Tag: self-manipulation toolbox

Finding sources of motivation

Akshat Rathi11 Comments

Motivation to do something acts as that driving force which helps us through every phase of an activity. It gives us the energy to initiate the task, then to continue through its ups and downs, and finally also to bring it to an end.

Without the right amount of motivation, doing anything feels like dragging yourself down a road that you don’t want to walk. I am sure you can all relate to this feeling especially when as teenagers you were asked to do certain things by your parents without a good reason, for example cleaning your own room 😉

Additional motivation always help us to do something better or faster. Or at least that is what you feel happens when you feel that wee bit more motivated.

I don’t think I have to give you more reasons to convince you that motivation is an important factor in our everyday lives. I have spent quite some time in trying to understand this mysterious force with a wish to know how can I harness it better.

After speaking to many people about their source of motivation, I can conclude that almost always people have multiple sources of motivation. And it is not surprising that there are many common sources of motivation. We are all human after all. I’ll enlist a few:

Some positive sources: the desire to constantly improve (to be a better person, a better scientist, a better father or a better son), to achieve higher pleasures of life (happiness derived from completing a massive project, from helping someone or achieving a big goal)

Some negative sources: peer pressure (if she can do it, why not me? admittedly it can be a positive force sometimes), fear of failure (almost always bad and which causes so much anxiety).

Some of these sources may have struck a chord with you (like the one in the picture). And may be that after reading this short list you may not be surprised because they are very commonly the sources of motivation that many people use.

But my exploration has helped me find an additional source of motivation. One that I have used many a times unknowingly. That source of motivation comes from my constant quest to find a new source of motivation. It’s as if I treat my motivation to do something as drawing from a motivation bank. And because I treat it as a bank, I tend to look for sources that can replenish this bank.

And I don’t think I am alone in that quest, people seek new sources of motivation all the time. See for example what Alex says:

A friend told me that she had a three-tiered approach to motivation: First is motivation from the cause itself, but this is simply not enough to sustain motivation indefinitely in all situations, so the second layer was motivation from fun: the work itself should be enjoyable, but it’s just not possible to always make work fun, so the third tier was friendship: that you would work through tough times buoyed by friendship with colleagues and co-workers.

Have you got any sources of motivation that you could share with us?

Another human folly has made me think about how I look

Akshat Rathi4 Comments
I wondered, "Why do I need to look good? Why?"

I used to think that how I look or what I wear should not matter. The only thing that should matter is what I stand for: my work, my words and my nature. And yet, time and again as a kid, I was told that I should care too look decent. I was made to make my hair properly and tuck my shirt in neatly. When I rebelled, I was given reasons like the cliche, your first impression is your last impression. With no powers over my parents, I obeyed.

I finally have the right reasons to want to dress well and look presentable. Not that I looked like a mess ever before but now I have a reason to really care about how I look. If any parents are reading this post and have kids who won’t do something without a good reason then you should be happy because in this post you will find that good reason for your kids to want to dress properly.

The reason comes from another human folly discussed in the book Sway: The irresistible pull of irrational forces by Ori & Rom Brafman, called Value Attribution. To explain it, the best methods is through an example from the book:

On a January morning Joshua Bell, one of the the finest violinists alive, wearing a baseball cap nonchalantly took out his $3.5 million Stradivarius violin and started playing on a subway station in Washington DC.

Bell’s performance started with Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Unaccompanied Violin, one of the most challenging pieces ever composed for the instrument. Over the next 43 minutes there was no thunderous applause, no cameras flashing and actually no one seemed to care.

Of the 1097 people who walked by, hardly anyone stopped. One man listened for a few minutes, a couple of kids stared, and one woman, who happened to recognise the violinist gaped in disbelief.

This was no surprise to the people conducting a study of which Joshua Bell was part of. Think about it for a moment. Bell looked like an average street performer even though he didn’t sound like one. Without realising it, the commuters attributed the value they perceived to the quality of the performance. As they passed Bell, instead of hearing an outstanding concert, they heard street music.

Value attribution, after all, acts as a quick mental shortcut to determine what’s worthy of our attention.

This human folly creeps up on us all the time. Here’s another neat example, a bank sent out a flyer about an offer to it’s male customers. 50% flyers were accompanied with a really pretty female model and 50% were accompanied by a not so pretty version of the same model. What were the results? The men who got the pretty version of the model were twice as likely to sign up for the offer as the others.

Of course, no one is claiming that if you only look good and don’t act good that you will make a better impression. Instead, all factors remaining constant, looking good might make a better impression on the other person.

The adage about first impressions holds true after all. And yes, we all learn about it through experience but had someone told me this story, I may have been convinced earlier.

