Ep. 202: Ayelet Fishbach - The Science of Motivation

Sucheta Kamath: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Full PreFrontal exposing the mysteries of executive function. I'm your host Sucheta Kamath. And every week we talk about interesting topics pertinent to personal self management, helping children, adolescent, and even young adults to manage their goals, manage their mission, and most importantly, how do we all persist towards our goals, through passage of time, through arduous roadblocks that we encounter on everyday basis. One of the topics that has interested me deeply is sense of motivation. I am currently interviewing somebody for a job. And as part of their interview, they were saying, you know, I'm highly motivated, I'm a self starter, I get things done without anybody cajoling me. I, you know, and, and some of the examples she gave, I thought, were very funny. She said, I do not, you know, when I gotta get out of bed, I always make my bed. You know, if I say to somebody, I will call you on Thursday at nine o'clock, I am there to call them Thursday at nine o'clock. And that was so fascinating and so inviting to hear somebody talk about, about their motivation and their ability to persist and pursue their motivations that they have. That it, it just reminded me all my 25 years of career I have spent working with people who are highly unmotivated, and people in their environment and their surroundings, such as parents, teachers, educators, colleagues are saying this person needs to change and somehow they you can find means to change them. So with that in mind, it was such an honor to introduce you all to a world renowned expert in motivation. And it's my personal pleasure to introduce you to Ayelet Fishbach. She is the Jeffrey Breckinridge Keller professor of behavioral science, and marketing at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and the author of Get it Done: Surprising lessons from the science of motivation. We'll be linking that book. And one of the interesting things about the title of the book is is you have three words that she has written on the title which is forget, quit undone, and then the parts of the words are canceled. I thought that was a very clever way to get people to think about how to overcome the challenges we face every day, as we think about managing our goals and motivation. She is the past president of the Society for the Science of Motivation, and International Social Cognition Network. She's an expert on marriage, motivation and decision making. Dr. Fishbach groundbreaking research on human motivation has won the Society of Experimental Psychologists Best Dissertation Award, and career trajectory award and Fulbright Educational Foundation Award. She is a celebrated speaker, author her articles are can be read many, many places. And she is highly influential in helping us think about our own understanding or lack thereof, of motivation and our ways of improving our lives. So welcome to the podcast. How are you today?

Ayelet Fishbach: Wow, thank you. So sure that that was a wonderful introduction. I feel like I should quit now. i Well, I'm very happy to be here today.

Sucheta Kamath: Well, for starters, I thought I often asked my guests about their executive function, you know, executive function, as you know, entails adaptive flexibility, goal assessment, intentional focus, goal directed persistence. In short, executive function is the CEO of the brain that governs or gives order to the rest of the brain to get things done, and achieve what it wants. So, for starters, I was wondering if you could share when you were younger, as a child, maybe elementary, middle school or high school? How were your own executive function skills? And did you gain any insight about your own intentions about learning and figuring out your ways at an early age or later on in your life?

Ayelet Fishbach: That's an interesting question. I don't think that I really paid any attention to Executive Education already being a good student until college really. I was okay. But at first I grew up in Israel in that community that is very different than where I have met now. So it was small, that whole community at a socialist community where we we walked in the land and that had farming and animals and so on. So, education was not that much of a center of anybody's life. And then I wasn't in particular, interested in what was going on in school until I go to college. And I didn't know maybe I was not interested enough, because obviously, like I did well enough to get into college, and then do things there, but it was really not intrinsically motivated until I started to study psychology. And then it was like, wow, that's exciting. And that, like, it just you really can't do, you know, you read like these handbooks, when you just start to study psychology and the other, you can't wait to have another hour or two. Now, what's more there, there's how else people can ask a question and look for data and run studies and develop knowledge. So I probably had a decent executive education, reflecting back, I was able to get a PhD, and then a job and no, and I said, do well enough to hold my career for 20 years now. But I didn't realize that until I had the chance to do something which is intrinsically motivating. And I would say that because they think that often when you think that you cannot do something, you might be confusing that with, I am not interested, okay, that's not the right thing for me.

