The following is the way I’ve approached the problem, and it seems to have worked for me. I’ve never tried to see if it would work with somebody else before, indeed I don’t think I’ve ever explained this to anybody else before.
As I see it, these problems arise when what I think I should do, and what I feel like doing are in conflict with each other. Going with what you feel is easy, it’s sort of like the automatic mode of operation. Overriding this and acting on what you think takes effort, and the stronger your feelings are wanting to do something else the harder it is.
The trick then, is to try to reconcile the two. The way most people do it is that they starting doing what they feel, and then rationalise it to the point that it’s also what they think to some degree. Fortunately, you can also do it the other way as your feelings are trainable. Find what ever it is that you want to rationally do, and then keep on reminding yourself not just why you want to do this, but also try to feel it. Imagine how doing well in, say, some course of study is going to benefit and advance you in the future. How it will give you an edge against others who haven’t studied the harder aspects of it, etc. Be creative, think of all sorts of positive reasons why doing this thing that you already know you should do is a great thing for you. And, most importantly, try to feel how you will benefit from this. Imagine yourself in the future having kicked butt in this course, or what ever, and imagine what that is going to feel like. Really try to feel it!
It takes time, but you slowly build up positive emotions around these things that you should be doing. At first, it just doesn’t take quite as much effort to do them. Then it comes quite naturally. And after a while you will find yourself actually wanting to do it, to the extent that it would take an act of will power to not do it. Really.
This process itself also becomes a habit. When you decide to do something, you will automatically start to build up positive emotions around what ever it is that you’ve decided to do. During my PhD writing it built up to such a degree that I’d have these dreams some nights about how amazingly happy and proud I was going to be when it was finished. Motivating myself to work on it wasn’t a problem.
When I was younger and started thinking about something I wanted to do, like, say, asking out a girl, I never performed the necessary backward induction. I would always envision what the future would be like when the girl said yes and how great it would be. It was so bad that I would try to plan, but seemed to be incapable of actually doing it because I spent so much time thinking about how great the future was going to be. In reality, I didn’t know what to say and the girl said no, so I concluded that envisioning the future was a bug, and tried to fight it.
I guess It’s lucky that I never completely got rid of this tendency, and in the mean time I’ve become much better at planning, (though doing any planning is an improvement, so this means little). Now it’s time to make a conscious effort at cultivating these positive emotions and see what happens.
For me, it works for the things that I believe to continue being important. I can motivate myself to start intrinsically liking doing what I believe to be important to be obsessed over. This doesn’t lock me in on specific subgoals, as when a subgoal is done, it’s transformed into new opportunities for the continuation of a bigger project.
But I’m afraid of starting to like things in which I don’t intrinsically believe, which I only need to get out of my way before a deadline.
From reading the above comment, I explicitly recognized that it’s circular: on one hand, I have a power to control the low-level emotional response, to channel it where I deliberatively believe it should go. On the other hand, I’m afraid of the emotional response taking over, leading me away from the things I deliberatively prefer in the long term. Both effects must be real, but I expect one of them is stronger, if used with sufficient cunning.
Polarizing the activities on those which I identify with, and those I apply only instrumentally creates segregated zones, in one of which deliberation channels emotion, and in the other of which deliberation is afraid of channeling emotion, as it’s expected that emotion will win there. So, on a surface level, it looks like what I identify with is the area of activities where the emotion is channeled. But one step deeper, it turns out that it’s actually an area deliberatively marked as being safe to channel emotions into. Emotional acceptance is the effect of the Escher-brained justification to emotionally segregate the activity, not the defining signature of the self.
And thus, I resolve to try allowing motivation where I didn’t before.
The following is the way I’ve approached the problem, and it seems to have worked for me. I’ve never tried to see if it would work with somebody else before, indeed I don’t think I’ve ever explained this to anybody else before.
As I see it, these problems arise when what I think I should do, and what I feel like doing are in conflict with each other. Going with what you feel is easy, it’s sort of like the automatic mode of operation. Overriding this and acting on what you think takes effort, and the stronger your feelings are wanting to do something else the harder it is.
The trick then, is to try to reconcile the two. The way most people do it is that they starting doing what they feel, and then rationalise it to the point that it’s also what they think to some degree. Fortunately, you can also do it the other way as your feelings are trainable. Find what ever it is that you want to rationally do, and then keep on reminding yourself not just why you want to do this, but also try to feel it. Imagine how doing well in, say, some course of study is going to benefit and advance you in the future. How it will give you an edge against others who haven’t studied the harder aspects of it, etc. Be creative, think of all sorts of positive reasons why doing this thing that you already know you should do is a great thing for you. And, most importantly, try to feel how you will benefit from this. Imagine yourself in the future having kicked butt in this course, or what ever, and imagine what that is going to feel like. Really try to feel it!
It takes time, but you slowly build up positive emotions around these things that you should be doing. At first, it just doesn’t take quite as much effort to do them. Then it comes quite naturally. And after a while you will find yourself actually wanting to do it, to the extent that it would take an act of will power to not do it. Really.
This process itself also becomes a habit. When you decide to do something, you will automatically start to build up positive emotions around what ever it is that you’ve decided to do. During my PhD writing it built up to such a degree that I’d have these dreams some nights about how amazingly happy and proud I was going to be when it was finished. Motivating myself to work on it wasn’t a problem.
Here’s a link to a YouTube video by pjeby describing a very similar technique.
I’ve never heard of this guy before, but yes, that’s the same idea at work.
He posts here all the time.
The video in the link is no longer available.
If you look into the abyss and see turtles all the way down, perhaps it’s all just the same turtle and you’re not thinking with portals, turtlebro.
When I was younger and started thinking about something I wanted to do, like, say, asking out a girl, I never performed the necessary backward induction. I would always envision what the future would be like when the girl said yes and how great it would be. It was so bad that I would try to plan, but seemed to be incapable of actually doing it because I spent so much time thinking about how great the future was going to be. In reality, I didn’t know what to say and the girl said no, so I concluded that envisioning the future was a bug, and tried to fight it.
I guess It’s lucky that I never completely got rid of this tendency, and in the mean time I’ve become much better at planning, (though doing any planning is an improvement, so this means little). Now it’s time to make a conscious effort at cultivating these positive emotions and see what happens.
For me, it works for the things that I believe to continue being important. I can motivate myself to start intrinsically liking doing what I believe to be important to be obsessed over. This doesn’t lock me in on specific subgoals, as when a subgoal is done, it’s transformed into new opportunities for the continuation of a bigger project.
But I’m afraid of starting to like things in which I don’t intrinsically believe, which I only need to get out of my way before a deadline.
From reading the above comment, I explicitly recognized that it’s circular: on one hand, I have a power to control the low-level emotional response, to channel it where I deliberatively believe it should go. On the other hand, I’m afraid of the emotional response taking over, leading me away from the things I deliberatively prefer in the long term. Both effects must be real, but I expect one of them is stronger, if used with sufficient cunning.
Polarizing the activities on those which I identify with, and those I apply only instrumentally creates segregated zones, in one of which deliberation channels emotion, and in the other of which deliberation is afraid of channeling emotion, as it’s expected that emotion will win there. So, on a surface level, it looks like what I identify with is the area of activities where the emotion is channeled. But one step deeper, it turns out that it’s actually an area deliberatively marked as being safe to channel emotions into. Emotional acceptance is the effect of the Escher-brained justification to emotionally segregate the activity, not the defining signature of the self.
And thus, I resolve to try allowing motivation where I didn’t before.