Being motivated generally means being drawn toward something. Even running away from a ravenous smilodon is motivated in a way by a desperate desire to keep on living (though when we get down to the reptile brain like that–eating, sleeping, procreating–the rules are a little different, and a little more fundamental, than when we’re trying to motivate ourselves to complete a term paper or clean out the garage).

The question is, what are you being drawn toward? You don’t necessarily need an end goal, and in fact most kinds of personal improvement have to do with acquiring habits you’ll want to keep for the future, habits you’ll want to keep for a lifetime rather than just use to get to a finish line. The best way to complete one novel is to become the kind of person who writes a lot; the best way to lose weight and stay fit is to become the kind of person who eats well and loves to exercise; and so on.

So we’re not looking for some kind of end state or finish line: instead, we’re looking for a vision of the future, some point along the line when you’ve accomplished some of the things you would most like to accomplish. What does that vision look like?

The reason this vision for the future is important is because we tend to align ourselves with imagined situations, an effect called “mood congruity.” If I vividly imagine a cold, drizzly, depressing day, I’ll tend to feel more depressed. If I vividly imagine a ravenous smilodon, I’ll tend to feel afraid. And if I picture myself in a house that is perfectly organized, I’ll tend to get excited about organizing my house. Our mental imagery affects our current mood and even our desires. That’s why thinking about playing video games instead of studying is a bad way to prevent yourself from playing video games instead of studying: the more we picture something, the more we tend to make choices that are affected by the image.

One last note about drawing ourselves forward: while visions of a good future can help make us enthusiastic about making good choices in the present, the future in question doesn’t have to be a distant one. For instance, if I want to clean the garage, it can be very effective to imagine myself just a couple of hours in the future with a small part of the garage completely taken care of, even if the garage as a whole is going to take me weeks to sort out. Or I might imagine what it will be like to show my spouse that newly-clean corner of the garage, or to think about what I’ll do in a couple of weeks with the money I make selling unneeded things I dig out of the garage on Craigslist. In fact, sometimes the little, short-term payoffs are the most motivating.

So short-term or long, what’s drawing you forward?

Photo by rogiro

For a month and a half now I’ve been pursuing My “Use ’em If You Got ’em” Challenge–basically, to get better and better at using the tools I already understand just when I need them, even at the seemingly worst times. It’s been challenging all right, but also educational, and I feel as though I’m slowly getting the hang of it. Of course it’s frustrating too, because when I don’t do a good job at using my self-motivation tools, because of my research I usually know exactly what I’m doing wrong. But Knowing Isn’t Enough: I’ve been needing to get in the habit of using self-motivation tactics as difficult situation arrives, and while it’s a very beneficial habit, it doesn’t come naturally!

And since it’s a difficult task, it’s been important for me to break it down to the simplest terms I can think of. The terms I’ve come up with make up the title of this post: relax, goals, choice, tactics. When I follow this approach, I have a very good chance of doing well. When I don’t, I’m more likely to rely on old, bad habits.

Before I talk about what each of the steps means, I need to mention the thing that makes any of them possible: mindfulness. I can only use my in-the-moment willpower tactics when I am consciously aware that I’m in a situation where I might make a bad choice. These really aren’t hard to recognize–I always feel a little doubtful, at least, when they come up. What’s hard is learning to wave a red flag at myself in those situations and say “Hey, pay attention to this! Think about what you’re doing!” Yet the more I do it, the easier it gets.

On to the four steps:

Relax: This is essential, and it’s so useful to me that most of the time it’s the only step I need. I find that when I’m in a situation where I’m in danger of making a bad choice, I tend to feel worked up about the problem–one part of me is ready to dig in and insist I make the bad choice, whereas another part of me is gearing up for a ferocious battle. Relaxing means letting go of both of these points of view and taking a few deep breaths. Is the question of whether I watch a movie or work on that project really life-or-death? No, it’s just an opportunity. I do my best to let go of my concerns and not take myself so seriously. Suddenly, making a good choice is no longer a struggle: it’s just one potential path I can take.