Sucheta Kamath: You know, as you were describing your own trajectory, it kind of reminds me of my personal education in India as well. Education was important, but it was not central, like you, you were not free of responsibility. And, you know, I remember, in my house, the rule was, whether you had board exams or you had a quiz, you still had to set the table, clean up after your dinner, you had to do dishes, you had to sweep and mop, if that was what your parents asked, and then get to studying. So now what I find, you know, children, you know, parents are feeding their children because the kids are studying for a test. I mean, hand feeding a high schooler, I have had a client who did that. And so I find this you know, everything else becomes a secondary because you somehow are getting good grades. So yeah, I think sounds like your executive function skills were very well put to test as well as utilized by you because you're doing managing communal responsibilities. So as we begin here, maybe you can set set us off with a good definition of motivation. Because I think colloquial wisdom says motivation is getting things done having this desire to get things done, but maybe that's missing something right?

Ayelet Fishbach: Yeah, well, it's kind of accurate motivation is power. Okay, and it's the internal power that you have which gets you to move from where you are to a different place it's so you have goals and we all have goals can we have goals related to our professional development, academic development, our health our relationship? And motivation is what gets you to pursue these goals. What gets you out of bed and into the gym shoes all right in front of your study materials it's really there the inner force, the inner power.

Sucheta Kamath: You know what's so interesting about that is you're saying having a goal is not enough, having a goal is a starting point, but that need needs to be propelled by actions which is what motivation is helps us get into. Correct?

Ayelet Fishbach: Yes and a part of that, being motivated is knowing how to set your goals but it's definitely not enough just the first part and motivation itself is the power to get their needs how you organize yourself and your life. And as I said that I realize that it may sound like you are around by yourself and just getting yourself to to do things and that would be a limited view of motivation, because motivation is often involved that designing the environment, designing the situation in which I can better achieve my goal. And if that sounds abstract, well, you exercise your motivation every time you set an alarm clock, okay? Basically, you know that you are going to be tired when you need to get up in the morning and that you will continue to sleep if he are in a cozy dark room. But if there was a loud alarm, that is going to change your situation, and likely you will get up to do something about it. And so you are motivating yourself by not anticipating that there was a problem changing something about them ailment and, therefore being able to stick to your goal.

Sucheta Kamath: And I love that I think your work really highlights the role of environment, I think, you know, one of the I think as we when we were discussing in pre recording that there is a misnomer or colloquial wisdom says motivation is all about determination from within and but there are environmental factors that can actually act as safeguard or mean guardrails that can allow us to not keel over and forget our goals, or our get off tangent as we are pursuing goals. So maybe you can share with us for starters. Oh, we often hear intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. So that once comes from within once is motivated by incentives and external goals. Is that a good place to start? And how? How would you describe the types of motivation that we all experience?

Ayelet Fishbach: So there was a lot to unpack in your question. At first, I do want to emphasize that motivation is about changing your environment, it's about changing your circumstances. You started with an example of a person saying I'm highly motivated. Well, while there are individual differences, some people might be in general, more motivated than others. It's often a function of where you are, and what is the thing that you set out to do. And so my example was it I wasn't a particular, a highly motivated student in in high school, and then I discovered psychology in college and became super motivated, because it was about, like, the challenge about the environment about the people I was with and the new topics that I was introduced to, and I would very much reject that the idea that people say I'm just I'm not motivated, well, you know, you did not find the thing or you did not design the environment that gets you to act.