Dealing with anxiety by overcoming a human folly

Akshat Rathi5 Comments

We all suffer from anxiety at many points in our life. It may be to a different degree depending on the cause of anxiety or on the person dealing with the anxiety. It is an unwanted but unavoidable feeling. Some do well to equate anxiety with irrational fears. In this post I am going to discuss one technique which works quite effectively. But before doing that let’s discuss a human folly: loss aversion.

In Sway: The irresistible pull of irrational behaviour by Rom & Ori Brafman, I was exposed to a fascinating human folly. The best way to explain this is through an example:

Prof. Bazerman’s Harvard MBA class starts with an auction. The prize is a $20 note. Rules: everyone can bid, increment is $1 and the second-highest bidder pays as well. Thus, in short, the second highest bidder is the loser.

As you would expect till about a bid of $16 many students participate in the auction but then by $18 there are only two people remaining, highest and the second-highest. A winner and a loser.

Till now students were in the auction to win but at this point, no one wants to lose. So the bid quickly spirals up beyond $20. As the prices climbs higher, the rest of the students roar with laughter.

From a rational perspective, the obvious decision would be for the bidders to accept their losses and stop the auction before it spins even further out of control. But it’s easier said than done. Students are pulled by both the momentum of the auction and the looming loss if they back down. The forces in turn feed each other – commitment to a chosen path inspires additional bids, driving the price up, making the potential loss loom even larger.

So the students continue bidding to a record of $204. All these years that Bazerman has conducted this auction he has never lost a penny.

The lesson? We, humans, are susceptible to care more about losses. Had the students stopped bidding at $21, the winner would have lost $1 and the loser $20. But in the case of the record of $204, the winner lost $184 and the loser $203.

As an observer, this seems completely irrational to us but at the time the student’s weren’t focusing on the prize, instead they were focusing on the loss: the shame of losing a simple bid. If you think about this for a second, you will realise that this human folly of loss aversion manifests itself in our everyday lives all the time.

One of the suggested ways of overcoming this irrational sway is to look at our situation from a larger perspective. If the students had stepped back for a moment and thought hard about where the bid is headed, they would have realised that it’s not something worth pursuing.

Of course doing this is hard because at that moment all you can think about is the loss. But as the Brafman brothers explain:

Our natural tendency to avoid the pain of loss is most likely to distort our thinking when we place too much importance on short-term goals. When we adopt the long view, on the other hand, immediate potential losses don’t seem as menacing.

So you may wonder what is this to do with anxiety. Well, we’ll get to that in a moment.

Imagine that you are driving to meet someone very important. The time and place for the meeting had been fixed quite some time in advance. When you are about 30 minutes from the place your car breaks down. A punctured tyre. You look at the watch and realise you have an hour before the meeting. All charged up you start fixing your car so that you can finish soon and drive to the meeting in time. It takes you 25 minutes to fix the tyre. Now you have 35 minutes to the meeting and you are about 30 minutes away. Although 5 spare minutes is plenty of time, all the time while driving you will be anxious. You will think about all kinds of situations that may never happen, what if you reach late? will he find your excuse of a punctured tyre too trivial? what would make for a substantial excuse? will your first impression ruin it all? will you lose that business deal? how will you answer your boss?

All through this process you are anxious. With the clock moving forward, your anxiety only increases. But what is it that you are thinking about really? You are thinking about a loss. You are worried about losing that impression which you could have made or that business deal that you could have got or your value in front of your boss because of a failed deal.

The problem is that your chances of failure have increased as compared to your chances of success. But because the human tendency to avoid losses, you will magnify the chances of failure. This will soon put you in the same loop as the students who were bidding for the $20 note. You will get more anxious thinking about the loss, that will make you think about greater losses which will in turn make you more anxious. In the process you may run over traffic lights or miss out on the correct turn you were supposed to make on the highway. Your potential losses will only increase.

The technique I am going to suggest to dealing with anxiety is simple: Think about gains and not the losses. Think about success and not the failure. Think about the positives and not the negatives.

And to aide you in the process, you can use the Brafman brothers suggestion to help you think about the positives: step back and look at the larger picture.

If you calmed down (step back) and did not worry about the loss of the business deal (bigger picture)  then you will be able to focus on the driving. It could mean that you may reach there in 25 minutes, instead of 30 minutes, a good 10 minutes in advance (positive). It will get you that good first impression (gain), the business deal and your boss’ praises (success). The potential gains may not be as high as the potential losses but stepping back will help you think about the gains. And, more importantly, thinking about the gains will certainly make it less likely to causes the losses. Where as thinking about the losses will only make it more likely cause the losses.

This technique can be applied to any situation in which you feel anxious. Worried about what will happen if you don’t get the grade you need to? Think about what will happen if you do get a better grade. Worried about what will happen if you don’t get paid this week? Well, what if you get paid double this week. Worried about what will happen if you did not finish the project in time? Think about what praises you may get if you finish it before time.

Loss aversion is a strong force, overcoming that may just become easier if you jump to do the exact opposite: gain seeking.