That’s a very interesting outlook—I haven’t really considered action being a sum of motivations up until now. So, I guess my question then would be, what does encouraging/discouraging sources of intrinsic motivation look like for you?
My answer to your first question was, I don’t know, but in the interest of comprehensiveness I mentioned a minor exception, which you asked about, so here is more info on the minor exception.
what does encouraging/discouraging sources of intrinsic motivation look like for you?
It looks like making a habit of patiently watching for the desired change. My software environment is organized enough that I can usually arrange for my future self to re-read a written reminder. So, (years ago) I wrote a reminder to watch for any instance where I think my behavior and my decisions are being motivated by interpersonal altruism or I experience pleasure or satisfaction from having achieve an altruistic interpersonal outcome. Note that this did not result in incontrovertible evidence of a significant increase in frequency of altruistic behavior. But I certainly stopped my addiction to the flow motivator (over the course of many years, except I relapse when I’m under stress, but these years it takes a lot of stress) and am pretty sure that the patient watching strategy helped a lot there. (And “just watching” helped me make other kinds of internal mental changes.)
My mind seems to works such that if the only conscious effort I make to effect some internal change is to get into the habit of watching or checking to see if the change has already occurred, my subconscious sometimes seems to figure out a way to effect the change if I watch long enough (months or years).
There are much faster and more potent ways to increase motivation and drive for most people: avoiding all exposure to light between 23:00 and 05:00 every night; getting as much very bright light as possible during the first 3 hours of wakefulness; making sure to get enough tyrosine (a dopamine precursor); deliberate cold exposure; avoiding spending too much of the day in perfectly-safe pleasurable activities; doing enough things you find aversive or outright painful; doing enough risky things. But you didn’t ask about that, I don’t think: “passion” almost always refers to intrinsic motivation (i.e., basically something that feels good or that a person wants to do for it own sake rather than as part of a plan to achieve some other outcome), whereas the motivation for most of what I (and probably you) do is extrinsic. E.g., I take the time to cook a healthy meal not because I enjoy cooking but rather because I anticipate that eating well will pay dividends mostly in future years in helping me achieve outcomes that I haven’t even decided to pursue yet. I took stuff like that to be outside the scope of your question.
That’s a very interesting outlook—I haven’t really considered action being a sum of motivations up until now. So, I guess my question then would be, what does encouraging/discouraging sources of intrinsic motivation look like for you?
My answer to your first question was, I don’t know, but in the interest of comprehensiveness I mentioned a minor exception, which you asked about, so here is more info on the minor exception.
It looks like making a habit of patiently watching for the desired change. My software environment is organized enough that I can usually arrange for my future self to re-read a written reminder. So, (years ago) I wrote a reminder to watch for any instance where I think my behavior and my decisions are being motivated by interpersonal altruism or I experience pleasure or satisfaction from having achieve an altruistic interpersonal outcome. Note that this did not result in incontrovertible evidence of a significant increase in frequency of altruistic behavior. But I certainly stopped my addiction to the flow motivator (over the course of many years, except I relapse when I’m under stress, but these years it takes a lot of stress) and am pretty sure that the patient watching strategy helped a lot there. (And “just watching” helped me make other kinds of internal mental changes.)
My mind seems to works such that if the only conscious effort I make to effect some internal change is to get into the habit of watching or checking to see if the change has already occurred, my subconscious sometimes seems to figure out a way to effect the change if I watch long enough (months or years).
There are much faster and more potent ways to increase motivation and drive for most people: avoiding all exposure to light between 23:00 and 05:00 every night; getting as much very bright light as possible during the first 3 hours of wakefulness; making sure to get enough tyrosine (a dopamine precursor); deliberate cold exposure; avoiding spending too much of the day in perfectly-safe pleasurable activities; doing enough things you find aversive or outright painful; doing enough risky things. But you didn’t ask about that, I don’t think: “passion” almost always refers to intrinsic motivation (i.e., basically something that feels good or that a person wants to do for it own sake rather than as part of a plan to achieve some other outcome), whereas the motivation for most of what I (and probably you) do is extrinsic. E.g., I take the time to cook a healthy meal not because I enjoy cooking but rather because I anticipate that eating well will pay dividends mostly in future years in helping me achieve outcomes that I haven’t even decided to pursue yet. I took stuff like that to be outside the scope of your question.