Sucheta Kamath: May I quickly share story with you? You know, I was on a flight from Atlanta to India, which is connected flight and other India leg from I think Paris or whatever, the entire time, there was a leak above my seat, and my right shoulder kept getting completely drenched with this ice cold water. And so I called the flight attendant, you know, and asked and requested a change of seat the flight was packed, there was nothing they could do, she was so stressed and stretched, that she was not even empathic towards me, I was getting a little annoyed with her. Ultimately, there was nine hours of flight, I was just plotting, like, the whole time I plotted it, that I'm going to send an email to Delta, I'm going to complain, I'm going to be so mad and I'm gonna tell them I'm going to ask for refund then I landed and my family came to the gate to welcome me and I completely forgot. And I completely lost my ventures, my plot my email, and I just became unimportant. And so I see that you're talking about this environmental embedded cue, he was very frustrating it was not that important to me to actually pursue a complaint.

Ayelet Fishbach: You know, I love this story. Yeah, you know, it probably would have been better for future people on the flight if your complaint so if you're angry or I lead to, to action, but for your well being the you were in a different situation and the anger was was gone and replaced with with love to your family and now you are a different person pursuing different goals and very happy with with doing that. You know, we all can identify situations where we just cannot do something and then other situations in which we are doing just fine and we need to organize our lives so that we are importing that the factors that help us to stay motivated to get things done to the areas where we feel stuck, unable to do it. And then you're asking about intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is a very confusing concept in motivation science. And then I can get into the whole confusion people say intrinsic motivation, they mean different things. Okay economist mean that we don't pay, you know, as some people If it's from within as opposed to from the outside. In motivation science intrinsic motivation is actually pursuing something as an end in itself, is that the feeling that as I'm doing it I'm achieving my goal. This feels right. The activity and the goal that it serves are fused and we are intrinsically motivated. When we are like, doing something fun with our family, okay, when we are pursuing our hobbies as strolling the park and a reading a great book, these experiences often feel like an end in itself. And then we are extrinsicly motivated when we do something just for some long term benefit. There is no immediate pleasure. I might go get a medical appointment, because I care about my long term health, there is no sense that this feels right and good as I'm doing it. And then you have everything that's in between. So you know, your exercise. Morning exercise, does this feel like an end in itself or more like something that you pull through? Pulls away so that you will have the long term benefits. You work. Okay, are you excited to do your job? Are you one of these people that by the end of the day, I had another 15 minutes to finish what they have started? Or are you one of those people who just can't wait for work to be over so that you can do something else that the there is in between, you can be more or less intrinsically motivated, you can more or less enjoy the thing, okay, or feel that it's fine. Okay, I've feeling that as you pursue the activity or you're achieving something you are developing, you are learning you are relaxing, okay, whatever it is that you're trying to achieve, it happens as you pursue the action.

Sucheta Kamath: You know, this is really, really helpful because I think, take examples of clinicians, therapists and teachers, educators, parents, who are tasked to help people get on board doing things that the person you're working with, doesn't want to or is struggling, does not necessarily even doesn't want to, but may not know how to. It is such an important distinction that it feels right may not happen for them right away. Like let's say if I have reading difficulty, and I'm a, I have dyslexia, and I'm working with a dyslexia tutor who's showing me some sound symbol relationship that I don't get, I get it as a child, and I'm not going to enjoy it. But then I look out to my teacher support or the care that I get. So that seems to be a starting point that gets me to a place where I see my own success. And then I can say, Ah, now it feels good. Right?