Goals: Once I’ve stepped away from the situation a little and let go of the tension, I have room to reflect for a moment on my goals. If I want to lose weight, get more work done, be more cool-headed in difficult conversations, be more organized, or whatever it may be, I can reflect on my vision for myself and remind myself why those goals are important. By thinking about my goals instead of about the bad choice I was considering, I become much more able to focus on good choices.

Choice: In that state of mind, I can choose what I want to do–even if I’m not prepared to do it yet. I can take a moment to visualize my behavior and consciously pick one of those paths. Being relaxed and having my goals in mind, the good choices tend to be much easier at this point, and the bad choices less tempting.

Tactics: If a good choice is not easy to make at this stage–although honestly, it generally is if I go this far in the process–then I can start looking at my available tactics. For instance, if I’m trying not to eat something, I can use any of my 24 Ways to Stop Feeling Hungry. If I’m trying to start a project that’s difficult for me, I can use any one of the 7 Tricks for Starting in on an Unappealing Task. There are dozens of tactics for supporting a good choice on this site, and having even a few available to choose from–whether on a printed list or a memorized or on a bookmarked page I can bring up on my computer–usually gives me enough leverage to make the good choice I want to make.

Relax – goals – choice – tactics is a bit of an advanced technique, but if you’re interested in cultivating good choices, it’s  a habit well worth cultivating. As for me, we’ll see how I do as I get better and better at using my four-step method.

Photo by  sytoha / Syed Touhid Hassan

Weighing in when trying to get fit is a dangerous business. You might lose two pounds one week and gain back three the next when you’ve pretty much been eating and exercising the same way. You might lose fat but still gain weight. Your weight can even fluctuate during the day: I’ve seen reliable differences of five pounds between morning and night a few times, and never associated with extreme behaviors.

It’s not the scale’s fault: our bodies hold more or less water for a variety of reasons, including sodium intake and how recently we’ve exercised. When we build muscle, we gain weight: it weighs more than fat. Weights can vary due to the clothes we wear, how recently we’ve eaten and what we’ve eaten, and other variables.

Yet weighing in is one of the few ways a person can get any evidence as to how they’re doing in their attempts to get fit. Not weighing in is a problem because otherwise, apart from using calipers (which aren’t the worst idea in the world–but that’s a different topic), the only clear measure of success or failure is measurements that might take a month or more to clearly change, even if your efforts are going well. As human beings, we don’t work well with getting feedback over the course of months: we do better with feedback within a day, or preferably within minutes. Long-term feedback isn’t very motivating.

So what to do about the scale, with its short-term feedback laced with multiple misleading problems? Here are a few scale-related strategies:

• Use weigh-in results as data, not as goals. If you have your heart set on seeing a particular number, you can easily be disappointed just because you’re carrying more water around, for instance. The real differences that matter are in how you feel and how your body changes. Focus on exercising and eating to feel good instead of specifically to see numbers change on the scale. You can’t directly control your weight: you can only influence it. Goals work when they’re something that you can actually make happen reliably yourself.
• Weigh twice a day, but look at results over the course of a week. Weigh in at two different times in the course of a day and take an average of the numbers as an average daily weight. This way, one screwy weigh-in won’t throw you off. Weigh in at about the same times each day for maximum consistency. I like to weigh myself twice each time I weigh in. If they agree, I take the number. If not, I weigh in again to see which weight it confirms.
• Make sure you have a reliable scale. The old scales with the spinning dials tend to be highly inaccurate; get a brand of scale that you can rely on. You can find info on these by looking at reviews on sites like Amazon.com before buying, or you could buy a scale recommended by a doctor, nutritionist, trainer, etc.
• Relax. Whatever is going to show up on the scale has already been determined before you ever step on, so nothing’s really at stake when you get on the scale. The number you get will not be a definite and reliable answer as to how you’re doing with weight loss, and it certainly doesn’t tell you what will happen in the future. If you eat healthily and conservatively and get a lot of exercise, you will lose weight over time, whether the scale seems to be immediately supporting that or not.

