I am talking literally about physical pain. Not about a general category of negative motivators.
I haven’t thought deeply about that, but I would expect primitive things which motivate your lizard brain directly to be considerably more effective than whatever constructs parts of your conscious mind invent to try to motivate other parts.
I would expect that physical pain will only motivate immediately avoidant behaviors and will be as useless as any other kind of pain for helping sustained motivation needed to pursue long-term goals, which is usually where the problem lies. Because the lizard brain doesn’t do long-term projects.
Physical pain is also kind of difficult to harness for any practical application to oneself, I suppose...
Not really, humans rarely have to follow a ballistic trajectory :-) Given the ability to correct mid-course starting to move in exactly the right direction is unnecessary.
Hm, I believe the creativity required to set up reality in such a way that I feel physical pain only as long as I don’t start working on a certain project is beyond me… ;-)
I’m incredibly productive when I’m working towards a pass/fail goal on a deadline and I’m very scared of “fail”. Ambiguities in goal and time create problems.
Pain is said to be a very effective one.
Well, at least for me, not really. See also this post.
I am talking literally about physical pain. Not about a general category of negative motivators.
I haven’t thought deeply about that, but I would expect primitive things which motivate your lizard brain directly to be considerably more effective than whatever constructs parts of your conscious mind invent to try to motivate other parts.
I would expect that physical pain will only motivate immediately avoidant behaviors and will be as useless as any other kind of pain for helping sustained motivation needed to pursue long-term goals, which is usually where the problem lies. Because the lizard brain doesn’t do long-term projects.
Physical pain is also kind of difficult to harness for any practical application to oneself, I suppose...
I agree unless you are having difficulty with that first step which starts a journey of a thousand miles.
When going a journey of a thousand miles it’s useful to focus in the direction of your goal and go exactly in the right direction.
Not really, humans rarely have to follow a ballistic trajectory :-) Given the ability to correct mid-course starting to move in exactly the right direction is unnecessary.
Hm, I believe the creativity required to set up reality in such a way that I feel physical pain only as long as I don’t start working on a certain project is beyond me… ;-)
I’m incredibly productive when I’m working towards a pass/fail goal on a deadline and I’m very scared of “fail”. Ambiguities in goal and time create problems.