Ayelet Fishbach: Yes, and learning has to be immediately gratifying. In particular for young people for kids. We basically explore a few ways of making learning intrinsically motivated. And the one way that I think my dad surprised people is if we find out when we make math class a party. That is we play music and bring colored pencils and snacks then kids were solving more math problems, they enjoy the experience more now. I think that people find it confusing because in a way we brought some external things to the experience they brought music, we wrote in colors, but the whole class gave the whole event of studying math became something that it's more fun that it has more like surprising elements that is unusual and interesting. And that can happen in the materials. It could be that you found the right way to teach or to learn because you found type of exercises that are interesting for you, that are fun, you're curious to to solve, it could also be external. Okay, you do your homework or your tutor appointment in the most pleasant experience. There is lots of stimuli around you that make you feel in the zone, make you feel like this is right. The other way to think about how to bring intrinsic motivation to something that might not feel right, might not feel good, is to have people realize that sometimes it takes a bit of practice for something to feel good. You know, if you haven't been running for a while and you go on a jog, your body might hurt. But it's okay if you do this a couple of times, because then you will enjoy running the way you may have enjoyed it. Back at a time, we looked at this in their study with Caitlin Willie, by the way, also, the previous study was with her, we that teaching people improv, okay, and we worked with the Second City, which is an improvisation club here at the City of Chicago. And basically, we invited people who were very new to improvisation to feel uncomfortable when we told them yoga when you do this exercise is to feel uncomfortable. And what happened is that the discomfort that they would have experienced in any event, because you if you have not done improvisation before, and you're just trying it, it really pushes your, your limits as a person can you really feel awkward about your your body and what you say and how you you move. If you think about this as the goal, okay, my immediate goal today is to feel uncomfortable, then when you feel uncomfortable, it's a sign that this is working, okay, and you might be able to persist a little bit until it actually feels more confident. This is what we found that when people had the gall to feel uncomfortable, they wanted to do it more so that eventually they felt more comfortable.

Sucheta Kamath: You know, that's again, I think it's also another counterintuitive process, you know, we think anything that that challenges us should not challenge us, then you'll be able to grow. And so it's such a good good example that, that converting your discomfort into comfort requires you to engage with it, challenge yourself, and then once you are less confused, or a process becomes more transparent, that automatically evaporates in a way. So that's pretty neat as well. You know, I think the other question that I had, that, you know, the the, to motivational process that you were describing, if I'm correct here that you know, outcome focused motivation versus process focused motivation. Can you maybe help our audience understand a little bit about these dimensions? How actualize themselves differently based on the circumstances? And there are ways to you have designed clever ways to measure that how people you know, how do you measure an experimental ways? How motivated people are?

Ayelet Fishbach: Yes, and so we often think about motivation in terms of doing something and do it as quickly as possible. But other times we think about it in terms of applying yourself and your standards of performance, right? And so, it's important to do something it's also important to add to do it, right, yes. And these are different dimensions of motivation. Sometimes they are aligned, like the the runner that finishes the race at first that was obviously a highly motivated to work as quickly as possible, literally here, and also that define high standard of performance. But a student who's finishing that the the exercise that very quickly might compromise the quality, right? And so you might say, well, for doing your homework, the motivation to finish it as quickly as possible is not what we are looking for. Okay, we want you to have high motivation to apply yourself, to have a high performance standard and the when we measure motivation, we really pay attention to these different dimensions. You know, one, one way that Rima Touré-Tillery and I looked at it was looking at what happened when people were approaching the, the end of the goal when they were about to, to reach the goal. Okay, if what's important is doing each Friday, then they spend more time on problem okay, they they think about it more carefully. Okay, if what's important is to finish it as quickly as possible, and then they spend less time. What we actually found, we gave people a series of problems to solve. And what we found is that as they reached the end, they were taking shorter breaks between each two problems. So they were more eager to get this done by taking shorter breaks. But they actually on the very last couple of problems as spend more time getting it right, because we know that their motivation to do something right not to cut corners increases. Also, as you're about to, to reach your goal, I would think that in the context of now, education, we often need to pay attention to the motivation to do it right, much more than than speed, right, and whether the person took breaks and whether they were daydreaming a bit. Maybe because I am sometimes slow, and I have like, two out three kids that tend to take their time and be slow, I learned that it really doesn't matter, can you you can take more time. But your performance as standards should be high. And you should try to, to apply yourself not to cut corners.