Photo by GenBug

An experiment in excuses
For most of my life I’ve been running an experiment between two categories of things in my life: the “excuses are OK” group and “no excuses” group. It’s only recently that I noticed I was running this experiment, though, and so the years and years of results are only now starting to come in handy.

Let me give some examples of choices that have been in each group. By the way, though I talk a lot about eating well in this post, the points about excuses and exceptions apply just as well to forming any other kind of habit.

“Excuses are OK” group

• Eating foods that I’d be better off not eating
• Going to bed at a reasonable hour
• Keeping track of incoming mail

“No Excuses” group

• Parenting
• Vegetarianism (for the 22 years I decided to do that)
• Going to work

So I might do well for a stretch at making good eating choices, then hit a day when I was traveling and didn’t have many options, so I’d say to myself “Oh well, it’s really hard to eat well on a day like today–I’ll just eat whatever.”

But on that same trip I would not say “Oh well, it’s really hard to eat vegetarian on a day like today–I’ll just get a hamburger.”

My results
Knowing what I know these days about self-motivation, it shouldn’t surprise me that the “no excuses” group of activities were much more successful than the “excuses OK” group. For instance, when I started making a rule of eating only at specific times of day, it became much easier to make better eating choices. I went 22 years without knowingly eating any red meat, seafood, or poultry–even that time back in my 20’s when I was out of money and extremely hungry while traveling and someone offered me a hamburger. By contrast, it’s rare that I’ve gone 22 days without overeating (though all the days I have eaten well count for something, as I eventually lost 60 pounds and have been in great shape for quite a while now).

To look at it another way, and in terms of a real experiment, one study on habit formation found that those participants who kept up the behavior they wanted to make into a habit with no more than one exception over the course of months were much more successful at forming durable habits than those who made two or more exceptions.

The secret of excuses and exceptions
The thing about excuses and exceptions is that if we’re trying to build habits, there’s no good reason for excuses short of total catastrophe. Any time we don’t stick with the behavior we’re trying to build up–that is, any time we make exceptions–we lose some of the habitual behavior we’re trying to build. There may be days when eating well is inconvenient, boring, or annoying, but if I use inconvenience, boredom, and annoyance as excuses, then they’ll wreck my attempts to build a habit over time.

That’s not to say that making one excuse is the end of the world, but it is true that taking excuses as a serious problem and not an acceptable norm will help us develop the habits we want to create.

Easier said than done–but possible!
“That’s really nice,” you might say, “but it doesn’t help me for you to just tell me to behave the way I’d like to all the time. Not behaving the way I want to is the problem in the first place!” And that would be a reasonable thing to mention. Fortunately, there is a practical takeaway here: excuses are red flags and should be treated as such. There’s no such thing as a good excuse when trying to build a habit, there are only catastrophic interruptions. If a friend of yours is in the hospital and you end up throwing your good eating habits out the window from stress and limited choices, that’s fine; it’s not the end of the world–but it is a catastrophic interruption, and it means you’re damaging a good habit you’re working on for something more important. But good friends are more important than good food, and that’s a reasonable choice if you really need to focus on your friend.

On the other hand, what if you just interrupt a good habit because you’re in a bad mood or happen to be in a restaurant that serves something you like? Many of us immediately reach for the excuse box.

But if we recognize excuses and exceptions as danger signs, we can stop ourselves and say “My goal here is to build a habit, not to come up with excuses to screw that up.” Using this kind of awareness, making rules, taking responsibility, surrendering excuses, and making use of any useful tactics we can learn (like this list of 24 Ways to Stop Feeling Hungry), we can move ourselves out of the “Excuses OK” group and into the group that’s really kicking experimental butt.

