The Trouble with Motivation
Several of my artist friends have been frustrated lately by their lack of motivation and resulting difficulty getting into their studios. They want to be making art but they’re just not feeling like it. My problem has been finding the motivation to get to the gym (aka, my living room). I suspect that we’re not the only ones who are experiencing motivation fluctuations in the “new normal” and things might only get worse as the summer winds down, school begins, and the shadow of additional COVID-19 related restrictions looms.
But last week, when I did manage to find an enticing workout video, I heard something that got me thinking. “It’s about discipline,” the instructor said, “Not motivation.” He’s not the first person to make this distinction and I’m sure I’ve heard it before. But this time, something in my brain clicked.
Motivation is based on emotion—to be motivated is to feel like doing something. It’s relatively easy to be motivated in the abstract, but that does not mean that we are motivated to actually do the things we need to do. I am motivated to be fit and healthy, but I’m not particularly motivated to get up and exercise. And even if I am feeling motivated on a particular day, I can’t count on that motivation sticking around to get me to the next workout.
Like all emotions, motivation can be elusive and unpredictable. It’s hard to “get motivated” in the same way that it’s hard to “get happy.” If we sit around waiting for motivation to strike, we may be sitting a long time. This is where discipline comes in.
The Good News about Discipline
Many people think that discipline is all about willpower and that some people have it and others don’t. But recent studies have turned this thinking on its head. In one study, Denise de Ridder and Marleen Gillebaart, at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, randomly pinged study participants multiple times a day over the course of a week to see what distractions they were experiencing and whether or not they were able to resist and follow through with their intended behavior. Then they looked at how people’s behavior was related to their scores on a self-control measure. Surprisingly, they found that people with high self-control ratings were no better than people with low ratings at resisting temptations and staying on task. What they found instead was that people who rated higher on self-control were simply better at avoiding tempting situations in the first place. In other words, it was the people who structured their day to help themselves avoid temptation and stay on task who were the ones better able to follow through on their intentions.
This is good news because it suggests that discipline is not an inherent trait—it is something that you do, not something that you are. Shifting the focus from “getting motivated” or “exerting more self-control” to “creating a system of discipline” frames the problem of how to get things done in terms of something that is more readily achievable.
How to Discipline Yourself
How do we create a system of discipline? There is much we can learn by looking back to old-fashioned kindergarten. At its best, kindergarten is a finely-tuned discipline system. There is an overall plan, activities are structured and broken down into do-able steps, and days are scheduled. There are areas in the classroom with minimal distraction for quiet time, there is social interaction with clear behavioral expectations, and ideally there is ample time for playing outside. Kids are not expected to be inherently self-disciplined. On the contrary, there is a recognition that young children will resist doing things they don’t feel like doing, be easily distracted, have trouble delaying gratification, have a limited attention span, and need time to play and run around.
We like to believe we have come a long way since kindergarten, but the basic principles for creating a system of discipline aren’t all that different. At its core, an effective system of discipline is one that directs us toward the intended behaviors while helping our brains by minimizing the need to constantly make decisions and resist distractions. Here’s how to start creating discipline:
Articulate the big picture. Our larger purpose is what drives us—it’s why we rationally want to do the things that we might not feel particularly motivated to do—and it can be helpful to keep this larger purpose in mind. Whether it’s wanting to create ten great pieces for an art show, to be fit and healthy, or to put food on the table, many people find that posting their goals somewhere visible helps keep them on track.
Make a plan. Planning is how we bridge the gap between intention and behavior. How are you going to get your project done, consistently cook healthy dinners, or learn Spanish? It all starts with a plan—identifying the steps you need to reach your goals, breaking them down into concrete tasks, and thinking about how to allocate your time. Planning lightens your day-to-day cognitive load—there are fewer things to mentally keep track of and fewer decisions to make. It’s the difference between navigating with a road map versus having to make a decision at each intersection, hoping that the route you choose is getting you closer to your goal.