Sucheta Kamath: You know, I think this so resounds with me that it should take example of children doing homework. So if the parents promised them that yeah, you can, you know, play your video game for 30 minutes, you can see them whizzing through the homework, while they have made a lot of mistakes. And and so I think the parents find this difficult, like how do I make them do it well, and do it and then do it get it done as quickly as they want it done. So they have time to, to play the video game. So I feel like the you know, this, some of the interesting observations you have made, maybe you can talk about that. Getting started is one aspect of motivation that operates differently versus the middle slump. When we are in the middle of pursuing a goal, we kind of like kind of lose our thunder, get bored, get tired. And then we pick up the steam again, as you just gave example of seeing the end in sight, people begin to pay pay greater attention to the quality of outcome. So what was comforting about all that? is, it's a human nature. So it was very comforting that it's not just me. But I also am very curious. It's, it's so difficult, when it's not you that's involved in it when you're in charge of other people's motivation. How can somebody so maybe I'm asking complicated, multi layered question here, but can you talk us a little bit about these motivation, landmarks influenced the way we behave in the task completion differently? And how can people who support children take make use of that understanding to influence the outcomes?

Ayelet Fishbach: So, you know, that simple answer is that the same way you motivate yourself, you can motivate others, okay, the strategies are very similar. If you know that you cannot stick to a work task that is boring, that is uninspiring that that you deal with people that you don't appreciate. Then you should not expect your child to be able to work with that homework that is boring for them, right? That you fail to make into a process of discovery and a process of development and a process of reassuring the child's strength, they just work, but they don't see us. Let's talk about like the middle problem basically. So we have like beginning middle and end then we see the people are more motivated at the beginning and the end. Then in in the middle one of the cleverest that studies that Rima Touré-Tillery was back then my student and I did she's now faculty at Northwestern was giving people a pair of scissors and a bunch of fat shapes on a piece of paper Okay, and what they need to do is just carefully cut these shapes have many arrows by by the order that we told it to do so and so they're doing a great job of that the first couple of shapes. The last one is also pretty good. There are literally cutting corners in the middle. That the shape in the middle I had no corners. Now, if you think about it, we are excited when we start on something. We are excited when we are about to finish if there is a clear end, sometimes we are not excited because we don't see this ever ending. But if there is a finish line, we are again, excited and willing to work. If the middle is very long, that feels pointless, it's hard to feel like we are making progress, we lose our motivation to do it, and we lose our motivation to do it right. Now when applying it to other people, their goal should probably have short middles. Okay. And, of course, it depends on the child's developmental stage. But maybe one hour of homework has a middle that is just too long. Okay, maybe it needs to be broken to shorter units, where you have five minutes of beginning five minutes of end and barely middle. Now in our own life, there is a reason why most people don't set an annual exercise goal right that you set a weekly or a daily exercise called because if it's an annual goal, there was too much of a bill, you're going to lose thunder. Yeah, right. Saving for retirement is a challenge for you know, most Americans because it takes the middle is our life. 

Sucheta Kamath: That's such a profound statement. Right? I mean, I think none of the saving is beneficial. Now, it's going to be beneficial in 40 years. But that's so long.

Ayelet Fishbach: Yes, and so you try to make it into an annual saving goal, which is much better than a lifetime saving goals because there is less of a middle. Try to make middle short for yourself or other people celebrate beginning celebrate. And often you do it just by breaking a goal into two sub goals. Right. So you know, homework is a good example. Because there is always homework but how you structure this, how you think about that, like this call can be on an hourly basis, or daily basis, weekly. And so on.

Sucheta Kamath: That's another point that you also make in the book is that that the middle is so psychologically strenuous and also literally strenuous. Because it's been a while you have been added. You also talk about then progress monitoring, you know that I loved the that you were talking about, you know, working towards accomplishing certain parts of your large sprawling tasks, going towards the 50% point, you can have a different internal dialogue. And once you cross over the midline, you can have a different dialogue, how close you are, can you talk a little bit about this is a great strategy I feel when educators or parents are working with children, helping them achieve these goals, again, which just takes time.

