Addiction, Procrastination, and Laziness: A Proactive Guide to the Psychology of Motivation by Roman Gelperin

Author:Roman Gelperin [Gelperin, Roman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Self-Actualized Press
Published: 2017-09-16T07:00:00+00:00

A second, similar method of changing one’s environment to change one’s motivation is targeting the pleasure (or displeasure) derived from the task itself.

The activity of hiking may be inherently enjoyable to a person, but it will be much less so (if not entirely a pain) when he is doing so in ill-fitting shoes that create and continuously aggravate painful blisters on his feet. If he has only those shoes available, he will be greatly discouraged from going hiking altogether because he will anticipate it as an uncomfortable and painful process. Getting comfortable shoes, of course, immediately fixes this problem both practically and motivationally. And people are actually very keen on making these kinds of physical changes in their lives—ones that make desired or required activities easier or more pleasurable.[42]

It is making these kinds of helpful changes, but in the negative direction, that most people have a very hard time wrapping their minds around. For example, to purposely leave oneself with only uncomfortable shoes if one’s goal is to not go hiking. Or, more practically, to deliberately buy only bland, tasteless food if one’s goal is to eat less; or to intentionally make the conditions in one’s home uncomfortable and unaccommodating if one’s goal is to spend more time outdoors.

That very notion of purposefully making life harder for oneself is met with substantial resistance by most people, and is in general completely counterintuitive. The average person will consider the idea of doing so absurd, and resolve to battle with his unhealthy compulsions through his personal willpower, without resorting to such ridiculous measures. Of course we know that these efforts through willpower are extremely fickle and almost invariably doomed to fail, especially when the person butts up against the same motivational conditions every time. On the other hand, there is no doubt that our alternative method of physically changing the environment is directly effective and reliably yields great practical results.

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