Ah! So that’s what I’ve been doing wrong. When I tried to go to the gym regularly with the goal of getting stronger/bigger/having more energy, the actual process of exercising was merely instrumental to me so I couldn’t motivate myself to do it consistently. Two of my friends who are more successful at exercising than me have confirmed that for them exercising is both instrumental and a goal in and of itself.
But while I’m down with the idea of hacking terminal goals, I have no idea how to do that. Whereas compartmentalizing is easy (just ignore evidence against the position you want to believe), goal hacking sounds very difficult. Any suggestions/resources for learning how to do this?
The first suggestion is to try to start thinking of yourself as a fitness buff and actually do things to make yourself start thinking this way. So for example when you are waiting for the morning train, you could glance at fitness magazines instead of what you usually look at. Or you could occasionally buy an inexpensive fitness-related chochke, for example a wrist gripper to keep at your desk at work. Make an effort to look at other peoples’ bodies and note who appears more fit.
So on a cold dark morning when you are deciding whether or not to go the gym, the reasoning should be “I am a fitness buff and fitness buffs go to the gym every day” as opposed to “I want to be stronger/fitter so I should go to the gym.”
The second suggestion is not exactly a goal substitution but it’s a pretty similar concept—what I would call a tie-in. Tape a blank piece of paper to the wall of your office or bedroom. After each workout, draw another tick mark on the paper. For nerdy people, there seems to be a lot of satisfaction in accumulating points. So you are basically tying the goal of getting strong/fit to the goal of accumulating points.
Make an effort to look at other peoples’ bodies and note who appears more fit.
If you think of “fitness buffs” as being a special clique, then noticing other potential members of the clique and feeling like you belong to something bigger than yourself can reinforce your “fitness buff” identity. However, this technique can be very counterproductive. Women in the US and elsewhere are often socialized to compete with each other on the basis of appearance already, so noticing fitter women is already something that we do with not necessarily very positive results.
Actually, I try to keep appearance out my mind when I exercise because I’ve had issues with body dysmorphic disorder. Instead, I identify as someone who’s into, say, urban cycling. Now I notice when other people are carrying a bike helmet with them when they’re in a shop, for instance. I feel like a part of a group, and this feeling of identity encourages me to keep biking.
By the way, the idea that you can tell how fit or healthy someone is just by looking at them isn’t correct. Some thin, healthy-looking people don’t exercise, and some people who are overweight are actually quite healthy according to other measures of fitness, so I’d shy away from using appearance as a proxy for fitness.
If you think of “fitness buffs” as being a special clique, then noticing other potential members of the clique and feeling like you belong to something bigger than yourself can reinforce your “fitness buff” identity.
That’s not exactly what I was saying, although your point here is correct too I suspect. My point is that fitness buffs have a tendency to look at other peoples’ bodies just as car buffs have a tendency to look at other peoples’ cars and gun buffs have a tendency to look at other peoples’ guns.
However, this technique can be very counterproductive. Women in the US and elsewhere are often socialized to compete with each other on the basis of appearance already, so noticing fitter women is already something that we do with not necessarily very positive results.
Well that’s a different issue. But I do think there’s more of a problem with people putting not enough mental energy into fitness than too much.
By the way, the idea that you can tell how fit or healthy someone is just by looking at them isn’t correct.
You can make a decent guess about a person’s level of fitness based on their appearance. To be sure it will not be perfect. Besides which, the point is not to be a perfect judge of fitness—the point is to find ways to tweak one’s goals in order to have sufficient motivation to go to the gym regularly.
Thanks! The scariness of self-modification didn’t really sink in until I read your comment. I think I can generalize that advice to the other things I’d like to do as well.
What works for me is that I like going to the gym just to go to the gym. More specifically, I love the feeling of being able to lift lots of weight and I love the feeling of being sore the next day. This isn’t necessarily changing an instrumental goal into a terminal goal, but it does sort of reduce the distance between the original terminal goal and the instrumental goal. The original terminal goal (getting fit) has been moved closer in “goalspace” to the instrumental goal (lifting at the gym) by transforming into the terminal goal (get sore).
So in general it might be easier to think of shifting goalposts as far as terminal/instrumental goals. Picking a terminal goal that’s “closer” in goalspace to your original instrumental goal might make it more manageable.
The nice thing about hacking instrumental goals into terminal goals is that while they’re still instrumental you can easily change them.
In your case: You have the TG of becoming fit (BF), and you previously decided on the IG of going to the gym (GG). You’re asking about how to turn GG into a TG, which seems hard.
But notice that you picked GG as an instrument towards attaining BF before thinking about Terminal Goal Hacking (TGH), which suggests it’s not optimal for attainging BF via TGH. The better strategy would be to first ask yourself if another IG would work better for the purpose. For example, you might want to try lots of different sports, especially those that you instinctively find cool, or, if you’re lucky, that you’re good at, which means that you might actually adopt them as TGs more-or-less without trying.
(This is what happened to me, although in my case it was accidental. I tried bouldering and it stuck, even though no other sport I’ve tried in the previous 30 years did.)
Part of the trick is to find sports (or other I/TG candidates) that are convenient (close to work or home, not requiring more participants than you have easy access to) and fun to the point that when you get tired you force yourself to continue because you want to play some more, not because of how buff you want to get. In the sport case try everything, including variations, not just what’s popular or well known, you might be surprised.
(In my case, I don’t much like climbing tall walls—I get tired, bored and frustrated and want to give up when they’re too hard. One might expect that bouldering would be the same (it’s basically the same thing except with much shorter but harder walls), but the effect in my case was completely different: if a problem is too hard I get more motivated to figure out how climb it. The point is not to try bouldering, but to try variations of sports. E.g., don’t just try tennis and give up; try doubles and singles, try squash, try ping-pong, try real tennis, try badminton, one of those might work.)