Ayelet Fishbach: There are two ways to monitor progress, you can look back at what you have achieved or you can look ahead at what is yet to achieve. And at any point you can basically monitor progress in in one way or another okay, that if you are pursuing a four year college degree, you can say I finished one year, I still have three years to go okay, in their loyalty program, you can say, well, I already made half of the purchases to win a reward, I still need to make half of it purchases. So for basically every goal you can monitor that what we refer to as the glass half full, okay, how much progress have been achieved, or the glass half empty, how much progress is yet to to be done? At what I often see in education, and I don't have represented events sample. So it just my observation is the teachers tend to monitor progress in terms of what's left to be done in terms of the glass half empty, okay, this is where we are going. Okay, this is what's still missing. However, what we find in research is that for novices for beginners, up until that, the 50%, if, if it's an all or nothing goal, it's usually more effective to look back and see that I've already done some, okay, so in stead of look in your head and say, I still have to do at 90% of the work, look back and say, I already done 10% of the work. The reason that this is often more effective is that when we look back, we learn that we can do it okay. When we think about what we accomplished in the past, that increases our confidence, and therefore our commitment, and novices beginners are uncommitted gain, which is why when they see what they have achieved, they say, Well, I guess I can do it better than I expected, I guess that this is working. Once you are over the 50%, once you're an expert, then highlighting what's missing is, is actually more lovely to get your intuition and we did many studies, some with Stacey Finkelstein, some with with others on that, giving people this feedback on what they've accomplished, what gets to be done. If you take someone who's just starting a child, or just starting to, to learn how to play the piano, okay, I think that most people will have the intuition, they should highlight what they did well and not their mistakes. 

Sucheta Kamath: They know nothing. So just praise the effort to show up.

Ayelet Fishbach: Exactly why to show that good for you. When you give feedback to a pianist or an expert, then you're often tend to focus on what's missing, you did not quite convey the emotion in like this part, you did not quite follow that tempo, by whatever is missing is more motivating for for that person, by the way or somebody informative, because they got most of them the stuff, right. And we fit the givers should be very attentive to focus on what has been accomplished, when we are unsure about commitment and what is missing. Once commitment is established, and then the person is fully there.

Sucheta Kamath: So fascinating, you know, I can give you an example. So I, I live next to a public park and the the round around the public part is 2.7 miles. And my goal is to walk five miles a day. And so I of course, it is two miles or I mean, not even two miles, maybe one and a half miles away from my house. So if I, if I walk my dog in my neighborhood, I can get in Mile. And it just feels so good to have that jumpstart when I come to the park and begin my so it doesn't feel like I'm starting and I have 2.7 Miles only because I just walking the dog itself, it just gives me a little boost. And then I feel like whoa, if I do two rounds, it's like additional bonus. So I'm playing the head games with myself. But I can literally see that my psychological attitude changes if I show up at already having walked my dog, because my Fitbit is showing me. And the second point that you know, which you point out in the book, but I also have seen this trick. So work that  marketing people really get this, they get motivations far more than educate people in education. Well, the Smoothie King near us gives us a the card with two things punched already. And they want you to reach 10. So actually, they want us to reach eight. But it feels like oh my god, I have already achieved and you talk a lot about this in the book. So I'm wondering in, in the context of the teaching, if the teachers can give actually 10% of the grade, after the first class saying you did an a great introduction class. So here, you now have only 90 points left to earn in this class will be so much easier for the kids.

Ayelet Fishbach: I love this example. Yes. I don't know if that teacher is doing this but in illusionary progress, which is what marketing programs loyalty programs often do is very effective at getting people to persist. Hey, you've been already doing that. And so I keep going, okay, don't lose your streak. Yeah, you're already in it, which is a fun way to kind of trick ourselves to think that we are already doing something so that we will feel more committed. Now, on the other hand, that some teachers have the wrong intuition of starting with negative feedback, how bad I know, I'll give you the first test that is very hard. And you will see how much you need to learn in this class. And I see that like, oh, no, what are you doing? Right now, instead of giving something that's like easy that allows for fast progress, like letting kids realize when do it before? Yeah. You start by giving negative feedback about everything that is still done now. And you lose somebody's motivated anyway. It's one reason why approach calls also work better than they avoidance. 