Photo by ariel.chico

The image we get of temptation is of something that’s itching for a fight. We tend to talk about temptation as something that we have to resist or give in to, if we don’t steer clear of it in the first place. How accurate is this? Is struggling with temptation the best way to get past it?

In a post a while back, I described successful willpower as thinking more about the right things and less about the wrong things. One inevitable side effect of fighting something is that we think about it more. The more we fight temptation head on, the more we’re giving our attention to it. In other words, locking horns with temptation makes the temptation more powerful. That doesn’t mean we can never win out in this way, but it does mean that fighting isn’t always going to be the most efficient or successful process. (I say more about the problem of resisting in the article “Resistance Really Is Useless: Why Willpower Isn’t About Fighting Ourselves.”)

One of the alternatives is to focus your attention elsewhere. You see a doughnut; the doughnut calls to you; and you respond by grabbing a novel that you’ve been reading. Within a few minutes, your head is deep in the book, and the doughnut has retreated.

But there’s also a simpler and more educational option, which is to relax and observe. When we’re tempted by things that we’re aware wouldn’t be in our best interests, we can consciously take a deep breath, reorient, and begin to examine our own thoughts and emotions. Why did the thing seem so tempting? Is there something else causing anxiety or sadness or frustration, something that encouraged acting out? Is there a particular broken idea playing in a mental loop?

By consciously relaxing and letting the tension go–whether by using meditation techniques, visualizing a peaceful place, counting to ten, talking ourselves down, or any other simple relaxation method–the urgency and sharpness of the temptation immediately lessen. In this environment it’s much easier to talk simple sense to ourselves and move on without having to avoid or battle temptation. Instead, we let temptation float up and drift away like letting go of a balloon.

Like yesterday’s tip about putting an undesired behavior off for a little while, this approach isn’t radical, difficult, or necessarily life-changing all alone–but it does show temptation in an entirely different light, as a state that we can get ourselves worked up into instead of something external that moves in and threatens us. As we recognize the amount of influence we have over our own states of mind, we begin to find more tools for changing our minds and more options for being the people we choose to be.

Photo by against the tide

Breaking habits isn’t easy: it takes a lot of disruption to make a behavior we’re used to stop coming out automatically. Changing a behavior means coming up with many ways over time to stop ourselves from doing what comes naturally, by habit. For this purpose, the more tactics we have available to disrupt those undesired habits, the better–and one of those tactics, strangely enough, is a bit like procrastination. You could also call it “delayed gratification,” but regardless, the technique is to push things off a little further in time. For instance, if a person is hard at work at a home business and is tempted to stop working for a while to check Facebook, something they’re trying not to do doing working hours, one option is to say “How about I check Facebook a little later?” Chances are the idea of checking Facebook came up during a particularly boring or unappealing moment in work, and if things get more interesting as the work progresses, then not checking Facebook might be easier when the promised time comes than it was when it was first put off.

And if it isn’t easier to avoid when the delayed time comes, it can often be put off again. Enough delaying, and it might not happen at all, or else be saved to an appropriate moment–just as with someone who’s trying to stick to a healthier eating pattern putting off a snack until it’s meal time, when the snack is no longer necessary.

This is not a very sophisticated or especially powerful technique, but like the Just Don’t It technique, it can be pulled out at odd moments to interfere with a bad habit a person is trying to break. Even if ultimately the delays don’t prevent the undesired behavior, at least there has been some interruption of the normal state of things, which is an accomplishment and a bit of progress. And at their best, delaying tactics can be one of a set of tools that together can be employed to completely extinguish an undesired habit over time.

Photo by Stuart`Dootson

A year ago yesterday I made my first Willpower Engine post, writing about the riddle my sister posed years ago when she seemed to develop formidable willpower out of nowhere. I think that was my first real clue that willpower was not something that a person just had or didn’t have, but rather something that could strengthened, grown, built on, activated, or energized. It wasn’t until the last few years, though, that I started doing book research and really began to understand how willpower actually works.

