PSY336H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Behaviorism, Motivation, Neuroplasticity
PSY336 Week 3 Goals and Motivations
“What is necessary to change a person, is to change his awareness of himself. – A. Maslow”
• It’s not a lack of basic motivation or passion that caused us to be unable to accomplish
some goals.
Pick a Personal goal: to learn chess.
• Once a guy gave prof a book called “procrastination equation” and prof promised to read
the book and get back to the guy. Next year came around and the guy was in class again
and prof had to confess he forgot to read the book. Then he promised that he will finish
the book next week, and he did it.
• The procrastination equation: DI/EV.
• The motivation equation: EV/DI.
o D = delay; how far is the goal from you now?
o I = impulsiveness.
o E = Expectancy.
o V = Value.
Let’s first talk about D.
• What was the difference between the first time prof promised to read the book and the
second time he promised to do it in a week? Time difference. “Delay” difference. The
first time the promise is in the future. Because prof wouldn’t have to see the guy until
next year. But the second time the prof would see the guy again the following week.
• Most of us have done “last minute” marathons for readings or exams. We all know it’s
not good, but we still do it because we love our “war” stories – being able to finish x
amount of work in a short amount of time.
• One of the reasons why we procrastinate is because we are attached to the identity that
we are the “last minute guy” who does all this stuff and tells “war” stories to friends. At
least this is the case for prof. But this has limited prof’s own growth.
• In Kung Fu movies or action movies, the protagonist usually first gets his butt kicked and
bullied and humiliated etc. And then the training montage happens – all of a sudden he
becomes a hero. The training montage is awesome, because it seems like training all the
time and the guy emerges a superhero. Do you have a training montage story? (“I used to
be this this good etc etc. And then shit hits the fan, I collapsed, family died etc. And then
I have an epiphany and go through training montage and I get my shit together and now I
am so much better.”)
• Training montage makes incremental change really hard. The person believes that the
change has to be a magic moment that’s dramatic and that he will emerge as a superhero.
Everything will all of a sudden get so much better.
• Prof is in his mid 40s and still the training montage phase still hadn’t happened to him.
So he presumes that the training montage will likely not happen.
• Holding onto the belief of “things are going to be so much better in 3 months” limits your
understanding of change to that of dramatic and magical moments. This wishful thinking
will distort your vision.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
• Check out the website “ZenHabits.” Starts off with the guy being out of shape, out of job,
smoking etc.. Then the guy (Leo) discovered a secret – break it down, break the training
montage down, and turn it into smaller steps. It doesn’t sound too exciting, because there
lacks a magical moment where things just happen. But think about it, most of things you
do everyday, like brushing teeth, is easy and automatic. Making a change is hard.
• Imagine you build a habit every month. Which means at the end of the month, you won’t
have any exciting story to tell. Imagine in week #5, you already have a new habit. So you
move onto the next habit. Accumulate this for 11 or 12 months, you get 12 changes that
are automatized. So in this year, you have become amazing. This was Leo’s discovery –
break it down. You only have this much motivation, energy etc. if you try to take on
everything at once, you will probably fail. But if you broke it down into steps over time,
you can have your training montage.
• Let’s say, you just got an assignment in a class that’s due in about 2 months. Imagine a
graph of motivation versus time. Right now, because you just got the assignment, your
motivation is pretty okay. But it drops quickly because 2 month is a long time and you
don’t have to do it yet. Every once in while, your motivation spikes a bit because
someone remind you about the assignment, but it never gets too high. Then you reach the
last minute, and all of a sudden your motivation spikes very very high. We call this line
“motivation 1.”
• Now imagine motivation 2, which is to eat healthy. This one has a higher original
motivation than motivation 1.
• Imagine motivation 3, it started really low. It represents other things, like eating ice
cream, play video games, talk to people etc.
• There can be many interfering events during the time between new assignment and due
date. You may get busy, depressed, school gets crazy, relationships went bad etc. Every
time the interfering event happens, the motivation for other things, i.e. mot 3 spikes and
gets higher than anything. So during these spikes, you don’t do your assignment, you
forgot to eat healthy all because motivation for eating ice cream, playing video games is
higher.
• Two magic actions to resolve this:
o Get rid of life. Control the universe. This is not very practical or feasible.
o Use the deadline to your advantage. If you have an abstract, long-term goal, it
won’t make you get down to business. Only things that are concrete and in you
face will make you motivated to do things. So take big abstract goals and break
them down into small concrete goals. For example, if you want to become a
published author in 2 years, you need to get a good, approved draft in 1.5 years,
which means you need a draft in 1 year, which means from right now, you have to
write 30 minute everyday to achieve your timeline. If you can’t do 30 minutes
every day, you can choose to do 2 or 3 chunks of time each week.
In our case for the assignment, instead of the assignment being due in 2 months,
we can have a TA due date, to have our TA look it over, which is in 6 weeks. And
then you need a draft due in 4 weeks so on and so on. You push the due date
closer and closer to the present. This can make sure your motivation for
assignment is almost always at a relatively high level and you will be able to
resist motivation to eat ice cream or play video games.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
What is necessary to change a person, is to change his awareness of himself. It"s not a lack of basic motivation or passion that caused us to be unable to accomplish some goals. Pick a personal goal: to learn chess: once a guy gave prof a book called procrastination equation and prof promised to read the book and get back to the guy. Next year came around and the guy was in class again and prof had to confess he forgot to read the book. The first time the promise is in the future. Because prof wouldn"t have to see the guy until next year. But the second time the prof would see the guy again the following week: most of us have done last minute marathons for readings or exams. At least this is the case for prof. In kung fu movies or action movies, the protagonist usually first gets his butt kicked and bullied and humiliated etc.
