In my own research, we have shown that
if we can get people to think about
their wise, the purposes behind their
decisions, the broader purposes behind
what they're doing, they're much more
likely to be able to overcome the
temptation. So, if there's a piece of
chocolate cake in front of me and I'm
trying not to eat it, if you said, "Oh,
I'm I'm not supposed to eat that because
I'm on a diet." That doesn't have much
magic to it. But if instead I'm saying
things like, "I need to do this for my
family. I want to look good for my
children's wedding photos or you know my
children are looking at me or I want to
be a good example or all these other
kinds of reasons that you might these
higher order reasons that you might have
for getting healthier being fitter or
whatever not eating the cake. We show
that that increases the odds that people
will avoid the cake and we think it's
because it's giving people meaning.
These are higher order things that I
care about and these are what's going to
motivate me to hold out. Welcome to the
Huberman Lab podcast where we discuss
science and science-based tools for
everyday life.
I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor
of neurobiology and opthalmology at
Stanford School of Medicine. My guest
today is Dr. Kentaro Fuja, professor of
psychology at Ohio State University and
an expert in the science of self-control
and motivation. If you're somebody who
has ever struggled with procrastination,
sticking to a goal, or coming up with
the goals for your life, today's episode
is for you. We start off today's
discussion talking about the famous two
marshmallow experiment. The one where
they placed kids in a room with a
marshmallow and told them that if they
delayed gratification for that
marshmallow, meaning they didn't eat it,
they would then get two marshmallows.
Those experiments received a lot of
attention in that they were supposed to
predict whether people would be
successful later in life. We talk about
the criticism of those experiments, but
also how some of those conclusions were
valid and more importantly how people of
any age, including you, can build mental
resilience and your ability to
experience deferred gratification toward
your goals. We also talk about intrinsic
versus exttrinsic motivation. These are
topics that are very misunderstood out
there, but Dr. Fuja clarifies that when
we receive rewards for something we are
naturally inclined to do, meaning that
we love, it does not reduce our
motivation to do that thing. And this is
an important point and we go into it in
terms of the practical steps for
building and maintaining your progress
on goals. We also talk about what the
data say about the specific steps that
are most effective to both initiate and
reach short and long-term goals. We also
talk about how to get out of impulsive
states and states of procrastination,
what the data say about how to do that.
Today's episode is really focused on
science and more importantly practical
takeaways, several of which I plan to
incorporate into my own life. I only
wish I had this knowledge when I was
younger, but now, thanks to Dr. Fuja
coming on the podcast, people of all
ages can make great use of the
information and data from his studies.
Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize
that this podcast is separate from my
teaching and research roles at Stanford.
It is however part of my desire and
effort to bring zero cost to consumer
information about science and science
related tools to the general public. In
keeping with that theme, today's episode
does include sponsors. And now for my
discussion with Dr. Canaro Fujitta. Dr.
Kentaro Fujitta, welcome.
>> Thank you. Really excited to be here
today.
>> I'm super excited to talk to you. We
hear so much about motivation,
discipline, willpower, tenacity, but we
really haven't had a modern update on
the psychology of these in a long while.
Not just on the podcast, but I think
most people have heard of the so-called
marshmallow experiment, which hopefully
you could explain to us. tell us what it
revealed some of the criticisms and
maybe even some criticisms of the
criticism because I think the
marshmallow experiment which everyone
will learn about momentarily if they
don't already know what that is sort of
stands as this you know symbol of
whether willpower is somehow innate or
whether it's something that can really
be cultivated. So if you would uh what
is the marshmallow experiment? So the
marshmallow test was actually a series
of experiments that was conducted by
Walter Michelle uh in the 60s to 70s to
80s at Stanford. And what happens in the
classic paradigm is a child comes in and
is seated in front of a plate with some
kind of thing that they really want.
Generally speaking, it was a single
marshmallow. And the children were told
that the experimenttor was going to
leave for a while, but if they could
avoid eating the one or or basically
hold out and not eat the one and it was
still there when the experimentter came
back, they could get two marshmallows.
So, this is essentially a self-control
problem because you have a smaller
sooner reward and you're sort of trading
that off with a larger later reward. And
the key dependent variable here was how
long the child could wait. Now, the
dirty little secret about the
marshmallow experiments is that no child
waited the full 15 minutes that the
experimentter was gone. But what you
could do is you could basically as soon
as the door closed, you would start the
timer and then the the amount and and
you were just basically looking to see
how long the children would wait. That
was interpreted as the child's delay of
gratification ability or otherwise
self-control. Now, there were a series
of experiments that we can talk about.
um they use these experiments to learn a
lot about the different tactics and ski
uh tricks and tools that kids could
learn to use to improve their delay of
gratification. But that's not what
everybody knows. What everybody knows
about these experiments is that many
years later they analyzed data in which
they looked at children's delay time. So
again, how long did they wait before
they indulged in the one uh one
marshmallow? And then they they they saw
to what extent it was correlated with
important life outcomes like academic
achievement, career success, income, uh
even things like incarceration, social
relationships. And what they found was
shocking. The longer children could wait
before eating the single marshmallow,
the more likely uh they were to have to
to do well in school, more likely to
make more money, have more friends, have
better physical and mental health, uh
and also have lower incarceration uh and
problematic behavior
uh reports. Um and so this got people
really excited about self-control
because it was like it it suggested it
was a key skill for important life
outcomes. And this is what generated a
lot of that excitement. Did any of the
kids actually get two marshmallows as a
reward?
>> It depends on the data set. So research
has now shown that the marshmallow test
waiting times depend on a lot of things.
Um so in the original experiments there
were something like 15 minutes. Other
experimenters have shortened that time
to 10 minutes and that's a little easier
for children to do. Another really
important thing about the marshmallow
test is that the child has to trust the
experimentter. If you don't trust the
experimentter, why should you bother
waiting, right? It's perfectly rational.
just to go ahead and grab the one if you
don't trust the experimentter is
actually going to bring you two. Um, so
there have been experiments in which the
experimentter looks reliable or
unreliable in front of the child. So
they forget something or they remember
to do something. And when experimenters
are unreliable, children do not wait.
They just go and grab the marshmallow.
And it's been argued that that's
actually a sensible rational behavior.
So the setup here, it sounds really
simple, but there's a lot of uh art
behind this to make this experiment work
the way it's supposed to.
>> Is it a leap to assume that the adage
that children who observe their parents
doing the thing that the kids are told
not to do are less likely to follow
instruction? For instance, if parents
say, "Listen, no electronic devices
until after dinner and you've done your
homework." And then the kids see their
parent looking at their phone. uh does
that reduce trust in the parents advice?
>> I don't know if it reduces the trust in
the parents advice, but there is a lot
of research on what's known as social
modeling. Uh the most famous experiment
of this, they brought in a blowup doll,
which they clown uh and it was referred
to as Bobo. Uh and kids either watched a
video of an adult punching Bobo or being
nice to Bobo. And then we're allowed to
play with Bobo themselves. And those
that watch, they'll punch the boowo.
We're more likely to punch boowo
themselves. So this suggests that
children are very observant for our own
behavior. And so if you are acting in a
certain way, children are learning that
that's the appropriate way to learn. So
I don't know that it's been done
specifically on self-control. It may
have. Um but certainly in many many
other behaviors, children are remarkably
observant of what adults do. I won't
hold you responsible for defending or
holding up the marshmallow experiments,
but they've received a lot of criticism
over the years as have many paradigm
shifting areas of psychology, right? I
mean, or or neuroscience. You know, I
think it's uh important for everyone to
know that the moment that there's sort
of a a theory put forth like growth
mindset or for the developmental
neurobiologist, the idea that all
neurons in the cortex migrate radially,
like two, five years later, someone's
going to find an exception to that and
then the whole thing seems to crumble,
but then it sort of comes back where the
answer is both. In terms of the the
marshmallow experiment, I've heard a lot
of criticism. It wasn't as predictive as
we thought. Maybe the experimenters were
um sort of bi biasing the data
collection. What are the valid
criticisms in your view and what are the
criticisms of the criticisms in your
view? So, as I mentioned, the
marshmallow experiments or marshmallow
tests, they have to be set up right. And
like a lot of other psychology
experiments, I think the psychologists
kind of intuitively understood what it
took to get it right, but were not very
good at articulating those for others to
follow in kind of a recipe book. Mhm.
>> The most famous criticism or the one
that got the most press recently is that
there was a very large data set of
children outcomes in which they
completed the marshmallow test at four
years old and then a bunch of different
life outcomes at adolescence. And so
they basically wanted to see whether
they could replicate the marshmallow
test and they in principle they should
have and they did and they did not. So
if you looked at the simple correlation
between did delay time predict outcomes
like academic achievement and
problematic behavior, the answer was
yes. It seemed to replicate. But then
the the the researchers controlled for
things like social economic status which
was one of the criticisms of the
original Stanford studies because
Stanford children or at least the
children that were going to the Stanford
University daycare where these
experiments were being conducted were
not your average American family mostly
wellto-do and this matters and so when
the researchers they had like 30 or 40
other coariant variables that they were
controlling for when they controlled for
all these other variables children's
delay of gratification was no longer
predicting these outcomes it was
supposed to. And so this paper got a lot
of attention for basically saying look
there's this the marshmallow tests are
bunk. Now this has been controversial
because the question is was that
statistical adjustment appropriate and
are we interpreting that statistical
adjustment correctly. Um there have been
other experimenters other researchers
who have come along. One of them is
named Yuko Munakata and her team. They
took the same data set and they
reanalyzed it with a different set of
assumptions, a lot more conservative. So
rather than throwing in 30 coariantss,
they put in theorydriven coariantss,
ones that made sense from what we know
already about research as opposed to
like throwing in the kitchen sink. Um,
and when they did that, they still found
that delay of gratification predicted
reports of problematic behavior, which
suggests a very clean replication of the
original marshmallow test.
You know, some people have suggested
that that that failure to replicate the
original marshmallow test. It got a lot
of attention, but it may not have been
the final answer because these
experimenters again came along, looked
at exactly the same data set, and came
to the opposite conclusion. So, there's
still a bit of a debate out there. But I
think the main point to take away here
again is that the way that you set up
the marshmallow test is really
important. You have to have trust, you
know, and the argument about social
economic status is that kids who grow up
in high SCES environments, they're very
stable. They're very predictable. So
when you wait, you are more likely to
get the larger later reward. But if you
come from a lower SCES family where
rewards come and go and people and you
know just because you save now doesn't
mean it's going to pay off later,
they're not going to wait and so it's
not as indicative for them. So all of
these things have to be carefully
controlled for and they were part of the
original experiments. Again, not really
well articulated. To the extent that you
can create a situation where people do
trust that they will get the larger
later reward, there does seem to be some
predictive ability of this test. Now let
me just say as a self-control researcher
myself, I think people are missing the
boat. What is most interesting about the
marshmallow tests is not whether or not
they can predict outcomes later. And
that that's very nice to convince people
that self-control is important. If I'm
applying for federal grant money, for
example, that's probably the first
sentence that I write that, you know,
that that self-control predicts life
outcomes. There have been many many
other ways of testing this hypothesis.
So I don't think we need to rely on the
marshmallow test to make that point
anymore. The most important thing about
the marshmallow test that gets
completely overlooked refer goes back to
something you said earlier, Andrew. Is
it an innate talent or is it something
that we learn? The most important
experiments, Walter Michelle and his
team were teaching children the
strategies of self-control. And when
children learn them, their delayability
got better. That is a really, really
important lesson because it suggests
that self-control isn't something
innate. Instead, it's something that we
learn over time. Let me just give you an
example. So, one of the things that he
taught children was, is it better to
stare at the one marshmallow or close
your eyes? Cover it up or close your
eyes. Three-year-old children believe
that it's better to stare at it because
they think that's how I'm going to
motivate myself. Like if I can see what
I want, I'm going to be able to wait,
right? I can see the one, I can imagine
the second, I can wait longer.
5-year-olds learn that that's not going
to work. And they learn to cover it up
or close their eyes. In interestingly,
this be basically you can create a
written test where you can ask or a
verbal test where you can ask children,
what do you think you should do in order
to to wait longer? And research shows
that children who well let me let me let
me be more careful. Research shows that
there are age related differences. So at
three-year-old they don't know anything
but at 5-year-old they've learned. And
then later on at 13 years old those
children who correctly understand the
quote unquote rules of self-control have
less problematic behavior. So Walter
Michelle and his team went to a summer
camp for children with behavioral
problems. And those that understood the
rules, the the the tricks that work and
the tricks that don't work were less
likely to have behavioral problems uh at
that camp than those who did not. So
knowledge matters. Self-control can be
learned. It can be taught. You can learn
by trial and error. And I think that's
really important because it suggests
that rather than being something that
we're born with, we can get better. We
can grow. We can we can improve over
time. And I think this is a really
important lesson that often gets
overlooked with these studies. I'd like
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I'm smiling as you describe the
strategies these children take because
I've seen some of the videos and we'll
provide a link to those in the show not
captions. They're adorable and in many
ways they reflect the behavior of adults
but in a much purer form. Uh, I recall
one where I think it was a young boy
where he's like leaning into the
marshmallow and he's and he's kind of
doing like a like like acting but he's
not letting himself do and then he looks
away and it seems to be that he's aware
he wants to move. He's letting himself
move but then he's pulling back. And as
somebody who's uh currently training a
puppy, I can tell you that the weight
with placing food or a treat in front of
the puppy and getting that what
neuroscientists call top down
inhibition, the the suppression of
impulse um getting that trained up is so
interesting because talking about a dog
now, but um my new uh you know uh
bulldog mastiff puppy, he will
intentionally look away from the food as
a way to he's so tempted to eat it. So
I'll say, "Look at me." That actually
makes it easier for him. So it makes it
seem like he's more disciplined. But I
think all mammals, probably all
creatures that have this top down
inhibition come up with these
strategies. And I have to assume that
they're pretty unique, not just by age,
but to the individual. And I remember
one kid spinning around in his chair.
And it does seem to be that the impulse
to do something is obviously involves
movement. And it seems, and I'm curious
if there's any research looking at if
people have an opportunity to actually
move their body as opposed to sit
rigidly and prevent movement, whether or
not they're more effective in
suppressing impulsive behavior. I mean,
in cultures, um, many cultures, you have
things like worry beads to sort of
dispel anxiety. Some people when they
get stressed will go for a walk or a
run, and it does seem to work. It's
almost like that there's a revving of
the of the engine uh that drives
movement. We could talk neural circuits,
but it doesn't really matter what those
are. And when we're trying to suppress
any kind of behavior, being able to
channel that movement elsewhere seems
useful. Or what, as I was taught as a
camp counselor for young kids, be a
channel, not a dam. Because trying to
get a bunch of young young kids to sit
still is pretty tough.
