the most gets a new video game. Ready.... GO!" they will ask for a rematch.
Same action. Different motivation based
solely on their perception of the event. "Oh, they were just thinking about the video game" is a bull**** response because that doesn't do anything to the actual action. Same motions, just feels different mentally.
Another example:
Let's say on a table is a cupcake. You want to grab it.
In scenario A, there's a machine that will smack you across the face the moment you grab it.
In scenario B, there's a guy you hate that says "don't touch my cupcake, I will smack you across the face the moment you grab it"
Which one gives you more motivation? Despite the fact the actions and end results are the EXACT same I guarantee you most of humanity will grab the cupcake more in scenario B than A.
You know what the difference is in the two examples? It's the added element of competition, of a short-term goal, of a tangible success.
Rule #3: Have a short-term goal, a tangible success
So your teacher says "your assignment is due by the end of the week". You didn't ***** about it to friends like a child, you didn't roll your eyes, and instead of saying "I can finish this before the week is up I'm pretty sure" you said "Can I finish this by the end of the week?"
Good so far.
But then you sit down and you're having trouble actually getting anywhere. You have to read five chapters you skipped out on before, you have 15 pages to write and you can't find OS' awesome how to write a paper post, you need some BS sources from "peer reviewed journals" and you KNOW your professor reads them and makes sure they are good citations, just ugh, right?
Well for one, stop being negative.
Two, just do things one at a time. You finish reading the five chapters. THEN you figure out about writing. THEN you figure out about sources. Not enough? Add more goals. Time yourself. Tell a friend you're working on it and to ask you what you've accomplished in an hour.
It's like the difference between a money match and a tournament. You play in a tournament and you're in pools, you can get lazy and say the games don't matter much. You're in a money match? Every HIT matters. You become more involved because you understand the process and that each individual action is important.
Baby steps, short term goals. Chunking. Do that.
You know how I'm doing this post right now? One rule at a time. I go off and check my e-mail and work on something for a little bit, then come back and write another rule. Done.
Rule #4: Understand why you're doing it and agree with that premise
Have you ever seen someone take a class, goof off all year, find out they are failing, then flip the **** out because they need to pass?
They didn't understand what they were doing, or why, and if they did they didn't agree with the premise.
"I'm taking this class because I need it to graduate."
If you say that and still can't commit to a class,
you haven't internalized what you just said. Either that or you really don't want to graduate.
Motivation isn't some arbitrary thing. It's a dynamic viewpoint that is dependent upon social-contextual supports pertaining to basic human psychological needs.
So if you don't understand, intrinsically and emotionally, why you're doing something you will have zero motivation. That means you ****ed up and were lazy.
Human beings are inherently proactive, have an inherent tendency towards growth, and those tendencies need to be actualized by their social environment. Not understanding why you're doing an action is how you prevent your social environment from being a motivating factor in of itself.
If your parents have ever said "clean your room" (and they have), you probably did NOT want to do it. Why not? It's because you didn't
care. Punishments added to cleaning your room were just arbitrary so they didn't help. Rewards could help a bit, but meh. You still didn't want to do it.
Negativity (being forced to do something), being told to do a massive task (cleaning whole room rather than just "clean up your dresser"), responding to it with assertiveness ("Fine, I"ll do it" or "No, I won't!") rather than priming your brain ("Will I clean my room today?")
and then on top of all of that, completely not understanding your parent's point of view.
"Why are you mad?"
"My parents are making me clean my room!"
"Why'd they ask you that?"
"Because they're jerks!"
some semblance of that conversation has occurred in the past to most people. The kid is the idiot.
Why DID your parents ask you to clean your room? If you can't answer that question honestly and
understand it, you won't have motivation. Sometimes it is impossible, sure. But this is rare.
Your mom comes in to wake you up for school in 6th grade, steps on a toy in the dark and hurts her foot. She gets mad and wakes you up with "Clean your room when you get home today!!!"
You, not once, will think "I love my mother and she hurt herself in my room, I should clean the floor so this doesn't happen to others" unless you force yourself to understand the situation past the surface level.