Sucheta Kamath: Yeah, tell us a little bit the definition of these two goals approach versus avoidance.

Ayelet Fishbach: Yes, so approach one is other do goals. It's, you know, to to, like do my homework, exercise, eat green vegetables and so on. Do not goals, or avoidance goals I think they should not do okay, maybe I should not eat red meat. I should not stay late in bed. I should not daydream. I should not like watch too much.

Sucheta Kamath: Eat the whole cake...

Ayelet Fishbach: Yeah, yeah. All right. Now that there are a few problems with avoidance growth. Okay. First, how do you know that you are successful? Well, you ask yourself, How am I doing it? And by that you bring this to mind? So it's easy to show this without suppression? Can you try not to think about your ex? How do you know that you're successful at not thinking about your ex? You ask yourself? Am I thinking about my ex? Now?

Sucheta Kamath: Isn't that the white bear problem?

Ayelet Fishbach: Exactly, Stan Wagner's White Bear problem. But it's also like you ask yourself like Am I successful cutting down on the on the red meat on the TV. And now you're thinking about the foods and activities that you should not be doing. With kids, we see that also with adults, but even more with with kids with adolescents that affordance cause elicit reactance. So we all sometimes want to do something just because we are not allowed to do it. And with adolescents that is spiking. There is a really nice line of studies by Chris Bryan, where he used psychological reactance to get kids to eat less junk food. And basically what he told the adolescents is that marketers want them to eat junk food, marketers design junk food to make them addictive, they make money from you eating junk food. Now, that adolescent that reads that is reacting, okay? Like if they want me to do it, and I don't want to do it. They were eating less junk food. So they are not going to play into this marketing ploy. We see that avoidance cause often are the goals that that kids reject the the kid say I take, I don't want to do it, I don't want you to tell me what not to do. It's much better if your command what I should do. And then the last thing he said avoidance costs are less intrinsically motivated. It is just not very exciting to cut down on your TV. Exactly. Okay, it's not. Right. It's much more exciting to walk your dog. Okay, which would mean that you're cutting down on TV because you're outside walking your dog.

Sucheta Kamath: So true. So one good question about that. So you know, I see these kinds of mental hacks. I'm doing a little fake out with myself, you know, instead of telling myself because then it becomes avoidance don't watch TV, I'm saying just go out take your dog out. This is such a good self discovery process with children, when they don't have this metacognitive understanding about they don't think about their thinking, they may not even know can I influence by telling them how to convert an avoidance goal into a, you know, approach goal. Would that work in a similar way? Like you were talking about? In other places? How whatever works for us works for our children as well.

Ayelet Fishbach: Yes, well, what I meant is that whatever we apply on ourselves, we can apply that I set a approach goals for myself, I should also realize that I should set goals for my son who's 10 years old. But you're asking a really important question, which is how much we can teach children motivation, how much we can teach them to add to motivate themselves. There is very little data on that. We know that self control takes time to develop, it develops with age so clearly, a 10 year old has better self control than a five year old and less self control and poorly general ability to motivate themselves than a 15 year old whose a general increase but we know that it's still something that is being developed into the early 20s And I know about a few studies that look into teaching kids motivation, measuring motivation, see that it predicts good life outcome. I believe that is, is possible. And then we never tried that on a large scale. 