>> What you're saying is really
interesting. So, let me caveat
everything I'm about to say with by
saying it's all speculation. I
personally don't know of research
studies that look specifically at
movement, but everything that you're
saying makes total sense to me because
the root, the Latin root for the word
motivation is to move, right? So the
motivation is supposed to be the energy
force behind all of our movements. It
impels action. So to me it makes sense
that if I'm trying to motivate a
particular behavior, being able to to
act would be I mean it is essentially
channeling my energy towards doing
something. I mean, there are experiments
that I can tell you a little bit about,
Andrew, where, you know, to try to train
self-control, they will have people um
uh quote unquote approach or avoid an
object with a joystick, right? So, if
you see something that you're supposed
to avoid, you pull the joystick back.
So, you creating psychological distance
from the temptation versus on the things
that you're supposed to approach like
the broccoli you're supposed to eat,
you're supposed to move the joystick
forward. And there's some research to
suggest that this kind of automatic
you're not actually moving but you know
you're taking action that's often
associated with movement that that can
actually help improve people's
self-control over time help develop
evaluations such that okay the for
dieters for example the chocolate cake
is bad but the broccoli is good. Having
these movements towards the good stuff
and away from the bad stuff um does seem
to improve self-control afterwards.
Again, the question is, um, you know,
it's not quite what you're talking about
in terms of actual movement. Um, I think
there's also some research, again, this
is I'm not not exactly sure, but there's
some research suggests that like if you
fidget, you you might learn better um
than when you don't fidget. There's also
some research where if you are taking
notes with pen and paper as opposed to a
computer, you can learn better. And
again, I'm not saying these just because
I think they're so important, but rather
I just think they're nice illustrations
of exactly what you're suggesting, which
is there's something some really
interesting connection between
movement and motivation, which I think I
mean, I think that's a truism, but I
think these are really interesting
examples of that.
>> One thing I've been just grappling with
for a number of years now is this
concept that doing hard things makes it
easier to do other hard things. And on
the one hand that seems obvious, right?
Um because it's a process. The learning
to recognize the the what I call limbic
friction. That's obviously not a real
scientific term, but that you know
limbic system or more autonomically
activated. We feel like ah we don't want
to do it or we we or we're afraid to do
something and we have to push ourselves
to do it. That's a process that
translates across things. Um sure I I
fully accept that. But as much as I
believe that getting up in the morning,
getting outside, getting sunlight, maybe
taking a cold shower, getting a workout
in can deliver people to a state of mind
where they say, "Hey, you know what? By
8:00 a.m. I did a lot of hard things.
Anything else that I confront during the
day, it's going to be much easier."
While I acknowledge that can be true, I
also acknowledge from my own experience
that doing a bunch of hard things seems
to exhaust some sort of mental andor
physical resource that actually makes it
harder to both avoid certain things and
to push through hard things later. And
so obviously this depends on how hard
you exercise. Are you eating enough? Are
you sleeping enough? Assuming all things
being equal, I'm just curious, is there
a self-control resource center?
It could be distributed across neural
circuits. It could be psychological,
too, of course, but does something like
that exist? And is there any evidence
for that in your work or the work of
others?
>> There's two thoughts that immediately
come to mind with what you just said.
The idea that, you know, you can learn
like by doing lots of hard things, you
learn that you can do hard things and do
other hard things. I I think that's
really interesting from a motivation
perspective because you could argue
that, you know, what's going on here is
that there's some kind of self-efficacy
component that when I've done hard
things, my my self-esteem goes up and my
estimation and confidence to be able to
do harder things increases. And so, and
we do know that as self-efficacy goes
up, your your your ability to do things,
your motivation goes up and your ability
to perform also goes up. So, we
definitely know that self-efficacy is a
really important thing. The other thing
that you mentioned is the possibility of
exhaustion. And I find this really
interesting because it's a highly
controversial topic in social
psychology.
There was a big
um boom of experiments um in the 2000s
uh that suggested just what you're
saying that self-control is kind of like
a muscle and if I use it for one type of
task, I exhaust it for all others and I
have to wait in order for it to recharge
before I can do use it again. Much like
any other muscle. Also like any other
muscle, if I keep using it over time, it
should get stronger. And there were some
evidence for both of those.
Unfortunately, those experiments have um
much like the Walter Michelle study have
come under come under attack for whether
or not they can replicate. And the
conclusions are a bit mixed. There are
some analyses, they're called multilab
experiments where a whole bunch of labs
get together and they try to see if they
can replicate something. And that way
you get rid of experimental bias. There
are some multilab replications that have
tried to replicate this effect. So what
you do in the lab is you do one hard
task that requires self-control and then
you do a second one and the prediction
would be if you've done a hard thing
first then you should be worse at the
second one. So one multilab experiment
did not show that it was that it worked
and another one showed it did. The one
that showed it didn't work was led by
people who conducted this research in
the first place. So it was seen as very
damning like if they can't get this
experiment to work then it doesn't
exist. And so I think the consensus in
the field is that it doesn't actually
happen or at least we can't get it to
work in the lab.
>> Could you uh just for clarity sake uh
when you say it doesn't happen uh what
specifically are you referring to?
>> Let's say we have you um do a task where
you have to write something down with
your left hand. Okay. So this requires a
lot of effort. It requires a lot of
self-control to
>> left-handers out there are like no
opposite hand. Yeah. I just write in
your non-dominant hand. Then then we ask
you to uh you know do some other really
difficult tasks like some task that
requires inhibition. So the one example
is the stroop task right? So you see
words in different color fonts. You're
supposed to identify the font color. But
if you see the word blue in red ink
although the right response is that it's
red because it's written in red ink. You
automatically read the word blue. So you
want to say blue. Um this requires
inhibition. that requires you to stop
your behavior. And research suggests
that if you did the non-dominant
handwriting first and then you did the
stroop task that your stroop task should
become worse. In other words, you should
have a harder time stopping yourself
from just reading the word again. So, if
you've done the left-handed writing,
then you make more mistakes and you are
slower in your responses at the Stroop
task. That's what's known as the
depletion effect, right? Because I got
tired and so therefore my self-control
is worse until it recharges. So one of
these multilab experiments they try
something like this using different
tasks but I've given you a sort of an
example of what kinds of experiments
they run and they could not replicate
the depletion effect. Another multilab
experiment though smaller in scale and
not by the original authors they were
able to get the depletion effect. So
there's a little bit of just mixed
evidence and it's not clear whether
depletion really is a thing. Now, let me
say as a researcher myself, I'm in this
really uncomfortable position where I
actually think depletion is a real
phenomenon because I experience it all
the time in my own life.
>> Yet, I think the way that we have
studied it in the lab hasn't been very
good because much like the Walter
Michelle studies, I don't think the
original authors were very good at
trying to explain what exactly you need.
What are the implicit decisions that
they're making to set up this experiment
that makes it work? There have been some
accusations of like cheating and
monkeying with the data. I I don't know
about that. But my own take on this is I
think depletion is real. I just don't
think we figured out how to bottle it up
in the lab. We do know that people
believe that self-control is depletable
or at least willpower is depletable. And
the more you believe it, the more you
show these patterns. So there's amazing
work by Veronica Job. She has this
little questionnaire that she asks, you
know, if you engage in a strenuous task,
do you feel recharged or do you feel
more tired? And those people who say
they feel recharged
act recharged after doing a really hard
task. So it's hard people doing hard
things.
>> But for people who say that no, you
know, I think it's exhausting,
>> then when they're asked to do the
experiment, they actually show the
depletion effect. Though there's some
evidence that people's lay beliefs about
willpower might really play a key role
in whether doing hard things makes you
tired or whether doing hard things
recharges you.
>> Well, I'm going to stamp the belief into
my mind that doing hard things uh makes
other hard things easier. Uh because I
do believe in the belief effects um that
you describe and that my colleague Ali
Krum at Stanford has described for a
number of different categories of of
thinking and behavior. I also happen to
like exercise and I happen to like the
sorts of things that are supposedly
building up willpower. So, I'm going to
tell myself this, but your point is is
taken, which is that our narratives
about willpower matter a lot for whether
doing hard things makes subsequent hard
things harder or easier. I'm curious
about the specificity of these kinds of
effects. For instance, if people do any
number of hard things, uh, but they're
told to pay attention to their internal
process like, um, can they feel their
stress go up and then go down? Um, maybe
they learn to do some long exhale
breathing to lower their autonomic tone,
which we know, you know, slows heart
rate, etc. Can people learn a process
that then they can apply across
different scenarios? Because I think one
of the fascinating things to me about
school, about exams, about sports, or at
the extreme about, you know, screening
for special operations. You know, we've
had many people from the SEAL team
communities and other special operation
communities on this podcast is this
notion that maybe it doesn't matter so
much whether it's cold water or it's
exercise or it's um matrix math. The the
point is that you have to get into that
place of friction and then recognize
something about where and how your mind
and body go and start to work with that.
And I think that because that's getting
into a deeper layer of willpower and
tenacity that you know no one thing um
can can really we can say is like the
best tool. Like for instance, you're
you're a well-trained musician. Um
having been a failed musician. I suppose
I'm still a failed musician.
>> I too am a failed musician. tell you
that not hearing the um the the notes
come out of the instrument that one
would want to hear and that you're told
should come out of the instrument is
incredibly frustrating.
I think it's every bit if not more
frustrating than the inability to, you
know, do something physical. So, it's
not really about what we're doing, is
it? It's really about being able to
tolerate that friction, that
frustration. Can people learn to
recognize that state and push through
that state and therefore translate it
across everything from sport to
instruments to school to parenting to
whatever?
>> I think what you're saying is really
interesting and I have a whole bunch of
thoughts which I'm going to try to uh
get out uh in a systematic and organized
way. So, first, again, I'm not an expert
in this area, but we do know that people
have differential distress tolerance,
how much um uh unpleasantness they're
willing to put themselves through, and
there are individual differences.
As far as I know, it there there it
probably can be trained um and usually
through exposure, but again, I'm not an
expert in this area. What I can speak to
with respect specifically to willpower
is that willpower training paradigms
have shown to shown very limited
success. So for example, if again
imagine you're doing the Stroop task and
you're doing hundreds and hundreds and
hundreds if not thousands of these
trials. Another training exercise is you
literally go home and you practice doing
everything with your non-dominant hand
as opposed to using your dominant hand.
So these willpower exercises, you do
them for a week and you come back. Some
experiments have suggested that they do
in fact improve self-control. Others say
that they don't. And on average, reviews
of this literature have suggested that
the effect is much smaller than you
might hope despite all the work that you
put in. And it's very variable. So some
people will see some gains, but they'll
be small and but many people will see no
gains. That's about willpower
specifically. And and this is at the
point where I have to get a little bit
more detailed. I think there's a
difference between willpower and
self-control.
So willpower is one of the ways that we
improve and enhance our self-control
abilities, but it's not the only one.
And so the other ones, I've already
described some of them to you that
Walter Michelle discovered with the
delay of gratification paradigm, right?
So he wasn't studying willpower. He
wasn't seeing, he wasn't testing whether
children could just gut it out and use
their own brains to inhibit their
behavior. Instead, he was looking at
things like covering your eyes or
covering the bowl or turning your head
or imagining the marshmallows to be
puffy white clouds or imagining um that
there's a picture frame around it. So,
it's not real. It's just it's just a
picture. Um all of these different
behavioral and psychological strategies
that children were using these enhance
self-control without leveraging
willpower. At this point, you could ask
what is willpower?
And there it's not actually clear in
psychology what that actually means, but
most people understand willpower to be
the effortful inhibition or suppression
of impulsive tendencies. So there's a
yummy piece of cake in front of me and
I'm really tempted to eat it. Willpower
or inhib inhibition is the active
fighting of that temptation. Telling
myself don't think about it. Don't give
in. don't do something about. I think
this is sort of the paradigmatic sort of
version of of of self-control in which
you use your mental muscles to push down
those ideas. Those trainings are the
ones I was telling are not very
effective. But training some of the
other strategies that we might have like
closing your eyes or imagining a
cockroach crawl across the cake or
asking yourself, you know, what your
children would say if they saw you
eating the chocolate cake after saying
that you wouldn't. All these other
strategies, behavioral and psychological
strategies or tools as we might refer to
them, those can be taught and those can
in fact improve your self-control. So
whether or not self-control is something
that you can learn to get better at I
think the answer there is yes whether
willpower is something that you can get
better at there I am not so sure I have
this kind of running theory in my mind
which is anchored in neuroscience we
know that areas of the brain are
involved in kind of more sophisticated
uh processes where we can imagine oursel
now think about our past think about our
goals in the future kind of a high level
strategy uh formation definitely
involves the forebrain but it's a
distributed phenomenon. I think everyone
agrees on that. And then we have brain
areas that we know from stimulation
during neurosurgery, brain lesions, etc.
that they're kind of like switches. It's
like they make you want to eat, they
make you want to mate, they make you uh
want to vomit, they any number of
things. These are hypothalamic. They're
sort of deep limbic and hypothalamic
circuitry. And I have this like very
crude idea that
when it comes to suppression of behavior
or it comes to aspirational behaviors
like motivating to do something hard
over time that when we find ourselves at
a friction point like we don't want to
do something we should or we're having a
hard time resisting something that we
shouldn't that we have to go a layer
deeper into the lyic system and
hypothalamus. Like we just have to come
up with contingencies that are much
grosser than the than the like like like
you said like a cockroach on a on a
marshmallow. It's like sugar's good. We
have an innate circuit for being drawn
towards sugary things, fatty things.
Yum. That's like hardwired. So you So we
go towards the vomit reflex a little
bit, right? We uh we don't want to get
up and go to class because we're
exhausted and fatigue is real. Fatigue
is real. Shuts down our forebrain. So
the circuits are impaired. our
hypothalamus is driving us to like go
back to sleep, but we have to think
about the fear of showing up in class
for an exam and not knowing, you know,
it's the nightmare everybody's had at
least once, right? So, I feel like the
the control strategy seems to be to go
to a deeper layer of fear, disgust, etc.
How well does the opposite work? Like
how good is aspiration for good stuff?
Because those are also powerful drivers
of human behavior. And and I'm curious
whether experiments have been done to
differentiate between sort of fear and
love, if you will, to put it broadly, to
allow us to navigate all sorts of
circumstances. But I love the idea of
chasing love, chasing desire, all these
great things. But there are times when
we have to be like, "Oh no, I got to
imagine the cockroach or else this whole
I'll go back to sleep. I'll hit the
snooze button."