Rule #5: Remove competition; motivation is a habit
Very, very rarely will you find something more interesting and intrinsically motivating than an opportunity to test yourself against a challenge. So, think of it that way, because this is the hardest one.
You will have competition to meeting your goals. Mafia instead of a paper. Video games or internet instead of sleep or homework. Going to work instead of staying home.
Often, the competition is stacked against you. You have to remove it, because if you don't
you will break your freaking brain.
The majority of mental malaise comes from thwarted need satisfaction. People find something important, don't achieve it through normal means or don't fully understand how to get there, and then their own existence is warped beyond recognition because they overcompensate in certain areas.
You will do the same if you don't remove competition.
Open up your web browser and make it a habit of cycling through websites? BAD.
You have just hurt yourself by dooming yourself to a huxley-esque dopamine loop. Why sleep? I just want to look at cool stuff on the internet, amirite?
You have to end that. Consciously, logically. Do that FIRST or you will undermine the rest.
What's the first thing you do when you go home? Video games?
If it should be homework then you best not play video games the moment you come home.
This is the hard part because it can take up to a
week to break a common habit. You know how long habits maintain dormancy (i.e., if you pick it back up it almost immediately becomes a habit again)?
Three months.
Yeah, ****ing sucks. You will have to deal, because if you're day is waking up, going to class, coming home, then playing video games and debating whether or not you want to do homework you have doomed yourself.
If the only way to do something is to leave a dopamine loop, it will be a struggle EVERY DAY.
Consciously say "**** that" and prevent yourself from doing it while simultaneously making a new, more healthy habit.
You see, motivation itself is a habit. Your body is designed through millions of years of evolution just to have tendencies towards doing what needs to be done and promoting your own well being.
It's very hard to allow that evolutionary design to flourish if your time is all filled up. VERY hard.
There's no easy way around it. You have to physically and mentally decide you want to change your bad habits and remove the competition. This is why some people have a "study room"; if all they do is study, it's easier to study in there.
This is also why some people have trouble sleeping, btw. They lay in bed and read, watch TV or use a laptop, use it for sex, lay in bed to think, jump on their bed, whatever, then they lay down to sleep and find they're not sleepy. If they only use their bed for one thing, they get sleepy fast.
But anyway:
Don't equate things with "funness" or "enjoyment". Just equate them with their reason to be done in the first place. THAT is how you order importance. If you logically sit down and say "Will I do homework or will I play video games", it starts to seem like an obvious choice as to which is more fulfilling. When you then say "I have to do homework so I can get a good grade and make strong connections with this content that can help me later in life in addition to graduating" and that has to go up against "I like shooting zombies" it's like splashing cold water on your brain. Suddenly you feel like an ******* for playing games instead of doing homework, or talking on facebook, or whatever.
Rule #6: Walk through a doorway, reassert your goal
This one helps with lots of stuff, but especially with motivation and planning. You want to get out of that rut? You stuck in the "need to be entertained" mindset? Feeling negative?
Get off your butt, walk through a doorway, then stop. IMMEDIATELY think or say aloud what you need to do. That will become your brains primary focus from that point forward.
Humans for some reason actually have a mental switch that goes off when they walk through a doorway. They just straight up forget what they were thinking about and their brain resets and realigns itself with the new room.
Every feel that change from walking into your classroom or office in comparison to walking OUT of them? Walking into your room or out of your house? Into your car or out of your car?
You aren't one brain, you're many brains and whichever one is booting up depends on the doorway you just entered. If it's a fresh door it's super easy to manipulate. If it isn't it just takes a little bit of effort.
Walk through doorway.
"I need to do XYZ"
That simple.
So follow those rules and motivation will become a habit and very obvious, intuitive thing. You've gotta meet those social needs and to do that you have to understand why you're doing something, remove the negativity, remove the competition, have short-term attainable goals, and instead of just telling yourself you can do it and it is pre-ordained, ask yourself if you can and leave the possibility of failure out there. Your brain will want to avoid it.