I started this blog thinking that there should be enough to post about for at least a few months, but what I’ve found is that the number of things a person can usefully know about willpower, self-motivation, habit-building, habit-breaking, goals, and organization–all of which I would suggest are different ways of looking at the same thing–is enormous. This seems kind of depressing at first, because you think to yourself “Are you kidding? I’ve got to get all this down before I get my willpower working?” Fortunately, it’s more like every different facet of willpower is a different kind of opportunity to seize, and any single one can make a real difference in our lives. We don’t have to learn every single tool that can possibly affect willpower (well, I’ve been doing my best to keep up with all of it, but that’s just because I’m trying to write about all of those tools): we just have to find a good set of tools that work for us personally.

The site and the posts have changed since the beginning: for a while there I was trying to make each post almost like a chapter of a book, with full and in-depth coverage of one specific thing. Over time I’ve learned to say less at once, to try to come in and make one specific point that might be able to stick with a person throughout the day instead of trying to cover every angle. I’ve also gone from posting a few times a week, whenever I thought of something to write about, to within a month posting on a regular schedule, first three days a week and more recently five. Sometimes I have a few posts ready in advance, while sometimes I finish the next day’s post just the night before. After a year, thinking and writing about habit has become a habit itself for me, and is almost always interesting and fun.

I’m very grateful to everyone who has come by to read The Willpower Engine so far, especially to those who have commented or gotten in touch, as well as to friends, family members, and visitors who have helped me refine and improve the site. I hope you’re getting at least a small part of the enormous pleasure and benefit from reading the site that I get from writing it for you.

You can find a complete list of Willpower Engine posts to date on the Complete Post Listing page at http://www.lucreid.com/?page_id=802.

Photo by benefit of hindsight

For years it’s bothered me that “Just do it” is in use as a corporate slogan, because it’s a practical and extremely useful self-motivation shortcut. “Just do it” can sometimes sneak you into success while your brain is still arguing the merits of failure. While you’re trying to decide whether to start working on taxes or to watch some TV, you might say to yourself “Why don’t I sift through my files and dig out all my tax-related materials, just as something to do while I’m deciding?” If it works (and of course it doesn’t always, but if you haven’t tried it, you might be surprised how easy it is to fall for this handy trick), you end up doing what you hoped to do without ever having to decide to do it.

But that’s not what I’m going to talk about today. Instead of talking about just doing it, I’m going to talk about just not doing it. Here’s how that works:

Let’s say I’m at home on a Sunday, as I was this past Sunday, and I have a lot of writing I’d really like to get done, which I did. And let’s say there’s a movie I’d like to see, which there was, and that it wouldn’t be hard for me to just go to it and carve a couple of hours out of my afternoon, which was the case.

Deep down, I knew that I wanted to be doing the writing. I enjoy the writing, and it’s important. But the movie was very tempting: it was hard to argue that it would do awful damage to my plans for the day, because it wouldn’t. It was hard to argue that it was unreasonable or damaging, because it wasn’t those things either. No, it was just a worse choice than writing. Even so, pitting the two against each other, writing would have a good chance of losing, because movies are more obviously attractive, easier to picture having fun at.

But this is where I employed the mighty power of just not doing it: as I was beginning to imagine going to the movie, just the kind of visualization that tends to make a person more likely to do something, I stopped and said to myself “Or … I could stay home and get back to writing.” I felt an immediate relief, as though I had been waiting to give myself permission to make the right choice, and thinking about the options as little as possible from there, I went back to writing and wasn’t bothered by that choice the rest of the day.

I’m not describing this situation (or the cinnamon bun one) because I think it’s impressive or especially virtuous: the usefulness of it is that it isn’t anything special. I didn’t have to build up to it or use clever techniques: I just took advantage of the possibility of saying “No, let’s not.” It’s an option I’m trying to use more and more lately, and it’s surprising to me how much I’m able to accomplish by saying “No.”