>> I think what you're saying, Andrew, is
something super profound, more profound
than you might think. So, for years,
self-control researchers have assumed
that the secret to self-control is
actually doing exactly the opposite of
what you suggested, which is turning off
the hot system, right? Because they
argue that these liyic systems, these
hot systems, these more quote unquote
anim animalistic systems are the things
that make the temptation so powerful.
And so, by activating those systems, all
we're doing is we're upregulating the
temptation impulses. And so for years
and and this is part of Walter
Michelle's fundamental model for example
and many many others they talked about
making your cognitions cooler. In other
words, shutting down the emotional
system and thinking very cooly and
calmly about the thing in front of you
in order to make the right choice. I
think what's profound about what you're
saying is that you've articulated two
alternatives. One is that I fight fire
with fire. So if this thing is pulling
me, I'm going to find something that's
going to push me away. Right. Um, and as
you said, the example would be like
there's a piece of chocolate cake and I
imagine a cockroach calling across it.
There's not actually very much research
on that. The most most of the dominant
models in self-control really talk about
cooling your cognitions. You're told not
to fight fire with fire. That you need
to be in a calm and collected state. The
reason why I think what you're saying is
true is that I have some other work
looking at the other strategy which is
you said finding love. So, in my own
research, we have shown that if we can
get people to think about their wise,
um, you know, the purposes behind their
decisions, the broader purposes behind
what they're doing, they're much more
likely to be able to overcome the
temptation. So, if there's a piece of
chocolate cake in front of me and I'm
trying not to eat it, if I only think
about cake related things, that could be
really difficult. But if instead I asked
myself like and and even if you said,
"Oh, I'm I'm not supposed to eat that
because I'm on a diet." That doesn't
have much magic to it. It's like it it's
kind of sterile. So, it doesn't move me
in any way. But if instead I'm saying
things like, "I need to do this for my
family. I need to do this to get to my
children. I want to look good for my
children's for my children's wedding
photos." Or, you know, my children are
looking at me. I want to be a good
example. or all these other kinds of
reasons that you might these higher
order reasons that you might have for
getting healthier, being fitter or
whatever, not eating the cake. We show
that that increases the odds that people
will avoid the the cake. And we think
it's because it's giving people meaning.
It's infusing the moment, as you say,
fighting fire, like fighting fire with
fire, not with fear, but with love. Like
these are these are higher order things
that I care about, and these are what's
going to motivate me to hold out. what
you're highlighting is with your
original example something a little bit
different than that which is fighting
fire by taking the positive and turning
it into a negative and my PhD student
Paul Stillman and a colleague of his um
Caitlyn Woolly they did some experiments
in which they had people think about
it's usually when you think about
self-control you think about the
short-term or long-term gains they
instead had people think about the
short-term losses of indulging so what
are some of the things like what's the
like think about the sugar crash that
you would experience if you ate the
chocolate cake. Right. So, and they show
that that kind of served much like you
were talking about the vomit refunks. It
pushes people away far enough. They're
in the short-term mindset. They're
thinking about short-term things. The
short term is pulling them in. So, they
fight that with a short-term repellent.
And they found that that's also very
effective for self-control. Your ideas
are almost antithetical to what most
people would say the status quo in
self-control research. But for that
reason, I'm super excited because my own
work is starting to challenge that idea
as is as is Paul Stillman and Caitlyn
Woolly's that we might be able to use
the lyic system. We might be able to use
our hot reactions. We don't have to
assume that they're going to be bad, but
or they're gonna they're going to pre
predispose us to indulgence, but in make
us susceptible to indulgence, but
instead they might be what inspires us
and gives us the motivation to do the
right thing. And I think that is really
exciting,
>> fascinating. Um, and I'm so glad you
you're doing that work. Um, you know, we
had David Gogggins on this podcast.
David, author of Can't Hurt Me. Um, and
famed for doing hard things all day
long. I I knew David before he had a
book, before he was public facing, and I
can tell you I met him at a meeting and
afterwards he said he was running to the
airport and I thought he meant like
rushing to the airport because that's
what that means to me. He was literally
running to the airport. We were 16 miles
away from San Jose airport. He was he
went in the back changed and he like ran
to the airport with his luggage. So,
he's always been that way at least uh as
long as I've known him. And I think one
of the reasons David is such a shining
example uh of motivation is that he is
very open about the fact that he listens
to negative comments from social media
in his headphones when he when he runs.
He's talked about that. He talks he
tells himself what a piece of garbage he
is if he doesn't do this. I mean he he
basically flagagillates himself into
into doing these things. And any attempt
to suggest to him like oh maybe you
could take like a more soft gloves
approach like he's not hearing it. It
clearly works for him. He's actually
right now um I think he went back to the
military. He's also in um paramedic
school. I think he's he's probably
becoming a physician, too. I mean, he's
he's a remarkable example of that
approach. It's an approach that's very
hard for a lot of people and some people
would say it's pathological. I don't
believe it is because it clearly works
for him and the alternative was far
worse. He'll tell you that as well. We
could even talk about eating disorders,
right? Anytime we have a discussion
about suppression of the impulse to eat
cake, you know, there's going to be a
subset of people out there that are
saying, "Oh, so you know what you're
talk talking about is is eating
disorders, right? Switching the
contingency. If I can avoid it, that's
rewarding." Which is associated with
certain eating disorders.
I love the idea that there's this other
side that you could entice yourself with
the positive outcome. What I'm hearing
you say is that if it's a short-term
battle like right now, think about the
downside or the upside right now. If
it's a long-term battle, you want to
think in terms of long-term outcomes,
bad, both bad and good. Is that right?
Should we have all of those in our
toolkit?
>> I completely agree with you, and I love
the fact that you use the word toolkit.
Um my colleague Ethan Cross and I, we
wrote a paper in which we talked about
the self-control toolkit. Basically, we
argue we have lots of different ways to
enhance self-control.
We speculate that certain tools might
work better for certain people at
certain times. We don't currently have a
very good framework for predicting what
would be the right strategy for this
kind of person in this kind of
situation. And so if your if your
listeners are saying, "Wow, that totally
would not work for me." That's okay by
me, too. I don't think there's going to
be one tool that's going to work for
everybody. The self-control toolbox
approach spec uh explicitly um embraces
the idea that different things are going
to work for different people. So, if
you're the kind of person who's very
reactant,
someone who says, "No, I can do it."
then you might want to think about all
the bad things people say about you
because you're going to react to it and
say, "No, I'm going to do it." But if
you're the kind of person who tends to
listen to what people say and you
incorporate their perspectives and
they're saying bad things about you,
well then that's probably going to have
a demotivating effect, right? So again,
the strategy that works so well for one
individual may not work for another. It
may also be that certain self-control
strategies work for certain contexts and
not for others. So, for example,
you know, for me, getting started with
the workout is the hardest part. I have
all I have litany of reasons why I don't
want to do this today. And so, for me,
the hardest part is just getting on the
bike or starting to lift weights. You
know, sometimes it's just putting on the
workout clothes. The strategies I use
for that, I usually tell myself like,
you know, what would my heroes do in
this situation? So, the quote unquote,
what would Jesus do? I think it's a very
effective strategy in those kinds of
situations. You imagine someone that you
really admire or you imagine someone who
looks up to you and you have you want to
be you want to be that person that you
admire or you want to be that person
that people see in you. That for me
helps me get going for at the beginning
of exercise. But when it comes toward
the end when I'm like just pumping out
that last rep or I'm the last minute of
a really hard climb, these things don't
work so well for me. Like for me at that
point, I just want to grit my teeth and
get it done. And so willpower might be a
better strategy. So, I think we have to
explore the entirety of the self-control
toolbox. We have to be and through trial
and error, find what works best for us.
This is another reason why I would like
to stress to your listeners that
self-control is a skill that you tailor
for yourself and it's a lifelong
journey, right? I'm not going to be able
to get up here and say do XYZ and all of
a sudden people are going to be amazing.
Instead, they have to try and have to
fail. And it's in the failure where you
actually learn the most because you say,
"Oh, that's not for me or at least that
wasn't for me at this time." The reason
why I find this approach really
exciting and also hopeful is that I
think a lot of people when they fail at
self-control, they just say, "I'm a
terrible person. I'm never going to get
this. I just have bad self-control, bad
willpower." But instead, the learning
approach, the toolbox approach just
says, "Okay, that tool didn't work this
time." And failure represents an
opportunity for self-growth and
exploration and discovery, which makes
it a lot more positively toned as
opposed to, wow, I really screwed up.
I'm a terrible person. My goals forever
gone. And I think that's a really
important implication of understanding
self-control not as an innate skill, but
something that you grow and cultivate
over time with things that you learn.
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motivation something that needs warming
up? I I've long chuckled at the fact
that we understand that you need to warm
up before exercise.
Even it's running, you got to jog a
little bit before you you you sprint.
Um, certainly we need warm-up sets
before we do our work sets. Everyone
understands this, but for some reason, I
think people assume that focus and doing
hard things mentally um or creatively
should be like a step function where
you're like show up to the work, you're
like focus. I like to think I've tried
to spread the gospel of of look, it's
going to take a little bit of warming
up. Your mind's going to flip to other
things. I mean, and you can drop into a
groove. I mean, I think the the really
interesting research on both the
hypothalamus, but also these these
higher brain states, if you will, that
the models say that there's sort of like
an an attractor uh model where, you
know, you sort like your your brain
state is sort of like a ball bearing on
a flat surface that's kind of moving
around and the ball bearing is moving
and then over time it becomes more and
more concave and eventually focus you
drop into a groove. But that takes time.
It takes reps. It takes the mind picking
up your phone again for the third time
and then going, you know what, I just
got to get this thing out of the room.
that focus isn't just like a switch.
Motivation isn't just like a switch. And
I don't think people really, they either
haven't heard it or they don't believe
it. But everyone, at least to my
knowledge, has experienced it. We're not
robots. We're not robots. And so, are
there tools that people can use to
either embed that knowledge or to, you
know, move into focused states uh more
quickly or more effectively as well as
move out of motivated states? Has
anything been studied about transitions
between tasks as something useful?
because we have dynamic lives, right?
It's not just about the workout or just
about the class or just about, you know,
parenting or just about whatever it is.
We have to move from thing to one thing
to the next. And these are very
different brain circuits.
>> I think what you're saying is really
fascinating. I love this idea of
attractor states. Um, in my own work, we
don't have that kind of model and we
don't use the language of warming up,
but we do know that there is a dynamic
interplay between how you think about
something and the motivation that you're
experiencing. Right? So if a workout is,
you know, oh, another hour of pain, like
we're not going to get super excited
about it. But if instead you change your
mindset about it and and again, this is
the power of work that Aliyia and folks
who do growth mindsets think about. If
you change sort of the cognitive
orientation you have towards it, a
different set of motivations can get
activated. So if I say it's not an hour
of pain, but instead of me becoming the
better me, that set of cognitions, that
set of thoughts activates a different
set of motives that comes to bear and
and can then be applied to the task at
hand. Now, that's not quite warming up,
but in some senses, it is a warm-up.
It's sort of finding the right set of
thoughts that are working through your
mind to maximize the motivation that
you're experiencing at a given time.
Another interesting thing to think about
is that there's there's sometimes it's
not just about the amount of motivation,
but it's also the type of motivation.
For example, many sports have an
offenseoriented
component and a defenseoriented
component. And they probably require
very different mindsets and they
probably also require different
motivational orientations. One of the
most important orientations that we know
for motivation science is an orientation
towards um nurturance and advancement
moving forward gains
versus an orientation towards safety and
security preventing losses. And there's
been some speculation that and there's
been some research to support this that
having the right kind of motivation for
the right kind of tasks enhances
performance. So if I'm playing offense,
right, there's always there's always
that notion that you don't want to play
not to lose, you want to play to win,
right? And that's particularly true of
offense. So in offense, you want to be
about advancement, promotion, gains. But
when you're on defense, right, at times
it might it very well might be about
preventing losses. And so if that were
true, and again that's not true for
every sport, but if that is true for a
particular sport, you might do better if
you're in a more promotion motivational
state when you are on offense and a more
preventionorient uh motivational state
when you're on defense. And if you get
that mixed up, you won't be as
effective. So when you get the match,
research suggests that you enhance
performance, but if you get a mismatch,
you kind of have like not quite grooving
and you won't perform as well. You're
not kind not right. you're just not
feeling right. You're not feeling fit.
You know, there is research on
regulatory fit and it suggests if you
can if you can get task motivation fit,
if you can find the if you can get
yourself in the right motivation for the
task at hand, you'll have enhanced
performance. Now, the reason why I bring
this up is because research that I've
conducted with my colleague Abigail
Scholer and David Mey, we've shown um
that people have some insight into this.
They know there are certain tasks that
you're better. It's better to be
promotion on this task and it's better
to be prevention on this task. And they
also kind of know the thought processes
that they have to engage in in order to
get there. So are you going to be
thinking about gains or you thinking
about losses? Um are you going to be
more in a sort of a a
security or advancement or security
mindset? They can tell us that if I
think this way, if I think about
security or think about advancement, I
will do better on this task. which
suggests that people have some insight
into what not just the amount of
motivation but the right type of
motivation to do well. And so part of
what you're talking about warming up
might be that people are sort of trying
to cobble together the right set of
thoughts to get the right right
motivational type not just the right
amount but the right type in order to do
the task at hand. There may also be an
additional complexity with the amount
because we know not enough motivation is
not good. But we also know too much
motivation is bad. And so you like
Yorkxy dos Datson rule like the the
U-shaped functions. You kind of want to
be in the middle for ideal. You want to
be amped up to be able to do the task at
hand. But if you have too much, right,
you might choke because it means so much
to you that you just you just overthink
things, right? So there there might also
be regulation not just to maximize
motivation but the right type and at the
right level for the task at hand. So you
can imagine your your colleague David
Grogggins going absolutely crazy at a
daycare soccer, you know, some
children's soccer game. That would be
bad, right? So you need to scale back
motivation, find that sweet spot. So I
think there is a lot of this regulation
that people kind of do intuitively. Some
people probably do it better than
others. And I love this idea. I've never
thought about it as sort of warming up
because it might take a couple of
moments to actually get all the ducks
lined up in a row so that the system is
is operating functionally both
cognitively, motivationally,
biologically at all levels to maximize
performance. And I love this idea. You
also mentioned this idea of switching
and there is an extensive literature in
cognitive psychology and it's called
task switching. Moving from one one set
of tasks to the other and rapidly
switching back and forth. There's
something known as the switch cost.