Ah! So that’s what I’ve been doing wrong. When I tried to go to the gym regularly with the goal of getting stronger/bigger/having more energy, the actual process of exercising was merely instrumental to me so I couldn’t motivate myself to do it consistently. Two of my friends who are more successful at exercising than me have confirmed that for them exercising is both instrumental and a goal in and of itself.
But while I’m down with the idea of hacking terminal goals, I have no idea how to do that. Whereas compartmentalizing is easy (just ignore evidence against the position you want to believe), goal hacking sounds very difficult. Any suggestions/resources for learning how to do this?
Yes, I have a couple suggestions.
The first suggestion is to try to start thinking of yourself as a fitness buff and actually do things to make yourself start thinking this way. So for example when you are waiting for the morning train, you could glance at fitness magazines instead of what you usually look at. Or you could occasionally buy an inexpensive fitness-related chochke, for example a wrist gripper to keep at your desk at work. Make an effort to look at other peoples’ bodies and note who appears more fit.
So on a cold dark morning when you are deciding whether or not to go the gym, the reasoning should be “I am a fitness buff and fitness buffs go to the gym every day” as opposed to “I want to be stronger/fitter so I should go to the gym.”
The second suggestion is not exactly a goal substitution but it’s a pretty similar concept—what I would call a tie-in. Tape a blank piece of paper to the wall of your office or bedroom. After each workout, draw another tick mark on the paper. For nerdy people, there seems to be a lot of satisfaction in accumulating points. So you are basically tying the goal of getting strong/fit to the goal of accumulating points.
If you think of “fitness buffs” as being a special clique, then noticing other potential members of the clique and feeling like you belong to something bigger than yourself can reinforce your “fitness buff” identity. However, this technique can be very counterproductive. Women in the US and elsewhere are often socialized to compete with each other on the basis of appearance already, so noticing fitter women is already something that we do with not necessarily very positive results.
Actually, I try to keep appearance out my mind when I exercise because I’ve had issues with body dysmorphic disorder. Instead, I identify as someone who’s into, say, urban cycling. Now I notice when other people are carrying a bike helmet with them when they’re in a shop, for instance. I feel like a part of a group, and this feeling of identity encourages me to keep biking.
By the way, the idea that you can tell how fit or healthy someone is just by looking at them isn’t correct. Some thin, healthy-looking people don’t exercise, and some people who are overweight are actually quite healthy according to other measures of fitness, so I’d shy away from using appearance as a proxy for fitness.
That’s not exactly what I was saying, although your point here is correct too I suspect. My point is that fitness buffs have a tendency to look at other peoples’ bodies just as car buffs have a tendency to look at other peoples’ cars and gun buffs have a tendency to look at other peoples’ guns.
Well that’s a different issue. But I do think there’s more of a problem with people putting not enough mental energy into fitness than too much.
You can make a decent guess about a person’s level of fitness based on their appearance. To be sure it will not be perfect. Besides which, the point is not to be a perfect judge of fitness—the point is to find ways to tweak one’s goals in order to have sufficient motivation to go to the gym regularly.
Thanks! The scariness of self-modification didn’t really sink in until I read your comment. I think I can generalize that advice to the other things I’d like to do as well.
What works for me is that I like going to the gym just to go to the gym. More specifically, I love the feeling of being able to lift lots of weight and I love the feeling of being sore the next day. This isn’t necessarily changing an instrumental goal into a terminal goal, but it does sort of reduce the distance between the original terminal goal and the instrumental goal. The original terminal goal (getting fit) has been moved closer in “goalspace” to the instrumental goal (lifting at the gym) by transforming into the terminal goal (get sore).
So in general it might be easier to think of shifting goalposts as far as terminal/instrumental goals. Picking a terminal goal that’s “closer” in goalspace to your original instrumental goal might make it more manageable.
The nice thing about hacking instrumental goals into terminal goals is that while they’re still instrumental you can easily change them.
In your case: You have the TG of becoming fit (BF), and you previously decided on the IG of going to the gym (GG). You’re asking about how to turn GG into a TG, which seems hard.
But notice that you picked GG as an instrument towards attaining BF before thinking about Terminal Goal Hacking (TGH), which suggests it’s not optimal for attainging BF via TGH. The better strategy would be to first ask yourself if another IG would work better for the purpose. For example, you might want to try lots of different sports, especially those that you instinctively find cool, or, if you’re lucky, that you’re good at, which means that you might actually adopt them as TGs more-or-less without trying.
(This is what happened to me, although in my case it was accidental. I tried bouldering and it stuck, even though no other sport I’ve tried in the previous 30 years did.)
Part of the trick is to find sports (or other I/TG candidates) that are convenient (close to work or home, not requiring more participants than you have easy access to) and fun to the point that when you get tired you force yourself to continue because you want to play some more, not because of how buff you want to get. In the sport case try everything, including variations, not just what’s popular or well known, you might be surprised.
(In my case, I don’t much like climbing tall walls—I get tired, bored and frustrated and want to give up when they’re too hard. One might expect that bouldering would be the same (it’s basically the same thing except with much shorter but harder walls), but the effect in my case was completely different: if a problem is too hard I get more motivated to figure out how climb it. The point is not to try bouldering, but to try variations of sports. E.g., don’t just try tennis and give up; try doubles and singles, try squash, try ping-pong, try real tennis, try badminton, one of those might work.)
I had some good results here with the strategy of recovering from a stroke, but I don’t especially recommend it.