One thing I’ve noticed is that framing the same task differently can make me either intrinsically motived to do it or not do it. For example, I have a text file full of blog posts I’ve identified as high-quality to read at some point. But reading blog posts from this file feels boring and forced in a way that browsing blog posts from Hacker News does not. I’m not sure how to explain this. However, one thing I do try to do is that once I notice myself conceptualizing some task that I endorse in a way that I find intrinsically motivating, I try not to destroy that conceptualization. For example, I don’t force myself to do it if I happen not to feel like doing it at some point. I stopped using the Pomodoro Technique because I was afraid it was destroying my intrinsic motivation.
I did some reading of the literature on intrinsic motivation and came to a conclusion I hadn’t seen anywhere else, which is that people are intrinsically motivated to complete tasks that raise their status. The reason “extrinsic” rewards don’t work: the implicit message of such rewards is that you are lower status than the reward-giver. I don’t remember all the evidence that lead me to my conclusion but I do remember that e.g. when the reward-giver hands out praise as a reward for good performance, people perform as well as they do when they are “intrinsically” motivated.
I did some reading of the literature on intrinsic motivation and came to a conclusion I hadn’t seen anywhere else, which is that people are intrinsically motivated to complete tasks that raise their status.
Yes, I think that the situation is that people are biologically hardwired to pursue their comparative advantage because doing so was was historically what was most conducive to becoming higher status, so that people’s motivation goes way up when they’re pursuing their natural comparative advantage (relative to their subjectively perceived communities).
You’ll never get quality feedback from that kind of environment. If the bar is so low that you need only exert minimal effort to outclass everyone around you, then how will you ever be able to excel?
Worst case, you put yourself in a toxic environment and lose all motivation. If those fine folks around you don’t find something important, then why should you? You can pick up bad habits that way. For example, there’s one study which found that if your friends are obese, then you have a much higher chance (57%) of becoming obese yourself.
“No matter how slow you go, you are still lapping everybody on the couch.” If the choice is between lacking motivation entirely and having some motivation, the second seems better. One possibility is that you could find an environment that motivates you intrinsically, then once intrinsic motivation was acquired, start setting challenges for yourself.
I’ve found a mixed approach helpful: spend some time with people who don’t know how to do X, because you can add a lot of value to their lives by showing them how to do it better. Spend some time with people who are much better at X than you, so you consistently improve (and have new things to teach.)
I think most people tend to be far too hesitant to teach things they know, because they know that someone else understands it better. But if that person isn’t doing the work to teach, then simply talking about what you know can be incredibly valuable.
Do you remember any particular articles or whatnot on motivation that helped you come to the conclusion that the opportunity to raise your status motivates? This seems plausible to me and I’d like to read more.
Edit: Social status is mentioned on Wikipedia a few times, e.g.
I think I just searched for info on extrinsic and intrinsic motivation on Google Scholar. Looking at my notes, one of the papers I found was called “Self-Determination Theory and the Facilitation of Intrinsic Motivation, Social Development, and Well-Being” if that helps.
I think another tidbit that persuaded me was seeing autonomy, mastery, and community as all being elements cited as important for intrinsic motivation. These all seemed like facets of social status: autonomy means you are in control (and therefore statusful), mastery means you can build skills that get you status, and community means you have people to be high status relative to.
I was just skimming though; I wouldn’t read too much in to my conclusion. If you want to do a literature review and write up your findings that’d probably be pretty valuable. There might be other interesting findings to report on, e.g. IIRC performance on menial tasks doesn’t suffer in response to extrinsic rewards.
But reading blog posts from this file feels boring and forced in a way that browsing blog posts from Hacker News does not.
I (and surely many others) have similar problem; one thing that helps a bit is using Pocket app—it’s a much nicer reading experience than “this file”; reading things in Notepad is aesthetically aversive. (I also occasionally use VoiceDream, that integrates with pocket and does decent text2speech, so you can listen to the posts when walking etc.)