There's a sort of delay and a decrease
in performance at at the very point of
switching because you're there's kind of
an cognitive inertia. You're still
operating under the old set and it takes
some time to figure out how to switch
into the new one.
Sort of zooming out a little bit. I
think that's also related to research on
disengaging, right? So, um you know,
I've been pursuing this goal for so long
and I get it now. It's done. It it
doesn't really make sense to keep going
because you've already accomplished it.
it's time to move on to something else.
There is some research suggests that
that's that disengagement process is
very difficult. And we actually don't
understand it nearly as well as we
understand persistence. So because of
research on psy and on self-control and
grit, we know a lot more about
persistence than we know about
disengagement. And it's a it's an area
of research that is really important for
us to get into. We do know that
disengagement is related to lots of uh
positive outcomes um when the person is
unable to pursue a goal anymore. So for
example, if you're a woman and you you
always wanted to have children but
you're now past the biological age where
you can have children, it's probably
healthy to disengage from the desire to
have children. Similarly, if we age out
of a sport or we experience some kind of
catastrophic injury where we just can't
do it anymore or the some window of
opportunity has closed, right? Research
suggests that for people who are more
adept at disengagement, they experience
better mental well-being outcomes and
they're able to re-engage in a new set
of goals much faster. But beyond that,
we have to really understand more about
the about the psychology of
disengagement and how we know when to
persist and when to disengage.
It's a really important question, but we
don't know very much about it. Partly
because we tend to in our culture
emphasize persistence and grit more than
disengagement.
seems like what we're trying to do when
we want to get motivated or when we're
engaging self-control is we're trying to
bring together state of mind and body
and concept. So there's the the thought
piece like I'm I'm a person who works
out even if he doesn't want to provided
I'm not sick or injured, right? Because
I think it's important to have those
caveats. I don't believe in the no days
off thing. I take a day off every week.
I cycle my training, etc., etc. But I
also believe in state of mind and body.
And one of the things that's kind of um
well that just isn't discussed enough
among high performers and I think in
athletics in academics in music etc is
that once you taste a really great
workout once you taste flow state once
you taste neuroplasticity like you grind
it out and you learn something and you
now have mastery of something there's
this temptation to need to be in that
perfect state in order to feel like you
can do it at all. like as you ascend the
staircase that somehow like that's going
to happen more and more often and many
people will assemble their entire lives
trying to recreate those states and I
think one of the beautiful things again
about people like David Gogggins we
we've also had Coleman Ruiz and other uh
SEAL team tier one operator DJ Shiffley
uh Jaco Willink I think what's beautiful
about that community is the way that
they describe doing hard things but
actually they were weaned in Buds and
and in their other training
from a place of suck like as Jaco who's
a good friend of mine says you know we
start where it sucks when your weapons
are wet and you're cold and it's sandy
that's the starting line so that you
completely recalibrate this notion of
optimal performance and I think that's
something that we don't really have an
analog for in in the rest of the world
certainly not in academia it's like get
great sleep um maybe caffeinate just
enough be on the right place of that
U-shaped curve right or inverted
U-shaped curve not too stimulated not
under stimulated and on and on and I
think well all of that's great. It's one
of the reasons I don't like the notion
of optimization because ultimately
optimization is about for that moment
and the the idea that we're trying to
attain a perfect state before we can do
the real work I think is one of the more
popular concepts about motivation. So, I
is it possible that we can rewire our
thinking so that we're we start from a
place of suck? Like maybe I should be
doing my workouts at 3:00 a.m. igoggin.
But I don't do that, right? I like being
rested, caffeinated.
>> Do you see what I'm getting at? Yes, I I
because in terms of building real mental
toughness, the ability to push into
something when everything is like
pushing back on oneself,
that seems to require crap conditions.
>> I think what you're saying is really
interesting because I do think we know
from research that people are incredibly
creative at coming up for justifications
to not engage in self-control. So, you
know, I'm supposed to work out today.
Um, my gym clothes don't match. Or, you
know, I'm supposed to work out today,
but it's too sunny. I'm supposed to work
out today, but it's not sunny enough.
It's it's raining too much. It's raining
too. Like, people are remarkably
creative at coming up with reasons to
justify their indulging in their
temptations. So what's really
interesting about what you're suggesting
here is that you can just like and again
I don't know that anyone's actually
studied this but this is there might be
sort of this bias or at least we we
capitalize on a bias that things have to
be just right for me to do it. Like it
has like I I think of this when I'm
writing but um you know I think a lot of
us have this idea that like I don't feel
like writing today like the conditions
just aren't right so I won't I'll just
put it off till like the muses hit me
and it's just right. Right. Um, and you
know, you learn over time that like your
every day is going to be that not so
perfect day. And so you just have to
learn to deal with it. And then once you
get into it, as you were talking about
earlier, you might warm up to a point
where now it's actually optimal, but it
takes some time to get there. I think
one of the things that's really
interesting about what you're suggesting
about the sort of optimization culture
may be that we're embracing this partly
because optimization is an exciting
idea, but also it's a great
justification for not ever doing the
really hard things because the
conditions aren't quite right. And
again, I think people are incredibly
creative at coming up with reasons why
they shouldn't do the the hard things.
In the moment of choice, it seems
perfectly reasonable. And that's one of
the things that's really frustrating and
challenging about self-control because
you mentioned the sort of idea of
aligning concept with body when
self-control conflicts are far away from
us. So when I'm thinking about, you
know, exercising more next year, but not
today, next year, it's really easy to be
able to say like that's that's the right
thing to do. That's the thing that I
really want. But when next year becomes
today, right, all of a sudden my my
mindset's in a different place and that
choice is really hard again. It becomes
really really hard. The clarity that I
once had is gone. What's also
frustrating with self-control is so that
makes it hard to follow through with
your intentions. But what's also really
frustrating about self-control is as
that moment passes and you're looking
back at it sometime in the future,
right? So now that the the the data
start has come and gone and now you're
looking back on it. You have distance
again and the clarity comes back and
you're like why didn't I do what I was
supposed to do? So again, one of the
frustrating things about about
self-control is that it's distance
dependent. The right thing to do is
really clear when it's far away, but
when it's close, it's hard to figure out
what I should be doing. And research
that I've done suggests that this exists
in part because our our minds shift in
how we think about the event. When the
event is in the distant future, it's
more abstract. It's or distant future or
it's happening to somebody else or it's
hypothetical. When it's far away from
me, it's not imminent. I'm more likely
to think about it in terms of
desiraability, why I'm doing it, right?
It's going to be much more abstract. But
as when that future becomes now, my
mindset changes and I'm thinking now
much more about feasibility. How am I
going to do it? And much more much more
concretely about what I have to do. And
the problem is is a lot of these things
that are hard, the wise are really
positive, but the how's are really
negative, right? That's because they're
hard. And so just at the point where I
have to do the hard thing is when I'm
thinking about why it's so hard the
most. And then that's why I say I want
to do it. And then again, time passes,
distance passes, it gets farther away
from me, and I'm looking back at it be
like, but that was something I really,
really wanted to do because now I'm
thinking about it in terms of why again
instead of how. So in order to try to
overcome that in in my lab, we've
conducted experiments in which we have
people think about um we we we bring
them in and we have them think about
their goals and why they're pursuing
their goals or how they're going to
pursue those goals. We then give them a
self-control conflict that's unrelated
to those goals. So they're just thinking
generally about why or generally about
how. So this is again the frame of mind
that we generally have when things are
far away or the generally have frame of
mind when they're close. You use the
word warm-up. So, we've essentially
warmed them up and then we give them a
self-control task and they have much
better self-control when they've thought
about wise than house. And again, we
argue that this is because we're
simulating the mindset of when the thing
was distant than when it was close. But
that's the problem with hard things.
When they're in the distant future, it
seems like a really good idea, but and
we can think about why we want to do it.
When it's when we actually have to do
it, we don't think about why anymore. We
think about how. And the how just sucks.
And then again, as as time passes on, we
look back, we're completely perplexed as
to why we didn't do the thing when it
was it's so clear to us that that was
the thing that we really wanted to do.
>> I would also um add and feel free to
disagree that the the rewards that come
after challenges to meet those rewards
are are the real rewards. You know, I'
I've been going on and on online for a
few years now that, you know, uh
dopamine and other forms of chemical
reinforcement that come without effort.
Um while there are examples of those
that can be healthy or innocuous, most
of them are are pretty uh detrimental,
but there's nothing quite like rewards
that follow intense prolonged effort.
It's really interesting that you mention
this because I think when we think about
self-control, we tend to think about it
as a binary, you know. So, again, if
we're going to use um you know, cake as
an example, so if I'm trying to lose
weight and there's a piece of cake in
front of me, usually it's a binary. I
have this goal to lose weight. I also
have this goal to eat the yummy cake,
right? And those two goals are in
conflict and I have to choose one of
them. And that makes the decision
actually kind of hard because it's one
against one. One of the things I think
really interesting about what you're
saying about doing hard things is that
those are additional motivations that
have nothing to do with losing weight,
right? Those are additional motivations
that fuel the long-term goal. So, I I
was mentioning before it's really
important to think about your your wise.
I I'm using that in plural. It's not
just the one why I want to lose weight,
but it's I want to I want to be
healthier. I want to be a good example
for my kids. I want to show that I can
do this. I want to become the better me,
you know, whatever. All these different
motivations
when it there's no reason why resolving
a self-control dilemma should be a fair
fight. Like why should you give the
temptation a a fair one-on-one
challenge? Instead, I think you're
you're kind of highlighting that growth,
self-discovery,
confidence, self-esteem, you know, um
all these other things can also if we
can leverage them, we we can become much
more um much more powerful against the
temptation because we just find
additional sources of motivation to push
through the things that we really don't
want to do. And ironically it's a self
it's an upward cycle because the more
you do it right the the more positivity
you experience uh and so it's a sort of
a virtuous cycle whereas you can also
imagine the opposite if you give up
right then you say I'm not capable and
all those motivations start to collapse
I'm not going to become that person I'm
not going to grow I am the person I was
worried I was and all these you can just
sort of hear this negative selft talk
and you can see it becoming a negative
downward spiral so I really find what
you're saying really interesting like
like really f like not just the
phenomenon but to really focus on it and
say like I'm doing the hard thing not
just for the one goal but because I want
that dopamine rush. I want you know I
want my system to learn how to take this
on and I want to prove to myself that I
can do it. As I said it's it shouldn't
be a fair fight. We should stack the
deck in our favor.
>> Yeah. If the temptation is limbic, come
in with more limbic as well as high high
level concepts. Spread them out over
time is what I'm hearing. what's the
benefit now? What's the drawback now of
making the wrong decision? And then
extend that out to like tomorrow, the
next day. Spending a little bit of time
on these things can can mean a lot. And
in the end, what we're saying is a lot
of time is really like a minute. Yes.
Like it's not like you have to sit down
and do a journaling exercise, although I
think from your work, it's clear that
that can be beneficial. I do also think
that like it should get easier over time
because as you said we have these
attractor states in our mind and you
know the first time we try to pull these
thoughts together it's hurting sheep
right so you're trying to get all these
ideas and these motivations and these
thoughts and these biological systems
motivational systems cognitive systems
all lined up the first time you do that
that might take more work but the more
you do it right we know the mind likes
to practice and be in the same places I
think at more over time it should become
faster and faster so this idea of
warming up which I really that you
mentioned before, the warm-up might get
easier and easier and easier the more I
do it.
>> Well, the concept of warming up came to
me years ago when we would record neural
activity in in the brain uh of either
awake animals or in some cases I had the
benefit of of seeing this in humans. I
have a friend who's a neurosurgeon and
if you look at a a an animal or a person
doing a task and and you you could use
functional imaging so it's more
non-invasive um or you could use
electrodes you could use calcium imaging
and monitoring the activity of lots and
lots of neurons you you don't see that
like the the person or the animal like
does this perception exercise and all of
a sudden like the circuit that's
involved like lights up. What you see is
there's a lot of noise, what we call a
lot of hash, not not the kind people
smoke, but it's like it sounds like on
the audio monitor as they repeat the
task over and over that the signal
becomes very very clear and you haven't
made any adjustments to the equipment.
Sometimes you have and you start getting
great signal to noise because the
circuit just it's these attractor states
and that the signal to noise goes way
way up. And I was watching this and
going oh these are like simple
behavioral tasks or perceptual tasks of
like telling you know uh you know a
person trying to say oh you know the
dots are moving up or the dots are
moving you know on average down and you
just see like the brain goes through
this like transition state and then and
then as people get sleepy it gets a
little noisier and then it comes back
again. I was like, "Oh, this kind of
like explains a lot of my experience
trying to study or to do things." One uh
piece of knowledge that I'm really
excited about that I'll just pass along,
there's a guy down at
>> University of Pittsburgh, Peter Strick,
um who's an exerciser. He happens to
like doing exercise, but he also maps
neural circuits. And he discovered that
the brain areas that control movement of
the large musculature, when those become
active, they actually activate the
release of adrenaline when we move. And
the adrenaline then feeds back on those
circuits.
This is a a reminder to anyone that
doesn't feel like working out. The
warm-up serves to increase these
chemicals that then bring more signal to
noise in the neural circuits that
control movement. So, it makes sense why
like after 5 minutes of warming up,
you're like you're more motivated. It's
it's not purely psychological. Anyway, I
just kind of throw that out there. I'm
curious about the role of of
competitiveness. Um, you know, when I
was a posttock, I was confronted with
being uh in an area of science where a
lot of tools were coming in. It was
super competitive and it was kind of a
first come first serve. There was some
creative work involved, but like we all
knew what the tools were and we were all
like going hungry hippos for these and I
was in competition with really big labs.
And that competition fueled me in a way
that I wasn't familiar with. I'm not I
don't consider myself an innately
competitive person about most things. I
won't like be the guy who has to win at
ping pong, right? Um certain things I'm
competitive about but not others. But
what I noticed was having a an enemy was
incredibly motivating. And in the end,
they got some and we got some and we
ended up being more or less friends at
at the end. But and it brought out our
best. I like to think that it brought
out our best. Do people tend to kind of
distribute along a a normal distribution
or is it a binary distribution in terms
of competitiveness? And to what extent
are people that are competitive like we
have the example like Michael Jordan who
apparently was like he was competitive
about everything apparently. To what
extent are those people the people we
call motivated are they just really
really competitive because a lot of
endeavors in life are not competitive
but a lot of them are right getting at
the you know the setting the curve being
the one student who could or two
students who can get A+ in the class
like you and I you know you went to
Harvard I'm at Stanford you know and you
know it's a very competitive environment
the sort of the apex of competitive
academic environments so how does
competitiveness play into willpower and
tenacity and self-control over time. Are
those people just better at it? But what
happens when you remove the enemy? You
remove the competitor.