I’m a fan of writing to-do lists and I get out-sized satisfaction from checking off items. I also like to end my day with a list of the first thing or two to do at the start of the next. Having these little reminders written down means that my brain doesn’t have to work to remember what I was doing or think about how to get into the flow of the day.
For some things, it may work well to out-source the planning. This is what I’ve done lately with exercise. Like many people, I have started using a website with pre-made exercise plans and videos so that all I have to do is show up and press play. All the decisions about how to move toward my fitness goals and what to do on any given day have already been made by someone else. This is like using a satnav—it may take you down some streets that you wouldn’t have chosen, but it usually gets you where you want to go with little mental effort.
Make a schedule. If something is important, you need to block out the time to do it. Having a schedule for the day, week, or month is a big win for our brains. For one thing, we don’t have to spend mental energy deciding where to spend our time or fighting off competing interests. Parents have long known the behavioral benefits of limiting options. Wise parents do not say, “I’d like you to help clean the house this week.” They say, “It’s time to clean the house; do you want to dust or vacuum?”
The added cognitive benefit of scheduling is that space is freed up in our brain when we don’t have to mentally rehearse our to-do list or worry about something falling through the cracks. My kids, for instance, are much less stressed about upcoming exams once they have made a study plan and schedule and know that if they just follow it, everything will get done.
Remove distractions. My will-power for resisting sweets went right out the window when quarantine started and my college-aged daughter moved back home, started baking, and filled the house with distracting desserts. These confections either derail my intentions to eat less sugar or they force me to spend mental energy fighting them. (But they are delicious.)
Think about how you can tweak your environment or schedule to limit distractions. If you are trying to cut down on junk food, for example, keep it out of the house in the first place by shopping at times when you’re not mentally fatigued and low on willpower. I have stopped checking my news feed before bed because I know from experience that when I’m tired it’s hard to stop. I have also been trying to tidy up my art studio—at least to a reasonable level—after each session so that I don’t walk into a distracting pile of clutter the next day.
Look for social support. The same study that looked at self-control in people’s daily lives also found that when study participants were around other people their behavior changed. When people were around, it was easier for participants to follow through on their intentions. However, if the other people were doing the behavior that the participant was trying to resist, the opposite was true. In other words, if you are trying not to eat sugary snacks, you will probably be more successful at resisting them when other people are around unless those people are already eating sugary snacks, in which case you are more likely to succumb. This difference is not a function of desire or innate self-control, it is simply a function of the social environment.
It can be easier to get things done if you’re working in the context of a like-minded group—a team at work, a writer’s group, a study group, or even people you don’t know working near you in a coffee shop or library. Many schools recommend that students have their own private space for online work, which often ends up being their bedroom. This might work well for some, but others might actually work better (depending on the task) in a shared space with siblings or at the dining room table alongside a parent who is working from home.
Keep your brain tuned up. When you are mentally fatigued, it’s much harder to avoid distractions, stick to a schedule, and focus. Keep your mental resources topped up by taking a break from work and screens and doing something restorative like walking to a park, meditating, or just relaxing on the terrace. This restorative time is as important as all those other things you have to do, so schedule in the time.
Discipline Keeps You Moving
There is no doubt that feeling motivated makes it easier to do things. My sister-in-law does yoga every day because she loves yoga and feels like doing it. But even so, she is diligent about scheduling in her yoga time so that it doesn’t get absorbed by all the other things she needs to do.
Paradoxically, motivation can also be the result rather than the driver of doing the work. Many people find that once they get themselves started on something, they are motivated to continue because they get satisfaction either from the task itself or from the positive feeling of getting something done.
But we can’t always rely on motivation, which is why discipline is so important. Motivation can put an extra spring in your step, but it’s discipline that charts your path and keeps you moving.
Anne Kearney is an environmental psychologist and artist who currently lives, writes, and makes art in Barcelona. Her work is inspired by her decades of experience studying the interactions between people and their surroundings while working for universities, non-profits and NASA. She has a B.A. in Cognitive Science from Stanford University, and a M.S. in Resource Policy and Behavior and Ph.D. in Environmental Psychology from the University of Michigan. You can learn more about her work at annekearneyartist.com.