Get It Done: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation

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Find ways to make the activity fun. If something is more enjoyable, it becomes intrinsically rewarding and much easier to accomplish. For instance, finding exercise and foods that you enjoy that help you towards fitness goals. If you don't enjoy something intrinsically, you will eventually avoid it and give up on it. Even the most dreary tasks can be livened up somehow. When you find yourself facing a goal that's highly important, framing your progress based on what you haven't yet accomplished may be more motivating than thinking about what you've already done."

Finally, think about times that you’ve been successful and unsuccessful in achieving your past goals. Thinking about successes is kinda easy, right? But we’ve all messed up at one point. I know I have. I’ve tried, I’ve failed, I’ve tried, I’ve failed again. So, how about learning from those failures? If you’re someone who struggles to lean into your mistakes, you’re not alone – but you are missing out on a bunch of important information. Partea de mijloc este cea mai dificila, concentrează-te pe ceea ce ai atins deja, pe progres, nu pe lungul drum pe care, încă , îl mai ai de parcurs. Fishbach also suggests that incentives will undermine children's intrinsic motivation more so than adults', because children are still figuring out which things they're doing because they enjoy them versus because of some other incentive. That seems plausible enough.

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incentive structures: if the reward is incorrect, the outcome will be; adding incentives mainly dilutes the goal goals must be valuable and within reach (be on the right side of sunk-cost fallacy); action increases commitment Ayelet Fishbach is theJeffrey Breakenridge Keller Professor of Behavioral Science and Marketing and IBM Corporation Faculty Scholar attheChicago Booth School of Business. Adam Grant, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of Think Again and host of the TED podcast WorkLife I want to say I learned something from this book but it was just so heavy-handed with the numerous theories in the end that I doubt I will remember hardly anything coming month or two. And few pearls of wisdom I decided to commit to memory were pushed out by the heavy-handed serving of superfluous information later on. So I think if this book aimed to teach long-term it missed the goal on this.

This book was received as an ARC from Little Brown Company - Little Brown Spark through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Opinions and thoughts expressed in this review are completely my own. P170 “It’s important…that you correctly judge the strength of the temptations you’ll face. As long as your expectations are well calibrated, you’ll be prepared to fight temptation off.”Maybe you’ve also pulled yourself through a major life change before, like ending an unhealthy relationship or switching careers. All of these are things that need to get done, even when motivating yourself to do them can be tough.

P74 “all-or-nothing goals” i.e. a college degree vs. accumulative goals” i.e. working out 5x per week or reading 20 books this year

You could use it to your advantage, by, say, working in a public place like a café. And if you’re a bit of a hermit with lots of aspirations, there’s still hope. Because even a proxy for another’s presence, like a picture of a loved one or (this one’s a little bit creepy) of staring eyes, can help you put in the extra effort and inspire you to be your best self. Final Summary It’s a surprising anecdote to be offered by an expert in the realm of setting and achieving goals, but her message gets right to the heart of one of the deceptively simple lessons in her book: choose your goals wisely.