>> I think what you're saying is really
interesting. Um, and I too have heard a
lot of these stories and I've always
thought they were very interesting. I
personally don't know of any direct work
looking at competitiveness and
self-control. Um, the closest work that
I can think of in my sphere and there
might be other research on competitives
outside of the work that I typically
read mostly has to do with achievement
motivation. Right? So achievement
motivation is a lot like competitiveness
in the I think competitiveness actually
often comes out of achievement
achievement motivation. Achievement
motivation is sort of like a recognition
for doing really really well on
something and it's usually really really
well relative to other people, right? So
like achievement motivation, you really
want to be the person all the way at the
top. Like that's maximal achievement,
motivation, satisfaction if you're
number one. If you're number two, you
might actually get to that situation
where now you're rivals and that fuels
you to go higher and higher. We do know
that achievement motivation is a
motivation like many other motivations
that's probably normally distributed. Uh
so so that ach the desire for
achievement and achievement recognition
uh will be stronger in some people and
weaker in others. The thing to think
about I think is although achievement
motivation may be sort of um promoted by
our particular culture. When I think of
motivation, I think of much more of the
the myriad or plethora of different
emotions that we the different
motivations that we have that might
motivate behavior in just as productive
a manner. So I'm I'm I'm examining for
I'm thinking about for example we know
that belonging motivation is really
important for humans. Humans as a social
species we survived because we were in
groups and we had others. A human alone
is not very powerful but a human in
large groups is very powerful. So, we've
evolved this motivation um to be
connected and and socially intertwined
with other people. But I'm sure you know
folks that are super belonging motivated
and people who are not so motivated. And
the people who are really motivated to
belong to a group will do amazing things
in order to belong to the group. If they
get rejected from that group, they will
they will bend, you know, heaven and
earth to get back in that group and just
do amazing things. So I and there are
many other motivations too. motivations
for power, motivations
uh for um uh you know control, uh you
name it. There's there's a whole
motivations for self-esteem, motivations
for for competence. Um and so you know
when I think of motivations, I try not
to think of any one motivation, but sort
of think about the aggregate motivation
impelling pushing us towards a
particular uh behavior. So again, we
were I was talking a little bit before
about not giving the temptation a fair
one-on-one uh fight, but actually
bringing to bear all the motivations
that might help you overcome it. If you
know what motivates you, you should use
those and activate those when you need
them strategically. Right? So if I'm
someone who is competitive, then I might
use achievement motivation to fuel my
desire to to do really hard things. Um,
but maybe I'm not that kind of person.
And and you see this all the time. I I
do Pelaton and you see the Pelaton
instructor say like if you don't want to
see the leaderboard, get rid of it. For
for some other people, it's more about
being on the bike with other people. And
that's what and and staying with the
group, not being in front of the group,
but staying with the group is what fuels
them to do things that they didn't think
they could do before. Again, just taking
the idea of a self-control toolbox
really seriously. Different strategies
are going to work differently for
different people. And so I think it's
really important to explore and not just
explore different strategies, but to
really to explore yourself to really say
like what really does motivate you. And
I'm not sure that we always do know what
really motivates us. I think a lot of
times we kind of discover what our
motivations are by saying I like this
and I don't like this. But it's only
through exposure. So to go and explore
and figure out what makes you tick and
then to exploit and use those in your
strategies and again the constellation
of tools that works for me may not work
for other people.
>> I'd like to take a quick break and
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I've been playing with a little bit
recently in my own life is um just
striving for immense con consistency in
certain things, not trying to fail, but
not focusing so much on on peak
performance, but just without fail.
Every single night, I have a particular
practice before I go to sleep and just
no matter what, I show up to it. If I
fall asleep, I get out of bed. There are
times I'm like, I'm not like fully
focused on this right now. I'm not I'm
having trouble fully focusing on this,
but for me, it's really become an
experiment in consistency. I think I'm
like two years and some change now into
it. And and so it's tapped into this
different part of myself that I'm not so
familiar with, which is like not trying
to get the best performance out, right?
Um but that's great when it happens, but
it's different. And earlier we were
talking before we went on, Mike, we were
talking about abstinence versus
moderation. And I'm curious what the
data show. Uh, and when I hear
abstinence, obviously it sounds like
people trying to avoid certain
behaviors, but I think we could flip it
the other way, too. You know, is it uh,
you know, is it always the case that um,
you know, we have to show up to to the
thing or, you know, at our best or like
yesterday I was supposed to do a HIT
workout and I confess, look, happens to
me too, folks. I was like I was due for
a high-intensity interval training
workout and I was like things were
getting really compressed. I thought,
what would happen if I just did the
eight rounds of this on the assault
bike, but I didn't go all out and I'm
going to just do the first two, not
lazy, but semi- lazy. And I noticed by
the third or the fourth, of course, my
motivation started to increase. And I
was like, "Oh, this is really cool." It
was it was informative for me because it
showed me where the barrier was. It
wasn't necessarily about the effort. It
was about the concept. So, what's the
deal with abstinence versus moderation?
When when can we tap into this as a
useful tool? I'm gonna have a two-part
answer, so it might be a little bit
longwinded. I'll help remember both
parts. So, the first part is that
generally speaking, um, psychology has
tended to emphasize absence or
consistency in self-control over the
alternative, which is moderation. So, we
have a lot of self-control theoretical
models which stress the importance of
patterns over isolated acts. Once you
have a pattern of behavior in place, it
carries a a special
uh hold over you that a non-pattern does
not. So, let me give you an example. So,
I have an I have an Apple Watch and it
tells me if I've closed my ring for the
day. And there was a point in time where
that number was some huge number because
I had managed to be consistent for a
really long time. And it's let's say it
was 500. And I I had 500 and I wanted
that to keep going. And just knowing
that I had that unbroken streak of 500
in and it of itself became motivating to
me above and beyond the desire to
exercise and all the reasons why I
wanted to do the workouts. Right? So
these theoretical analyses have
suggested that one of the things that
helps us maintain self-control is the
knowledge of the pattern. The pattern
itself has strength over us in a way
that doing something once every once in
a while sporadically does not. So if
you're able to tell yourself I do this
I've done this every week for you know
this every Sunday for every week or for
the last x number of years that has a
special motivational power that perhaps
even the same number of things even the
same number of times you've done the
activity if you've done it more
sporadically it doesn't have that power.
Perhaps it could be just because you
have the habit. Perhaps the habit locks
you into place and it's possible that
you know we have like psychological and
cognitive things that help us in place.
Others have argued that you know we like
the sense of completeness the gestalt of
having this pattern whereas again the
sporadic doesn't have that sort of s
orderly system right um but one of the
things that you might recognize is that
patterns tend to lead to really rigid
behaviors right so when I was when I had
the streak going I was like up at the
middle of the night on a treadmill just
trying to get my steps in um just
because I wanted to keep the pattern
which was really stupid Um so you know
they can take a life of their own which
in some cases can be good but it can but
the rigidity of these behaviors could
also be bad. So it was this idea that
there might be um um trade-offs
associated with abstinence like
drawbacks of abstinence that got my
student fun and I really interested in
if there were other alternatives and the
most common alternative is some version
of uh moderation. So at its extreme
abstinence is doing like never indulging
in the temptation or always doing the
goal- directed option and moderation is
generally doing the thing that's good
for the goal but allowing yourself to
have the occasional lapse. Now I want to
be clear here. This is not the same
thing as failing because failing or just
you know justifying something post hawk.
You're you're not talking about the
pattern of behaviors. You make that
decision in the moment and say well you
know the the cake looks really good.
It's sunny out. It's beautiful. I
deserve the cake and you eat it. That's
sort of like a a justification in the
moment. When we're talking moderation,
it's more kind of like I have the goal
in mind and with the goal in mind, I
understand that indulging once isn't
going to kill that goal, right? So, so
it's not that I don't have the goal in
mind and I'm just want the temptation. I
have the goal in mind. I'm integrating
it with the indulgence and saying this
one instance isn't going to destroy my
goal. It's a lot like saying, you know,
eating chocolate cake once isn't going
to make you fat. or eating a salad for
lunch one day isn't going to allow you
to lose weight. What matters is the
sustained behavior over time. But you
have choices about that pattern. You can
either have it be completely consistent,
one thing, or you can have cheat days.
And so we were really interested in some
of the trade-offs. You think about some
of the trade-offs. Abstinence, as I just
mentioned, leads to really rigid
behaviors. But computationally, like the
choices is already preddecided for you.
You sit down, it's it's Monday 5:00,
that's your exercise time. You don't
have a choice, right? If you're
following an absolute strategy, the
choice is made for you. It's really
easy. So, it's computationally simple.
In principle, if you can hold on to
that, it makes much more rapid progress
because you never take a step back.
You're always going towards the goal.
But there are some trade-offs with this,
like the rigidity, right? So, it's
Monday 5:00 PM. It's your daughter's
wedding, but you're getting the workout
in. Why? Right? like that that lack of
flexibility is kind of crazy. Once the
pattern is broken, it's all or none.
It's gone. So, if you're absent and you
have a lapse, the goal is done, right?
You you can't go back. My point here is
that there are some trade-offs between
abstinence and moderation. And we are
really interested in trying to
understand why people choose one versus
the other for what kinds of tasks, what
kinds of what kinds of goals. um and
with the idea that maybe sometimes we're
picking the wrong pattern for the goal
at hand. Right? So, for example, if I'm
trying to be faithful to my spouse,
right? Abstinence is probably better
than indulgence because the thing about
being faithful to your spouse is that if
you have the one lapse, you are no
longer a faithful spouse, right? Sort of
by definition, that's a situation in
which you have failed and that goal is
gone forever. On the other hand, for a
student studying for an exam, they can
hang they can they can watch a little
Netflix or they can study for their
exam. Normally, those two types of
conflicts th those two goals aren't in
conflict. But if they're if the night
before an exam, now they're in conflict.
Do they exclusively study or do they
give themselves a study break? In that
kind of situation, a study break might
be okay because the taking five minutes
for a study break doesn't mean that you
fail at studying. So, so we're kind of
interested in whether people pick
certain kinds of strategies for certain
kinds of conflicts, whether and also
whether certain personality types might
prefer certain kinds of strategies. So,
if I'm the kind of person who likes to
keep things black and white, abstinence
might be the way to go. If I'm the kind
of person who likes variety, then
moderation might be better. Another
thing that we're really interested in is
why people pick the wrong one. And one
of the things that we've been finding,
some initial uh findings that we have
from our lab is that when you present
people with targets, other people who
have engaged in absence versus
moderation, at least the participants
that we've asked generally say that the
person who engaged in absinence has
better self-control than the person who
engaged in moderation, which is
interesting to us because actually
moderation is more difficult. So you you
could have said that the moderation
person has more self-control than the
person who's absent because that's the
that's in principle the easier decision.
But this suggests to us is that there's
a there may be a bias that when people
are saying okay I want to go on a diet,
I want to exercise more. I want to uh do
whatever they might be defaulting to
abstinence when in fact they might be
better off doing some some version of
moderation.
>> Fascinating. Uh, two of the best pieces
of advice that I ever got for my
academic career, but turned out to be
valuable for all sorts of long-term goal
pursuits um and just life is my dad
who's a scientist, you know, he said
when I really hit the gas pedal on my
academics because I was coming from
behind coming out of high school um he
said, "Listen, you got to be a
long-distance runner in this game. You
know, you you there is a thing called
burnout and you just have to figure out
what you can do consistently." And then
uh a neurologist at Berkeley who was
also in the psychology department, Bob
Knight, u one time I asked him like
what's the key to this whole thing? And
he said uh um he said find a
nondestructive way to reset yourself
each week and figure out what you can
invest five or six days per week and
update that every five years or as your
personal life changes. So what he was
saying was what you can do as a graduate
student is different than when you're a
posttock and when you have a family and
and I said what's your non-destructive
thing and he goes completely mindless
activities in particular fishing. I
don't want to insult any of the
fishermen and women in the in the
audience. I have a lot of fishermen on
my mom's side. Um but he just would go
fishing not think about science not
think about anything. I don't know if he
did it with other people or not. And
that was his reset. And I think as
simple as that advice is, it was really
valuable to me, which is why I'm saying
it now, because he was laying out a
pattern. The week is is a fundamental
unit of work, and you have to figure out
how to reset so you can continue to come
back and be that long-distance runner.
Otherwise, you could burnout is real,
physical burnout, uh mental burnout, and
what's not sustainable is like not
sustainable. I think one of the things
that you know one of the ideas that
we've been playing around with is this
notion that there might be sort of two
modes of goal pursuit that people have
one of them is the single goal like
here's the most important thing in my
life and I'm going to sacrifice
everything for it
and again that's very effective for
getting things done and I think some of
the most highly productive highly
successful people specialize in that
mode and and I think our our society is
actually really good at advancing that
idea like they say like you
study when you're young. Throw
everything into it. That's not
important. Put your put your effort into
this. We're really a very goal- directed
society. I think we raise our I think,
you know, we're really raising our kids
to be that way. Saying like, you know,
you got to do XYZ. So, if you want to be
an athlete, you have to do this, this,
this, this, this. If you want to be, you
know, if you want to be a scientist, you
have to do this, this, this. You have a
doctor, this, this, this, this. So, we
kind of track them really quickly, and
then everything becomes about that
singular goal. But humans we never
pursue one goal at a time. Like the
truth is we are pursuing in our lives
multiple goals. So I have a goal to
spend time with you know to work
obviously but I also want to spend time
with family and friends. Um I want to
exercise watch out for my health. I want
to indulge my artistic side. I want to
indulge you know all these different
goals. They they're kind of what my
friend Abby calls invisible goals.
They're goals that we're pursuing, but
we aren't necessarily aware that we're
pursuing them. And as a result, we're
not actually maximizing and giving them
their fair due diligence for us to be
the well-rounded humans that we want to
be. So, you were mentioning balancing
work and nonwork. I think this is
fundamental, but when we think about
what is success, we go back into that
single goal mind, right? That single
goal mode. And one of the things, again,
I think that's why people prefer
abstinence over moderation. They think
they're thinking about the one goal that
is most important to them, and they're
going to subordinate all the other
goals, sacrifice all the other goals
that they have for that one goal. But
there might be something really healthy
and wholesome about understanding that
you're actually pursuing multiple goals
and then realizing that you have to
divvy your effort among them. and doing
so systematically might end up helping
all the goals in a way that's better
than just pursuing the one and
sacrificing all the other ones. In other
words, the the gain from pursuing all of
them might be more than the gain of
pursuing the one. And I think the the
the philosophies of abstinence versus
moderation kind of speak to that that
that tension between do I pursue the one
that's really important versus do I do I
spread my effort among the many.