One thing I’ve noticed is that framing the same task differently can make me either intrinsically motived to do it or not do it. For example, I have a text file full of blog posts I’ve identified as high-quality to read at some point. But reading blog posts from this file feels boring and forced in a way that browsing blog posts from Hacker News does not. I’m not sure how to explain this. However, one thing I do try to do is that once I notice myself conceptualizing some task that I endorse in a way that I find intrinsically motivating, I try not to destroy that conceptualization. For example, I don’t force myself to do it if I happen not to feel like doing it at some point. I stopped using the Pomodoro Technique because I was afraid it was destroying my intrinsic motivation.
I did some reading of the literature on intrinsic motivation and came to a conclusion I hadn’t seen anywhere else, which is that people are intrinsically motivated to complete tasks that raise their status. The reason “extrinsic” rewards don’t work: the implicit message of such rewards is that you are lower status than the reward-giver. I don’t remember all the evidence that lead me to my conclusion but I do remember that e.g. when the reward-giver hands out praise as a reward for good performance, people perform as well as they do when they are “intrinsically” motivated.
Yes, I think that the situation is that people are biologically hardwired to pursue their comparative advantage because doing so was was historically what was most conducive to becoming higher status, so that people’s motivation goes way up when they’re pursuing their natural comparative advantage (relative to their subjectively perceived communities).
That suggests one way to motivate yourself to do something is to surround yourself with other people who are doing it badly.
You’ll never get quality feedback from that kind of environment. If the bar is so low that you need only exert minimal effort to outclass everyone around you, then how will you ever be able to excel?
Worst case, you put yourself in a toxic environment and lose all motivation. If those fine folks around you don’t find something important, then why should you? You can pick up bad habits that way. For example, there’s one study which found that if your friends are obese, then you have a much higher chance (57%) of becoming obese yourself.
“No matter how slow you go, you are still lapping everybody on the couch.” If the choice is between lacking motivation entirely and having some motivation, the second seems better. One possibility is that you could find an environment that motivates you intrinsically, then once intrinsic motivation was acquired, start setting challenges for yourself.
I’ve found a mixed approach helpful: spend some time with people who don’t know how to do X, because you can add a lot of value to their lives by showing them how to do it better. Spend some time with people who are much better at X than you, so you consistently improve (and have new things to teach.)
I think most people tend to be far too hesitant to teach things they know, because they know that someone else understands it better. But if that person isn’t doing the work to teach, then simply talking about what you know can be incredibly valuable.
In practice I think it would promote laziness and mediocrity much more than motivate you to excel.
Do you remember any particular articles or whatnot on motivation that helped you come to the conclusion that the opportunity to raise your status motivates? This seems plausible to me and I’d like to read more.
Edit: Social status is mentioned on Wikipedia a few times, e.g.
I think I just searched for info on extrinsic and intrinsic motivation on Google Scholar. Looking at my notes, one of the papers I found was called “Self-Determination Theory and the Facilitation of Intrinsic Motivation, Social Development, and Well-Being” if that helps.
I think another tidbit that persuaded me was seeing autonomy, mastery, and community as all being elements cited as important for intrinsic motivation. These all seemed like facets of social status: autonomy means you are in control (and therefore statusful), mastery means you can build skills that get you status, and community means you have people to be high status relative to.
I was just skimming though; I wouldn’t read too much in to my conclusion. If you want to do a literature review and write up your findings that’d probably be pretty valuable. There might be other interesting findings to report on, e.g. IIRC performance on menial tasks doesn’t suffer in response to extrinsic rewards.
I (and surely many others) have similar problem; one thing that helps a bit is using Pocket app—it’s a much nicer reading experience than “this file”; reading things in Notepad is aesthetically aversive. (I also occasionally use VoiceDream, that integrates with pocket and does decent text2speech, so you can listen to the posts when walking etc.)