Imagine failing on your goals/habits
Negative visualization helps the person realize the details that could go wrong. Turns out it’s more effective than imagining success.
Do this for anything, sports or work.
Set benchmarks (minimums)
Emily Balcetis discussed how setting a minimum gives a clear feedback loop. So even on your worst days, you get enough done to ensure you stay on track
Examples: at least 20 pushups. Or at least 4 hours of work every day
Keep a record of your progress
To stay motivated, you need to notice progress. And we often forget how much we’ve accomplished if we don’t keep a record of it. Yes, our brains guess wrong.
You can use Notion, a journal, or the Reporter app
Reward yourself cognitively by saying "yes I'm on the right track”
This mechanism gives you a tiny boost and keeps you moving forward. Dopamine is the molecule of motivation (not reward). This tool is the healthiest way to get a reinforcement for the work you’re putting in. Much better than alcohol and partying.
Don't indulge in dopamine-triggering activities
Activities like eating sugar, watching porn,… have extremely strong dopamine increases which can offset baseline dopamine levels and make you crave more
Competition increases testosterone
Evolutionarily, males had to compete against each other to get the best mate. The more they compete, the more testosterone they needed. This made them feel more comfortable and less anxious about someone overpowering them. Note: winning also helps because it correlates with dopamine.
Choose anything healthy you can compete at. Sports, business, finding love, etc. and try to engage in it a regular pace.
You get less dopamine each extra time you do an activity
Addiction stems from when you keep doing an activity (ex. drinking alcohol) looking for the reward that you used to feel. But the issue is that… the more you do it, the less rewarding it becomes. That’s quite unfortunate but solvable.
If there’s something you enjoy a lot, set some type of boundary to avoid getting these drawbacks.
Set deadlines
Nothing puts you into a ‘forward center of mass’ more than deadlines. Your dopamine spikes and you feel a strong urgency for getting things done. Some people prefer the strong activation when a deadline is about to arrive.
You can self-impose deadlines. Example: tell yourself that the article/homework needs to be done by 10pm
Do a space-time bridging exercise
Smooth pursuit is the exercise of looking at an object (ex. pen, staring at it for 10-15 seconds) and slowly moving it away from you. Your brain starts to feel a sense of progress and it makes you more motivate to stay in pursuit of your goal.
Check this video to try it out live
Focus on 1-2 major goals per year
Most people struggle to persevere with their goals because they have too much. This often gets you distracted and prevents you from getting the main thing achieved.
Try writing your top 5 goals for the year, and choose 3 that aren’t that important or urgent
Assess goals on a weekly basis
You need to have a regular interval to check if you’ve made progress. It can’t be too short because you’ll feel like you didn’t do anything and it can’t be too long because you can’t review and stay on track.
You can schedule a weekly review on Sundays to see if you hit your targets and assess what needs to be improved.
Practice your limbic friction muscle (doing something you don’t want to do)
Limbic friction is the effort required to overcome the feeling of not wanting to do something. For example, doing a cold shower needs a lot of limbic friction. The nice thing is that the more you train this muscle, the better it gets.
Next time you feel the need to not do something, remember that the act of doing it is healthy for your motivation.
The 2 Day Rule
When building habits, it’s okay to fail sometimes. So instead, track if you skip the habit 2 days in a row. It’s a good psychological negotiation with yourself and ensures you stay on track.
Habit-Building
Envision or write down the sequence of events to execute the habit, and the events prior to doing the habit, and the events and reward afterwards.
So if you want to eat healthier, don’t judge yourself in the moments of lack of will-power. Instead, look for what happened that pushed you to eat an unhealthy meal. Understand the environment and emotion of before and after you indulged in it.
Use an intermittent reward system
Dopamine is increase when you don’t know when a reward is coming. Using an automated system also helps you avoid overwhelming your dopamine system.
You can do this by randomly treating yourself to a snack during a short-term goal or some gift in the long-term. Ensure that rewards come and go so you don’t always seek them… but still don’t feel like you’re never getting them.