Photo by D.B. Blas

Psychologist and yoga teacher Kelly McGonigal, PhD has posted a very useful resource for anyone interested in trying out or beginning to practice meditation. On her blog, Science and Sutras, you can find a 15-minute, guided, sitting meditation that you can do at your computer while listening to the MP3 file she has posted here:
http://kellymcgonigal.
blogspot.com/2010/01/new-guided-meditation-practice.html .

Basic guided meditation practices like this one are an easy and effective way to start meditating, a practice that pretty much anyone can learn and pretty much anyone can benefit from. Some of the payoffs to regular meditation (or even, heck, sporadic meditation) include relaxation, stress relief, increased focus, serenity, and perspective. I go on at more length about the benefits of meditation in my article “Strengthen Willpower Through Meditation,” which also offers some other resources you can use to get started or to learn more about the subject.

In addition to her Science and Sutras blog, Dr. McGonigal offers good material on her Twitter Feed and in her The Science of Willpower blog on the Psychology Today Web site. (And if you’re adding Twitter feeds, you may be interested in my own, quieter one at http://twitter.com/lucreid .)

Photo by Vitó

There are cinnamon buns on the counter in my kitchen, which I bought for my son. There is nothing preventing me from having a cinnamon bun, since it wouldn’t be grossly unhealthy to eat one, and my son isn’t necessarily entitled to every single bun. But I definitely have no nutritional need for a cinnamon bun and in fact am still working hard to lose weight, so while I’d certainly get a little pleasure during the few minutes it would take to eat one, in the long run I’m likely to get more happiness by not eating one. As low-key as the satisfaction of having made a smart choice is, together with freedom from a mild sugar crash and greater ease in getting more fit it has more enjoyment to offer me in the long term than the cinnamon bun.

But, of course, I wanted a cinnamon bun. I went over to the counter and looked at them, thinking something like “These aren’t really good choices for me to eat, but I can’t resist.”

Stop! Halt! Broken idea detected!  “I can’t resist” is making the cinnamon bun issue into an absolute, as though it were an irresistable force like gravity instead of 1) mild hunger plus 2) most of a lifetime of bad snacking habits plus 3) a vague leftover sense of mild deprivation from childhood. Theoretically, staring at those cinnamon buns, I should still have a way out, even though I was strongly inclined to eat one.

Lately I’ve been trying to make a habit of pulling out whatever willpower tricks I have whenever I’m in a situation where I could make a bad choice, even if it’s a very minor bad choice. So I tried a few of the 24 anti-hunger techniques I could think of off the top of my head: “Have some tea (anti-hunger idea #11), or a piece of gum (#10),” I told myself. I don’t want tea or gum, I answered myself. I want a cinnamon bun. I actually reached for the container then.

“You’ll be happier if you don’t eat that!” I told myself in desparation (#2).

You promise? I answered. (I’m not making this up. I actually thought the words “You promise?” to myself. It was a little weird.)

“Yes, I promise,” I said. “So are we good?”

We were good. I stepped away from the cinnamon bun and drank some water (#12). It wasn’t even difficult to step away then. The effort had only had to go into coming up with a tactic that changed my thinking for that particular situation.

Changing my thinking worked because I like happiness, which was what I was able to offer myself. Happiness is good, and within pretty generous limits, more happiness is better. Apparently whatever part of me wanted the cinnamon bun was satisfied if it could trade it in for happiness. While I was surprised that this little mental conversation was sufficient to resolve the cinnamon bun problem for me, in general it makes sense. We always have a variety of dimly-seen forces prodding us to do things that ultimately we won’t be thrilled we did, but we also have available to us a wealth of secret mental weapons we can use to align ourselves with our own best intentions, including visualization, reframing, distraction, support, and others. If we get in the habit of trying a few of them whenever we’re faced with a difficult choice, sometimes we’ll surprise ourselves.

Photo by TowerGirl