Certainly in the United States, we love
to rever the examples of extreme
performance. Michael Jordan, um you
know, uh Mike Tyson, um amazing
gymnasts, um uh you know, Yoyo Ma, like
all these people. But if you if you talk
to them or people from the tier one
operations community, they'll tell you
um there was very little balance
certainly when they were ascending the
ladder. But even to maintain high
performance, very very few people can do
that over time and have a a stable and
healthy personal life. Some can, many
can't. These days there seems to be a
kind of theme of of demonizing people
for being too extreme after I find it
very selfish on the part of um the
public to you know like rever these
people glean all the rewards of the
incredible you know photos of Jordan
Duncan and the dynasties and all that
and then and then be like oh well he was
you know compulsively uh competitive or
something like that like what do you
want like I mean obviously he did it for
himself hopefully more than he did for
uh for the adoration but you Imbalance
also brings extremes. I, you know, we're
talking about training a dog, right? I
mean, you can get these dogs that can do
extreme things well beyond what their
their breed represents, but that dog is
not going to be like other dogs. Its
neural circuits are honed around these
training things. And that's what happens
when you take young kids and you shape
them around a certain behavior, academic
or or athletic. So, it's easier to look
at those examples and say, "Oh, yeah. I
don't want to deal with that." And so
let's demonize them. I think we should
celebrate those people if that's what
they genuinely wanted. And we should pay
attention to the fact that they became
asymmetric in their wiring literally.
And most of us probably don't want that
or aren't willing to make those
sacrifices. And I think we can be okay
with that duality in our heads like you
know I there may be goals for which you
pursue in that single single-minded way
and because they're so important to you
as long as you're aware you know so sort
of like do I want to be a specialist or
a generalist
>> and you can't be both. So balancing your
time and effort between those two modes
I think is really important. You have to
decide okay this this this goal is worth
sacrificing for these other ones are
not. And as long as we're aware of the
trade-offs, I think that's good. My
concern is I think we often aren't aware
of the trade-offs. We're only aware of
the trade-offs in retrospect after we've
made the decision. So, you know, those
who have sort of more balanced their
goals, they say, "I should have put more
effort into the one. I didn't achieve
all the things I wanted to." And so,
they're regretful of that. And you also
see lots of stories of people saying
like, "I killed myself for this one
goal. I did it, but I kind of wish I
had, you know, this other." So, I think
the more we can do it proactively as
opposed to retrospectively,
the the closer we will be to where we
want to be. Again, I there's not much
research on this. And I think that's
what's really interesting to me about
it. We can have this conversation. As a
scientist, I'm a little frustrated that
science hasn't quite gotten up caught up
to these insights that we're talking
about.
>> If only dangerous words. Um, I don't
spend a lot of time on social media. I
have an allocated set of time. I have a
separate phone for it which helps talk
about moderation that really helps. So
when people send me things on X or
Instagram I I can't see it when it
because texts come through a different
phone. So as it allocated time that's
just a little it's been very helpful but
I have this kind of appreciation for I
don't know why they're these high-speed
cup grabbers. Do you know these people?
So they set out cups or objects and
everyone's like oh it was sped up and
they and they'll do other things like
run a clock in the background so you can
see that it wasn't actually artificially
sped up. I'm like this is so cool. And
then I realized I'm like, how much time
did they put into this? And um you know,
I hope that they're happy in their
high-speed cup grabbing. I don't know
what they're sacrificing for that, but
it's kind of amazing in this day and age
that because we can put everything on
display. Um there's more and more
incentive to become hyper specialized in
something for mere attention, and I hope
they're being rewarded handsomely in
whatever way, psychologically or
financially. But it's kind of
interesting. I don't think this existed
in the past. There might have been a
traveling carnival or something where
people would come through and do
acrobatics. But we're in a time now
where we can reach into our pocket and
see the extremes of behavior, including
these highly trained behaviors. So, it's
a very weird time that we're living in.
And it sort of gives the impression that
one has to be hypertrophied in one skill
or or one attribute or else you're not
really living. And nothing could be
further from the truth. you're making
really interesting observations about
the current state of our society and and
also about the impact it could
potentially have on motivation. I think
the interesting angle for me and what
you're just saying, you know, you're
asking whether the cup these these cup
folks um cup stackers are doing this for
the attention or they're doing it for
themselves. And I would say that the
research suggests that they probably do
it because they themselves love it. It
goes back to something that you said ear
a conversation we had earlier about
doing hard things. Research suggests
that when it comes to doing really hard
things, especially sustaining that hard
things over time, so you could do
something hard maybe once when you're
externally motivated, but sustaining
that over time is really difficult if
you are exclusively externally
motivated. Research suggests that your
self-control or at least your
performance and self-control is enhanced
to to the extent that you're
intrinsically motivated that you enjoy
it for the task itself. So there's
research that I Fishbach has done and
Caitlyn Woolly as well um where they've
shown that you know if you go to the gym
and you only think about all the things
that you benefit long term from the gym
that your attendance at the gym is okay
but if they include intrinsic act
intrinsic positivity or intrinsic
rewards like just listening to your
favorite music while you're on the
treadmill increases your likelihood of
going regularly. Right? Okay. So, the
idea here is that it's easier to sustain
motivation over time, especially when
things are hard. That's when you need to
sustain it the most. When you love what
you do, if you can't find something to
love, then you might be able to do it
short term, but over time, you'll
struggle to to keep that motivation up
mostly because the rewards are not
tracking with the difficulty of the
task. Right? That's led me to have some
thoughts about how you build
self-control and how you teach
self-control. And I think the worst
thing to do is to make someone like the
way that we currently teach self-control
I think a lot is in the classroom where
we make kids sit in the in the chairs
really quietly and it's sort of like
rule imposed. This is what you're
supposed to do. I'm not convinced that
that's necessarily the best way to teach
self-control only because that's all
externally imposed. The child does not
want to sit there quietly. The child
wants to do their thing. Instead, I
think the best way to cultivate
self-control for yourself or for others
is to do it in a domain that you have
intrinsic interest because there's
something where you will put you will do
the hard thing for a long time, but
you'll also
be more willing to explore and and and
find better ways of doing something
because you love it so much, right? So,
I used to practice martial arts, uh, and
I loved it. And, you know, I I would
lose a competition or I would have a
horrible practice or I just couldn't do
something. And what kept me going wasn't
the some desire to be better or some
desire. It was really just the intrinsic
love of the thing itself, the intrinsic
love of the process that kept me in the
game when things were the hardest. So,
you know, if I were to give advice to
anyone about how best to cultivate
self-control and to cultivate this
ability to do hard things, it would
first be make sure the thing that you
are trying to do that's so hard is
something that you love doing. Because
if you don't love it, all of the
external rewards are negative. They're
all punishments and that's not going to
sustain you. So, unless there's
something about the process itself that
you enjoy the pain, and that sounds
masochistic, but I think most people who
do hard things, they enjoy something
about the process. That's what keeps us
going. And that's what gives us the
consistent motivation to pursue things
over time.
>> I'd like to take a quick break and
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you perfectly queued up this question
that I've had and uh about people who
have very uh low activation energy which
sounds like a bad thing but it means
they can just like get into action right
away um versus people that you know it
takes a lot for them to get into motion
to do things and in being a scientist
and in being in labs and in running a
lab I can't say that people fall out
into two bins or two um you know
distributions on this but there do seem
to be people who for whatever reason, I
used to try and correlate it with
upbringing or something like did they
grow up on a farm or like were their
parents structured at home, but they're
these people who like if they're a bunch
of lab tasks, they're really boring.
They're like really boring. The first
time you do them, they might be
interesting, but like washing cover acid
washing cover slips and you know and and
like aloquating antibodies like there's
if you can listen to something or some
music or something like you can make it
a little bit more bearable, but it's
it's boring, right? The moment you
realize a technician could do it for you
and you already know how to do it, you
know, there are certain people who are
like, "Can't a technician do this?" But
there are other people who just go,
"Okay." And they just do it and they
seem to get energy from it. It's really
interesting. And then there are other
people, and I used to think, "Oh, these
are going to be the people with better
ideas or more creative and they won't do
any of this what I call chop wood, carry
water stuff." I haven't found that to be
the case at all. Some people just have
low activation energy. You give them a
task, they might ask you why, but they
just kind of do it and then they don't
waste any effort, like no friction.
Other people, it's like this whole
process. And I'm kind of pointing the
mirror at myself now because certain
things I'm very plug-and chug about.
Other things I'm like, really? Like I
have to this and that. I will say that
as one um you know the interesting thing
about academia um that was told to me by
my chairman years ago he said you know
academia is one of these funny careers
because the higher you go up the up the
ladder the more like low-level crap they
give you to do in addition to everything
else. I actually think that might not be
it's a terrible thing on the one hand
but it might not be such a bad thing.
And I'll just use one more anecdote. I
worked at a in the Stanford sleep lab
for a summer when I was um in college
and uh there was a guy who ran the the
project on um co-ran the project looking
for the gene for narcolepsy which they
eventually got his name was Sein Nishino
and he ran the lab he's an MD and a PhD
extremely talented and they're hunting
for this gene it was a big deal but he
would come into lab and do like the most
rudimentary stuff with the technicians
and I remember asking him I was like
what's the deal and he said oh I just
like to show people that I'll do this
and yet I also just like doing it
because it makes everything else easier.
And I thought, holy cow, like this guy's
running a giant program and he's in
there doing like the most rudimentary
stuff, no complaint, no nothing. And I
thought, how do you get to be like that?
And it turns out for me, you just have
to like scruff yourself and make
yourself do it. But some people just
seem to naturally make the connect. What
What is that? Is it upbringing? Is it
that some people just analysis paralysis
or they think they're special? I haven't
found the thing. I I can't find it.
>> I don't either. Uh I I don't know that I
have a good answer for you. Um
I can give you a sort of a scientific
perspective, but I can also give you a
philosophical perspective that comes
from my own Japanese background. Um so
so I'll start with this the the
philosophical one. You know, in Japanese
culture, I've been really interested
about this concept of ikiguai, which
means you're doing a mundane task, but
you are finding purpose in it. So, you
know, your job might be to sweep the
steps of a temple. And you could ask
like, "Wow, that's like as bad as
mundane and as trivial a task as I could
actually find." But you know the the
kind the idea of eeky guy is that sort
of thinking about if if that is your
purpose if that's your piece of the pie
like you're part of this giant system
and this is the important cog that you
fill people it actually enhances
well-being that that that they they'll
do it until they're like 90 years old
they'll still be doing it because and
they won't give it up because they find
so much meaning in the simple task. This
infusion of simple tasks I think is also
related to u the notion of rituals right
so we a lot of us a lot of traditions
have rituals that people engage in and
they engage it in a prefuncter manner
but if you engage it in a meaningful way
it has this power to connect us to
everyone else who has ever done the
ritual and anyone who might in the
future so sort of expands us to include
more people in us um and I'm really
interested in this idea that we can draw
sacredness from these mundane tasks.
Again, this is all speculation. My
colleague uh Shar Gabriel, she's a a
Sunni Buffalo. She studies what's known
as collective effervescence. This idea
of these magical experiences that we
have when we're in a crowd all kind of
doing the same thing. So like if we all
go to a football game and we're all
cheering at the same time or or go to a
concert and we're all singing Taylor
Swift together like or whoever your
singer of choice might be um that
there's sort of like a magicness where
we become we're doing something that's
fairly mundane but it feels sacred and
special to us. It's just infusing it
with meaning. Just going back to your
point, you know, I wonder for some
people doing the simple tasks might just
be a way of connecting to the essence of
the science itself or the essence of the
task itself. So when I was doing martial
arts, you know, you're supposed to tie
your armor on in a certain way and
you're supposed to bow in a certain way.
And in some senses it's like well
there's a stupid set of traditions and
you again you could just go through them
perunctry manner but if you did them
with meaning uh it's not just the task
itself but it carries this it it's the
connection that we have to people that
came before us and the people that came
be after us. Again as mentioned social
belonging is one of the most powerful
human motivations. um if we can create
these bonds through these simplistic
rituals, you know, those again these are
all speculations that I'm drawing, but
it could potentially be really really
powerful. And this this idea that there
might be sacredness in the mundane is a
an idea that I think really interesting
to me. So perhaps, you know, this this
PI that you're talking about felt more
connected to the lab by doing these
mundane tasks that I personally would
not want to do. Um, but you know,
perhaps it was a way of sort of saying
like I'm still part of this science when
I'm pushing paperwork at the higher
levels of administration. Again, it's
all purely speculation, but I think
there is some basis in in science.
Yeah, I remember thinking back then like
what a badass the guy also he and his
and his uh coworker um Emanuel Mo
eventually found the gene the ere it's
in the erection and hypocritin system
which has all these implications for
hunger regulation has implications for
the treatment of obesity like these they
were making fundamental discoveries and
like there he was and to this day I
still like rever him in my mind I was
like he's also by the way I'll just
throw this out there incidentally the
guy who taught me that getting uh
morning and evening sunlight in my eyes
would set my circadian rhythm because
the guy used to work like heroic hours.
He'll sleep like four or five hours a
night and he was like, "You just have to
stay on a circadian schedule." Turns out
you need a little more sleep than that.
But he's still going strong. So
incredible. As we've been talking today,
I I've had this thing in the back of my
mind which is like there's something and
this is an obsession of mine admittedly.
There's something about our ability as
humans to dynamically regulate our
perception in time that is extremely
valuable, right? And it and it's
especially salient when we think, okay,
there's the cake. I want that. Okay, I'm
not going to do that. You have to get
out of you can do things in space um not
outer space, but in physical space as
these kids did with the marshmallow. You
can turn around. You can put something
in front of it. You could imagine a
cockroach on it. But the powerful tools
seem to be when we incorporate some exit
from the moment into a future moment. We
like or we could think back. I mean,
David Gogggins will tell you and I have
a friend who's come on the podcast
before and uh Sam Hatar is a scientist
and he talked about how he was very very
overweight and you know he he he's he's
doing great now um with his health but
um David will tell you too like the fear
of being that again is also a motivator.
the thoughts to the past linking the
present to that and to a future concept.
