Thursday, April 10, 2014
Even the most intelligent, ambitious
and influential people struggle with follow-through. No matter how excited you
are when you begin something, you might find the ability to finish it frustratingly
elusive. Even our deepest personal goals, those related to our physical health,
our personal dreams or our career success somehow seem to slip through our
fingers like sand—why does this always happen?
The reality is that your ability to
follow through with your goals has little to do with how important the goal is
to you personally, and more to do with how you are approaching it
psychologically. Several studies have provided us with a window into human
motivation, and provide rather simple solutions to changing how we approach
task completion.
To-Go
vs. To-Date Thinking
Let’s say you have a goal to build
your own website. You finally sit down one night and download WordPress, set up
a hosting server and purchase a template you like. Maybe you even create the
homepage, and it looks super sleek. Before you head to bed you congratulate
yourself: “Awesome, I’m so proud of myself for finally sitting down to do this,
the homepage looks great.” Sounds like good progress, right?
It’s common for people to motivate
themselves by occasionally stopping to give themselves a little pat on their
backs for getting this far. However, science shows that this approach could
actually be the root of your downfall.
Several
studies conducted by University of Chicago psychologists Ayelet
Fishbach and Minjung Koo find that the tendency to focus more on how far you’ve
come (this is called “to-date” thinking) than what you have yet to
accomplish (called “to-go” thinking) can actually weaken your motivation
rather than sustain or improve it.
To go back to our example, even
though on the surface you know your WordPress site isn’t done, your
self-congratulation spurs a premature sense of achievement. This feeling of
accomplishment will either increase your likelihood of slacking off or make you
feel better about moving on to other goals that are also important to you.
Starting another task will make you feel like you are accomplishing something
yet again, when in reality task hopping like this leaves you with countless
unfinished dreams.
Fortunately, the solution is simple.
Fishbach and Koo’s study found that finishers approach their goals with a
“to-go” perspective instead. They don’t stop to congratulate themselves as much
as they ponder the next step in order to get closer to their goals. Changing
how you think about goals will be challenging at first, but like any new
approach it simply takes practice.
Remember, there’s no need to be
harsh on yourself; it’s natural to approach any goal with a mix of “to-date”
and “to-go” motivation. After all, managers wouldn’t get very far if they only
ever reminded their employees of what they have yet to accomplish.
Encouragement is important, but it should be focused on what remains to be done
rather than constant accolades for what has already been achieved. The vast
majority of praise should be experienced once a job has been completed. Studies
consistently show this is the absolute best way to motivate people to finish
what they’ve started.
The
Truth About Willpower
Finishing things is great, but what
if you struggle to harness enough willpower to even get started?
When you look at the accomplishments
of those around you, it’s easy to think that some people are simply born with
more willpower than others. However studies show this is actually not the case. In
reality, we all have pretty similar willpower reserves (i.e. the ability
to expend energy to tackle and complete tasks). The key is understanding the
limitations of our own willpower, then channeling and managing it properly.
If we all have similar amounts of
willpower, how do some people accomplish so much more than others? In order to
undertake challenges, everybody needs to purposefully exert energy and
consciously control their actions. However, building productive habits allows
you turn conscious actions (which cost you precious willpower) into automatic
behaviors.
Therefore, while forming habits does
not increase your willpower, it allows you to conserve your willpower reserves
to tackle more new challenges (and maintain enough willpower to follow through
with your goals, rather than start them and burn out halfway through).
Let’s say you start waking up at 6am
every morning to go for a run. While this will never be “easy,” it will require
less willpower over time as this action becomes a habit. It will become
automatic behavior, and free up some of your willpower for tackling new goals.
Most people cannot increase their overall willpower, but they can learn
how to use it wisely.
Sustaining
Self-Discipline
Remember, accomplishing things comes
at a cost. You are only human, and no matter how determined you are to complete
something you only have a limited supply of willpower. If you reach that point
where you simply can’t force yourself to open your laptop and put in another
hour of effort, then give yourself a break. Studies have found that giving yourself some time
to procrastinate on difficult tasks is not only all right, it might be
important for innovation. Even in moments of rest, the key is to stay focused
on where you plan to go, rather than where you’ve gotten so far.
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