Sucheta Kamath: Yeah, I mean, this is your I know, you have lots of projects in the works. But this is something very interesting, I find that you know, conventional wisdom, for example, it my mother, who is 80 years old, she lives with us and, and, you know, one of the, we make fun of it now, but she, she used to kind of use this tactic on a three, three of us, we, my older brother, younger brother, and myself, and she say, you know make your bed, people will say you're so amazing at making bed. And then she'll say, eat your broccoli. I mean, we didn't have broccoli in India, but Karela, which is the worst vegetable you can ever eat. And she said, Eat it, people will think you're the best Karela eater. And so I found that my my brother, and this is a folklore of the house now. But when he was little, he would eat the vegetable and say to mom, would people say now I'm a great eater of this vegetable? And she said, Yes. So it did work. You know, like she used that as an influence that people's perception of your capability as a motivator. And that worked. So I wonder, as we end, do you have any thoughts about a social regulation of motivation, you know, do we find as active social cooperation, we tend to engage better with things even against our own will.

Ayelet Fishbach: I love that you bought this toy, because there are really four parts to motivation. There is setting a goal, there is striving toward this goal, we discussed monitoring progress, there is juggling goals, okay, we'll discuss self control, okay, the there are things that I want to do and that things that I should do. And I know that to do these other things, I should not do the previous things on the on the list. And then the fourth element is social support. There is the role of others, and what do they say? And what do they think? And how do they help and basically, most of the things that we do that are meaningful, that are big we do with other people, okay? Whether it's success at work, whether it's like for you like producing this podcast, for me doing my research, it's always with other people, starting families with your kids. And so and leveraging social support is critical. If you're the only person who knows about your goal, and if no one else is there to help you. change that. Okay, find the people that you can share what you're working on with and that you anticipate will be supportive, and maybe they just want you to be successful. And that's already huge support. Maybe they can actually help a maybe you can pull the rope to get there. Even if not just them being there and watching you and hearing from you. You know, I will be there now one of many people that remind our listeners that we are social animals and we we have to have the group's support, we are not loners and to stay motivated those around you need to know and to help.

Sucheta Kamath: Well, brilliant. This has been such a fascinating and engaging conversation. I really appreciate you being so generous with us. As we conclude I often asked my guests if they have any recommendations of books that you have found fascinating, intriguing, informative, and that our readers can and listeners can benefit from reading.

Ayelet Fishbach: So that the field of motivation is actually exploding. There is so much work and there is Angela Duckworth's Grit book, Carol Dweck's Mindset, Wendy Wood on habit. Katie Milkman wrote on How to Change and there is just an explosion of ideas and then each of these books illustrate some important lessons and then don't forget to with fiction. Okay, there's so many amazing books that you could enjoy. Last thing about books. Don't ever read a book because you have to.

Sucheta Kamath: Yeah, so true. Do you have any Israeli when you were a child? Is it any Israeli author that influenced you as a child in fiction?

Ayelet Fishbach: I'll have to go back and think I do actually recently this she's not Israeli. She's Italian. But the reason, I was watching my brilliant friend that reminded me when I read these books by Elena Ferrante the first time and how much I resonated with her, because she, she writes about women's friendship and about growing up in in a place that is that is poor, that is non academic. And then how were the society, the people around you influence your pursuit, including your professional and academic pursuits. So I would say that influenced me a lot when when it came out, but it still wasn't quite my childhood.

Sucheta Kamath: Wow, that's lovely. Well, thank you for sharing that. I think. It's been a fabulous conversation. So. All right, that's all the time we have for today. Thank you again, to Dr. Ayelet Fishbach, for being my guest. As you can see, these are incredibly important conversations we're having with highly knowledgeable, incredibly qualified, qualified and passionate experts who have managed their own motivation so well, to inspire us to find our own kind of switch that helps us maybe switch is not a good analogy, but keep the pedal to the metal. And so lastly, as we close out, definitely subscribe to Full PreFrontal using your favorite listening app, share the episode with as many people as you can, and reach out to us if you have any questions. So once again, thank you, Dr. Fishbach, for joining us and see you again next week on Full PreFrontal.