What we're talking about is is mental
time travel. And this is a pretty high
level thing that I'm assuming my dog
when I put a piece of meat in front of
him on the floor can't do unless I give
him a command and I take it away if he
doesn't obey the command, which is how
he learned it so fast. So, when we're
talking about dynamic time perception,
we know that that's harder when we're
under conditions of stress. when more
when we're more relaxed, it's easier to
do. So, does any of the work that you've
looked at in self-control actively
incorporate the notion of
self-regulation,
how calm or how anxious one is? Because
we hear this like, oh, some people don't
eat when they get anxious, but a lot of
people just become anxious eaters or,
you know, for people in 12step for
alcohol, it's like never be like what is
it like angry, tired, you know, etc. for
these very reasons.
>> I think what you're saying is
fundamental to understanding
self-control. Self-control fails when we
are not able to move in dis in distance.
Right? So, I talked about how
self-control is distance dependent. When
it's far away, it's easy. When it's
close, it's really difficult. Um, and so
many of the most effective strategies in
self-control
require either physically distancing
yourself, as you've already talked
about, or psychologically distancing
myself, finding ways to either
uh to to activate the mindsets that I
have when the thing is distant. So, I'm
thinking about it as if it was distance
even though it's proximal. Um, or uh
finding other ways um to frame it as if
it's distance. So, um, as I said, in my
lab, we talk about, you know, again,
when things are far away, we tend to
think about things in terms of why, but
when they're close, we tend to think
about them in terms of how. And so, in
my lab, we sort of stress knowing your
wise as one way to extricate yourself
psychologically uh from the situation
that you're currently in. Now, you
mentioned things like, you know, being
drunk or being angry or being tired as
things that predispose us to
self-control failure. I don't know if
it's necessarily that it's difficult um
or if it's just they bias us in one
direction or the other and you know
strong emotional states um being u we
know with alcohol it creates myopia we
know that when we're tired we tend to
think more again more myopically more
here and now because we just want to
rest we don't want to think about the
long term that our mind sort of there's
a tractor state towards being very
concrete and thinking about how and
which again brings brings us actually
proximal to the temptation. So I'm not
sure that it's necessarily um harder to
do in the sense that like it's that much
more effort and all else is being equal.
It's just that the situation has put us
in a situation where it's a lot easier
to think proximally than think distally.
So what are some other ways in which you
can think get more distance from a
temptation that's not necessarily
thinking about why versus how. Um, other
ways might include, and these come from
my colleague Ethan Cross, who I know has
been a guest on your show, referring to
yourself in the third person as opposed
to me, right? So, I might say, "What
does Ken want to do in this situation
versus what do I want to do?" And just
simply referring to myself as other
people, not me, but as other people
would create psychological distance in
the space that allows that that gives me
just enough to think of it as far as
opposed to close. Um I mentioned also uh
a study that uh you know what would
Jesus do for example he did this with
kids uh Angela Duckworth and um Rachel
Carlson at the University of Minnesota
they brought kids in and in one
condition they just had them do a task
that required self-control as they
normally would. But in the experimental
condition they for the boys they got
they they gave them very sorry they gave
the children various costumes. They
could pick the costume that they wanted
to wear the most. like the boy a little
boy might put on a Batman cape and cowl
and then they were simply asked as you
do this task we want you to ask the
question what would that character do so
a boy might say what would Batman do and
they showed that thinking like Batman
made them have better self-control now
there's many reasons for this but the
reason that they emphasized was that
Batman isn't the kid and so they created
distance by emulating somebody else
research has suggested that the
simulation of someone else's mind in In
order to simulate someone else's mind,
we actually activate the neural
circuitry necessary
to have that mind. So if I ask myself,
what would Batman do? I literally have
to think like Batman. I reactivate the
kinds of thinking that I think Batman
would have. In other words, literally
turning me in my cognitive system into
somebody else. Um, so you know when you
are tired and drunk and mad and
everything else, one way if if you can't
think about your wise and you're having
trouble dis finding distance from the
object in front of you, it's not about
not being emotional. It's really just
finding some psychological space. And
one way to do that potentially is to
take on someone else's perspective,
someone that you really admire.
>> Incredible. I don't know if the
following experiment exists, but maybe
pieces of it exist in different
experiments. I'm interested in the value
of words spoken to self in one's mind,
words spoken to self out loud but with
no one around, writing things down,
words spoken to other people,
pictures etc as either weaker or
stronger motivators um for the obvious
reasons and I think all of us are
familiar at least you know in the 2000s
you would go into an office or a school
and there'd be these pictures. It would
be like, you know, um inspiration when
you know the moment meets the
opportunity and then it' be like a
sunrise or something like and I'm not
trying to make light of those better
those than like a bunch of other things
but and they're very innocuous too like
in this day and age where no single
historical figure seems to be immune
from criticism. These have become like
the safe concepts. I start half
chuckling, but like what is the value of
telling oneself like like Andrew, you
got this or telling someone else like
I'm going to do this? I don't know,
maybe using AI to create a picture of
yourself in the future doing something
or having done something. Um, surely
these experiments have been done. I know
some of them your laboratory has done.
What is the most potent tool? And I have
a feeling you're going to say all of
them. I think they can all have their
place but as I mentioned before I think
different different things will have
better power over others for certain
people. Um so for example if you tend to
be the kind of person who already has a
lot of selft talk going on and the selft
talk means something to you like like
they're meaningful voices to you that
you listen to then selft talk presumably
would be very effective for you right so
if you're the kind of person where if
it's positive selft talk you literally
feel better if it's negative selft talk
you feel worse um you know then perhaps
strategically trying to change that
selft talk could potentially have a
really powerful effect on you some
people talk about visualization so I
mention one one thing I forgot to
mention with respect to distancing
strategy. One distancing strategy is to
take a third person perspective versus a
first person perspective on the thing
that you're looking at. This doesn't
work for me at all because I'm not a
particularly visual thinker. I think in
words. So for me, words are more
effective than pictures, but if you're a
much more pictorial person, and we know
that this is a distribution that some
people are more pictorial and some
people are more verbal, um then perhaps
like visualizing yourself engaging in
the behavior would be more effective.
Let me add one more thing. There is
research that suggests um that when you
communicate something to somebody and
then they respond in a way that makes it
seem like you are on the same wavelength
that that creates an experience known as
shared reality. People put a special
premium in truth value to those
interchanges than when you don't have
that. So let me just give you an
example. On a lot of college campuses
today, you will see um banners that say
you belong and they're trying to promote
inclusion and make everyone feel at home
on the college campus. And my own
intuition about this is I'm not so sure
how effective those are. I think they're
a lot like the motivational posters that
you're talking about that used to be in
the offices. However, if someone says,
"Hey, you know what? I think you really
belong. I think um uh I'm really happy
that you're here." It seems it's a very
similar message. uh maybe it might even
use the same words. If it's conveyed in
a way that makes you feel like they
understand you and that you guys are on
the same wavelength, that actually has a
very powerful effect. And there's some
ongoing research in my lab that that
actually even though it's the same
words, there's something about that
exchange of like we see the world in the
same way that convinces me that what
you're saying is true and so therefore
it has a much bigger impact on me. So I
bring this all back to the self-control
by saying well if you know so you talked
about is selft talk more effective than
other talking. I suspect other talking
would be much more effective if you were
able to create this kind of reality,
right? Where if you had this
conversation and you said, "I'm gonna do
this." And that other person says, "I
know you're going to do this." Right? I
bet that has a lot more power than you
saying to somebody else, you know, I'm
going to do this. And they're like,
"Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Good luck." Right? So
that so there there are because humans
are social species there there is a
special power when we can create um a
sense of oneness with others that makes
our thoughts become real. So if if by
saying it the if by writing it my
thoughts are becoming real and have more
power over um those are much more likely
to have an effect. Again this is all
pure speculation but I think it fits
what we know about psychology.
>> Yeah it's incredible. I'm remembering a
recent conversation where, you know, was
kind of playing with the idea with
someone, you know, like it's the old uh,
you know, riddle, if a tree falls in the
woods, you know, and no one's there to
uh, witness it, did it make a sound.
It's sort of like if we have a thought
or an experience, um, and no one was
there to hear it or witness it, did it
really happen? And we know it happened,
right? We can be alone and we can have a
thought, but there does seem to be a
sort of loop that closes and gets
enhanced. And I'm not trying to be
mystical here. When something that we
say or do uh is witnessed and
registered, um this can go in multiple
directions. I'm reminded of a uh just a
very brief story. I have a good friend,
his name is Ken Ride Out. uh he's one of
these incredible um parents and his
husband to his wife and and he comes
from a really hard scrabble background
and and he's this incredible endurance
runner and uh in his 50s he's like
crushing races and he was doing a race
in the in like the the I think it was
like the African it was like the Gobi
Desert I think is what it was and he's
super competitive with himself and
everyone else but he he was hurting one
day and I think he he ran up next to the
guy who was lead leading the race took
out his earbud and turned to And he said
in kind of psychological warfare manner,
he said, you know, I don't know what it
is about me. I just don't get tired. And
he said he registered the fear on the
other guy's face and he just crushed him
that day. And and I and he won, of
course, in Ken Ride Out. Typical
fashion. Uh he's amazing guy. He has a
book out that's like really it's super
worth reading. Um because of his
trajectory like David Gogggins or these
other guys and the fact he wrote a book
is interesting, right? It's not just
there's something about externalizing
these these thoughts. I am sure
somewhere in his mind he didn't
necessarily believe what he was saying.
Everybody gets tired, right? Even Ken Ry
gets tired. But there's something about
externalizing it, seeing that validated
that makes it more true to ourselves.
>> And that's a kind of a competitive
example, but they're also beautiful
examples of that, like you said, where
someone's like, I believe in you, like
you can do this. And it completely
changes our notion of what's possible. I
certainly experienced that in a
non-competitive arena. So, something
there. I guess that's a a a note to the
uh to the person or people hearing
somebody's goal or wish um to like tune
in because those are potent moments or
potentially potent moments.
>> I'm always struck that, you know, our
the impact that we have on our students,
especially our graduate students and
stuff, um they're not the things I think
they're going to be. they they always
remember these side conversations where,
you know, you acknowledge some small
thing that was going on in their life.
But again, for them, it was that sort of
moment of like I'm bringing to reality
some of the thoughts that they were
having and hearing me say them or
hearing me verify some of these thoughts
had an incredibly uplifting event. As
you said, it can also have an incredibly
crushing event. So, if I'm having
insecurities and I'm sort of harping on
those, acknowledging that those
insecurities might have a have a have a
truth to them, they could be incredibly
damaging. Um, but I'm always amazed by
how inspiring it can be. Someone that
you really respect, you know, they know
you have this goal and then they say
like, I know you have this goal and I
think you can do it. Like it it brings
that that's what I'm talking about. The
shared reality, the social validation of
this belief makes it more real and thus
has more power. You know, we know that
writing thoughts down can be a very
powerful thing as well for emotion
regulation and and motivation. I think
part of that is just the actual sharing
part is the fact that now that I've
written it down, I'm now looking at it
as if it was not me, right? So, so now
it's not me, it's words on the page and
that brings another level of power that
didn't have when they're just floating.
So, again, I think all of these
strategies that you were talking about,
selft talk, writing, talking to other
people, I think they're all they can all
be powerful in the right way for the
right person, but they may also exist on
a continuum of potential potency, both
good and bad. what I'm about to ask sort
of gets into the realm of like um
performance but I could imagine it being
used for any number of things you know
music in particular the music that we
listen to at a particular stage of life
um is able to embody a lot without us
having to like script out complete
sentences is sort of a time space travel
of its own right there are certain songs
I'm sure for you too I hear them and I I
teleport back you know um is it possible
to build these anchors you know, like
like have a song or something that that
you associate with a time of like
working through struggle that the
process is captured in that and then you
can reapply it. Like do those tools
really work? Cuz there was this phase
from about like 1998 to about 2015 when
like TED talks and books were choa block
full of this stuff. It's not clear to me
that they work or that they don't work,
but music's a powerful anchor. Um, so
has anything been explored around around
this?
>> Not that I'm aware of. The the best work
that I can link to this is work that I
know that's done on nostalgia. Um, and
nostalgia traditionally is portrayed in
most media as something really negative.
It's like a negative bittersweet state.
But there research in psychology
suggests that nostalgia actually has a
very functional process. It serves a lot
of different motivations. So for
example, one of the things that it does
is it helps make me feel connected. So a
lot of times I I might feel like I don't
really know myself. I don't know who I
am. Nostalgia is a way as you me use the
word anchor. It it allows you to time
travel and anchor and then more
importantly see a sense of
self-continuity that I can see how I was
there then and I can see how I am now
and I see I feel a sense of connection a
sense of oneness and that that can have
a lot of positive benefits to the extent
that that's what you're looking for. So,
you know, to the extent that music makes
you nostalgic. And I think a lot of the
music that we love most has an element
of nostalgia to it, I do think it serves
a very important distance traveling
function, time traveling function. And
and you use the word anchor, which I
really like too. It it it reminds us who
we are, where we've been, and who we've
become. And we know for humans that's a
very that that narrative, that sense of
continuity is also very important for
existential reasons. that I belong here
for a reason, that there's a purpose.
And so motivationally, those can be very
effective. Now, I don't know if it
reinstates the motivations that you had
during the time, but I think it at least
allows you to connect to the time where
you had those motivations. They may have
changed. They may be stronger. They may
be weaker, but that sense of connection,
I think, is really important for
understanding what your motivations are
in the first place, right? How they've
evolved over time and what they are now
like. to the extent they're the same, it
might be able to reactivate, but to the
extent that they're different, it
actually might cause deactivation, but
not in a bad way, but in sort of a good
way in reminding you, okay, now what
motivates you? Now, what's changed? What
what do you care about? Now,
>> I'd like to just briefly return to the
concepts of intrinsic versus extrinsic
motivation. As I recall, there was this
famous set of experiments also done at
Stanford where they had kids draw, kids
intrinsic, excuse me, where kids drew
intrinsically like drawing. They just
observed which kids drew. who then they
started rewarding those kids for drawing
and then they observed at least as I
recall the outcomes being that they they
observed that some of these kids um drew
less or gave up drawing because um the
conclusion that was that these kids now
were doing it for the the rewards as
opposed to the activity itself. Did
those results hold up over time?
Generally speaking, the results have
held up over time. Although, you know,
there there are some situations in which
um they appear at odds with current
practices and intuitions that we might
have. And and the best example I can
think of is being paid for your job,
right? So, so being paid for your job is
something that you um is an extrinsic
reward is an exttrinsic reward for
something that you may or may not be
intrinsically interested in. And so the
the big question is if you love your job
and then I pay you to do the job that
you love, does the love that you have
for that job go down?
Now I don't think this is that
perplexing if you understand what was
actually going on in those Stanford
studies. So they were children. So again
the children were in intrinsically
enjoyed playing with markers and then
all of a sudden in one condition they
would say okay now I want you to play
with these markers and if you play with
these markers I will give you a reward.
A second condition they said surprise
you just play with the markers but we're
going to also give you a reward. And
then the third condition there was no
reward right? Um, and where you saw
intrinsic intrinsic motivation go down
is when the child knew before they got
to play with the markers the second time
that that they were going to get the
reward. So they were a they knew they
were playing with the markers to get the
reward.
It's unclear to me whether that same
confusion would happen with adults. So,
if I know I love this job
and now you're paying me a lot of money
to do this job that I love,
is it possible that I will confu get
confused and start to think, oh, I'm
actually doing it because I'm getting
paid. Yes. And I think we can think of
people who have had that experience. But
you can also imagine that as adults, I
know what I love and I'm not even paying
attention to how much money I'm being
paid even though I'm being paid. What
matters here is the the confusion. why
am I doing what I'm doing? And you could
imagine with adults if I'm really clear
why I'm doing what I'm doing that that
confusion might be less likely to happen
um than than if I'm not as clear about
what I really really love. Now, I will
say what I just said is very
controversial and I'm sure the
psychologists who are listening to this
are going to be all up in arms about how
that's that can't be true. Um I think
there are multiple theories about how
intrinsic motivation works and I'm
drawing for those expert readers, expert
listeners from the attributional
approach. Um and what matters here is
the conclusions one draws from one's
actions. Why am I doing this? As that
depending on how I answer that will
dictate how my motivation flows. If I'm
doing it because I'm trying to get the
extrinsic rewards then it becomes
exttrinsically motivated and my
motivation drops. But you can imagine
again with adults, those who really know
that that they love the thing and
they're really certain they love the
thing, they may be a little bit more
resistant to that. Interesting. And and
as adults, we can also um connect dots
and expand our wise, you know, say,
well, I love doing this thing, get paid
for doing it, and uh those resources can
help me provide for others who I also
love. So, it's sort of exponential. Um,
I remember a salary discussion with my
chairman, not at Stanford, but when I
was down at UCSD. I won't mention who it
was. You'll never figure it out, folks,
because there were several chairman
during my time there. And I'll never
forget during a salary negotiation, he
said two things. He said, "A, you can't
make more money than me." Which seemed
fair. He's, you know, running the
department. I was a a junior professor.
And he said, "And never forget, you're
going to make far less money than you
deserve for most of your career, and
then you're going to make far more money
than you deserve at the end of your
career." And I remember thinking like
that's the worst argument I ever heard
to somebody who can't afford housing or
whatever. Anyway, Stanford always
treated me well. But um and in many ways
he was probably right. No one nobody
goes into academic science to make
money. It's just not what you do. You
can look at anyone running a lab,
certainly in academia, and you can be
sure that the amount of work that
they're doing reflects their love of of
discovery and and and doing science. I I
feel very comfortable making that
statement. But in a lot of careers,
people do make a lot of money for
something that they intrinsically loved.
I'm thinking about performing artists
for instance. And um from my friends who
are in that world, I I think it can
create a lot of dissonance like uh
because they'll start taking tours and
they'll start doing album deals simply
for for the finances and they get used
to a certain lifestyle. Which brings me
back to this chop wood carry water
notion and the eeky guy. Is that how you
pronounce it?
>> Eeky. eeky um notion earlier. You know,
several of the people who I've observed
have incredibly long super successful
creative careers. I've been fortunate
enough to to speak to some of these and
these people and know a few of them and
100% of them will say that they still
engage in a lot of mundane tasks
throughout their day. Yeah, they have a
lot of hired help and things like that,
but they're still picking up after their
kids. Some of them are still edging the
lawn. are still doing these things
because when they didn't, they thought
that all their time would expand into
doing their creative work and they found
that wasn't the case. They actually had
lower motivation. And I'm sure there are
exceptions to this, but I don't know,
there's really something to this um like
staying in the groove of what what you
were doing in the early to maybe mid
portions of your career when you were
like climbing the rungs. That's it's
almost like a it's like a mental muscle.
>> Yeah. It just seems to me a little bit
like just stay I guess as I mentioned
before like staying connected to the to
the process to to the way that you know
I used to do things. I will say we have
to be really careful though because I
think this relationship between external
rewards and intrinsic motivation can be
exploited. So there's some research
suggests that when we know somebody
loves the job, we don't feel the need to
pay them as much because we know they'll
do the job anyway. Right? So whereas if
you took two people, one who is
intrinsically motivated and one who's
exttrinsically motivated, you have to
pay the extrinsically motivated person a
lot more money to do the same job than
the person who's intrinsically
motivated. But it begs a lot of
questions about fairness. Should you
really be paying two people different
amount of money when they're doing
exactly the same task just because they
have differences in motivation? And in
some respects, you're almost rewarding
the person that you probably don't want
doing the job because they don't they're
just doing it for the money as opposed
to they really love what they're doing.
Um, I think a lot of employers would
like to believe that they're or like to
have employees who are intrinsically
motivated because people who are
intrinsically motivated will often do
the extra step. They'll do the hard
work. But again, there's this there's
this always this concern that they could
be exploited because we know because
they derive some value from the work
itself that we might have this
perception that they don't need to be
compensated quite enough. So there is
this exploitation effect that's really
dangerous and pernitious. Are there any
elements of Japanese culture that you
wish you saw more of in the United
States for let's just say your students
and for for young people in general but
maybe adults as well and vice versa that
you in the context of your work um
because they are very different places
culturally uh certainly there's overlap
too but um numerous times across our
conversation on and off microphone we
sort of touched into some of these
really incredible concepts in Japan and
Japanese culture certainly we have them
in the United states and elsewhere too.
But you're in a unique position to
answer this if if you're willing. And
I'm always interested in how um concepts
from other cultures and our own could
be, you know, looked at.
>> Well, I should say first and foremost,
I'm Japanese American. I'm Nissi, so I
was born here. So, I have never lived in
Japan. So, I think a lot of Japanese
listeners might say, "Oh, he's not
really Japanese." I'm definitely
Japanese American. My connection to my
culture mainly comes from food u because
I like eating and cooking uh mostly
eating. Uh and I also as I said I used
to practice martial arts. I used I used
to practice the Japanese martial art
kendo which is sword fighting. I've
never actually thought about this
question. So so the question that you've
asked is is is a really tough one for me
and I'm going to have to just sort of
think on the spot. I think for me um one
of the things I again psychology I think
is starting to come to grips with it but
a lot of the work on mindfulness I think
is really interesting and important but
I don't know that we recognize enough is
sort of the importance of breaks uh
opportunities to take your foot off the
gas again I'm not so sure Japanese
culture
in society that they're good at that
either um you know the stereotype is
that they work all the time So maybe
they maybe they have just the same
problems that we do. But from the
outsers's perspective, at least the
notion of mindfulness um suggests that
there are times where we need to
not be so goal-directed and so driven,
but instead just enjoy the moment. But
it's not even enjoy the moment like I'm
going to enjoy this chocolate cake. It's
like just enjoying
being here uh in this moment. Um I think
that's an interesting idea that I think
in psychology we are wrangling with.
there's a lot of research in this area.
So perhaps it's not quite answering your
question. The other notions that I think
are interesting is just sort of the
notion of
uh
this notion of wabishabi that there's
beauty and decay and non-perfection. And
again I think that's an idea that can be
foreign in in the in in the in the
western cultural space where you know
like if we think about our landscaping
or we think about you know what we want
you know the way that we dress it has to
be perfect right like you know so we get
all this cosmetic surgery or we you know
buy all these clothes and if it's one
wrinkle we have to you know change
clothes or whatnot like we always we're
you mentioning the word optimization
before that we things have to be perfect
um where isn't In Japanese culture,
there's a beauty in the imperfection. In
fact, you want you actually
intentionally build in the imperfections
to have beauty. And I think again in the
context of this conversation that we
just had, you know, embracing the suck
and and starting from the place of not
being perfect to try to strive for
something better. Um, again, might be an
idea that we could incorporate. And and
we also already talked about eeky guy,
this idea of finding
connection
and and and and expansion and um meaning
and purpose and something really mundane
or ritualistic or simple. I think is
also a really interesting idea that
might sort of explain some of the lack
of happiness that we're currently
experiencing in our own culture where
we're constantly future oriented as
opposed to and we're always looking for
bigger things as opposed to finding
beauty in the simple things that we do
like the most mundane tasks that we do
might be the most important things that
we do but we just don't code it that way
because we're our eyes are on the prize
downstream and I wonder if that too
might be an interesting idea worth
exploring. It's interesting to think
about your answer in the context of the
the mundane or the chop wood carry water
type uh think plugandchug whatever
people want to call it because therein
seems to be at least part if not all of
the operations that we're applying to
the big lofty goals just on repeat with
this thing that this concept like I'm
going for this big whatever trophy
degree founding a company building this
like when we think about external things
but even for people who have like a
really big family concept. It's
beautiful, right? But I've seen a lot of
people crushed under that pressure, too.
And then they end up with a kid who
doesn't fit into their family concept,
and it's like completely destabilizing
for all their ideas. They thought they
could script it out according to their
family album from the past. I don't wish
that, you know, these hardships on
anyone. And yet, they're kind of like
the stuff that make life great, too, in
a weird way.
>> Yeah. That that that brings us back to
the idea of wisd like beauty and the
imperfection in beauty and the decay and
um yeah like we can embrace what is not
perfect which seems you know just sort
of thinking about my own life like wow
that's in some sense that's totally
foreign you know you're taking pictures
and it has to be the perfect picture
you're saying this perfect family like
we have these mental models of what the
goal is and we we only achieve it when
you're there. Um it's interesting to
think about like other like being h
giving some degrees of freedom in that
and and finding meaning in that. I think
that's a really interesting idea. Yeah,
it's actually one place where social
media has um in my opinion has shown a
bit of humanity uh contrary to the
stereotype like you know I see a lot of
social media stuff and sure like you'll
see incredible feats of artistic or
athletic or whatever and they'll get
like tons of views and likes but every
once in a while someone will come along
and very authentically like confess a
failure or come along and and just you
know express a hardship that they're
going through or a win that a that
doesn't really fall within our normal
notions of what a win is and it's like
an avalanche of interest in those. So, I
think there's a there's a natural um
kind of uh magnetism to these like just
human elements. So, I appreciate you
being willing to take that answer uh to
answer that question, excuse me, on the
fly. Um because uh you know, it's not
within your uh your PubMed profile, but
I but you you're I do believe that the
the people we are comes to the science
we do and and I numerous times
throughout today's discussion, I've
detected these elements of like who you
are in this and it's impossible to to
separate. So, so thank you for for the
consideration. And as a final question,
I'm actually just really curious what
you
want to do now. Like what what is the
the experiment you're working on now or
the dream set of experiments that you
think can really move the needle forward
in your own concept of this work?
Because clearly you're you're very
focused on it and we're very grateful
that you're doing this work. But yeah,
like where's your what are you most
excited about right now?
>> One is we tend to think about
self-control again at the tactic level.
What do I do to overcome this
temptation? And I think largely
overlooked is this idea of what do I
want to do again? Because you don't you
don't get your goal from a single
behavior. It's through repeated patterns
of action. So to really come up with
better ways to understand repeated
patterns of action in the lab or in the
field I think is a major challenge that
the field has to take on and hasn't. And
I think one of the reasons why we
haven't studied because it's so hard.
That's why we go back to these oneshot
deals. I think that's one of the most
important things to think about. Um,
another is, and again we talked about
this two modes idea. Am I pursuing the
one goal or am I pursuing the many? I
think in psychology we have spent a lot
of time focusing on the pursuit of the
one. And we haven't really done a good
job of sort of embracing the pursuit of
the many. To the extent that we have,
it's usually like two goals. So like
work life balance, we'll look at how
people navigate those. But as I
mentioned before, we have more than two
goals at any given time. So, how do we
integrate all of these goals? How are we
pursue them all the time? How are we
juggling all these balls and keeping
track of them? Um, are there goals that
we that we have that we're not even
aware of? Um, that we're actually
pursuing really interested in that. Um,
and then and related to that is sort of
fitting goals into the broader
constellation of all the things that we
want like connecting goals to these big
underlying values and motivations that
we have. that link is not really well
understood. So we talked a little bit
about getting our ducks in a row seeing
like the wise of a partic like when you
think about your goals the broader
motivations of what motivates them. How
how did that come to be? Like did our
system just know that these things were
aligned and now retrospectively we're
making the connections or does making
the connections have an important
impact? So not just multiple goals but
also levels of goals and how they
connect to more fundamental motives and
how we know that whe whether goal is
right for us I think fundamentally
requires understanding whether they
resonate with these broader motives that
we had and again as you mentioned also
like like getting things aligned like
that alignment idea I don't know that
we're really understand
how people do this it's magical when we
get it right we do amazing things how do
we know it was the right thing to do
like there's no textbook there's no
wiring there's that so what are the cues
what are the signals how do we discover
what we really want those kinds of
things I think are the future of our
science I don't know that it's going to
require a lot of methological
development but I think those are the
big questions I'd like to see us address
>> awesome awesome I look forward to seeing
what you and your colleagues discover
next and I want to thank you um thank
you so much for coming here today
sharing the work that you've been doing
in your lab when I discovered uh your
web page and saw a uh things you had
done um previously. I was like, I really
really want to sit down and uh and talk
to Ken because I I can tell that not
only is the work embedded in something
that we all grapple with and that's
extremely important to life advancement,
no matter how ambitious or non-
ambitious somebody is, but it's also
clear that you're bringing in a real
understanding of just how dynamic our
lives are. it's like not one goal and
and studying these things in isolation
has served us well I think in the past
and building a framework but I think
it's just terrific the way that you're
throwing your arms around all of it and
um and as I mentioned before it's clear
whether you intended it or not that you
bring a lot of humanity to this and
considering
yes there are answers they vary you need
a dynamic toolbox and yet there's
evidence that certain things really work
so I know I'm going to incorporate a
number of things that you share today
and I know our our listeners will as
well and so thank you for doing the work
you do. Please come back again and
update us as things evolve and um once
again really appreciate you.
>> Really honored to be here. Thank you.
>> Thank you for joining me for today's
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