Informal Post on Motivation

post by Ruby · 2019-02-23T23:35:14.430Z · LW · GW · 4 comments

Contents

  So these be some components of my thinking about motivation:
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4 comments

This post began with a few thoughts I wanted to share on my newly created short-form feed [LW · GW]. In order to convey those few thoughts, I found myself writing out a lot more of my general thinking about motivation. Eventually, it could not be defended as short-form anymore.

I still want to experiment with less formal and less polished writing. This post is presented as is, otherwise it probably wouldn't exist in any form for a long time.

Epistemic status: these are models I've held for a long-time and feel like they match my experience and are helpful, though that could be confirmation bias. They have sources in the ideas of others and academic models, for what's that worth.

I've been thinking about motivation again recently. Historically most (all?) of my motivation has come from a desire to solve an immediate problem or escape a source of pain (negative reinforcement, to use the confusing psychology terms). Assorted examples: studying in preparation of job-hunting because not having a job was painful; reading up on and practicing charisma (and later authentic relating/circling) because I wanted greater social success; trying to excel professionally and upskill rapidly because otherwise I wouldn't be good enough, wouldn't be as good as others, wouldn't accomplish my goals, and so on; the large amount of work I've done to understand and relate to my emotions because of all the difficult ones.

Yet there have been pockets here and there, and increasingly recently, where I feel quite happy about my life, what I have, and who I am. And I find myself having a bit less motivation. It feels okay to go to bed late or not do as much work or not get through my to-do list. In the past, such things would register as "failures" which felt like they'd cause me not to be good enough, not have the life I wanted, and not have the impact I need to. The fear of failing pushed me, and I have much less of that now.

I think my current state is much better. It is an improvement (for me) to have a good sense of well-being and satisfaction (I feel like I can think much more clearly, I'm a little saner or something), but I do need to iterate on how I approach motivation.

So these be some components of my thinking about motivation:

Let me roughly define motivation to do X as an experienced, palpable desire to do X such that doing X feels rewarding (and not doing X might even feel bad). You might be motivated to eat a sandwich, watch TV, work on your manuscript, talk to your friend.

For the most part, you feel motivation to do X when you S1 predict/believes that doing X will lead to reward. The reward can be pleasure or it can be the removal of pain. Basically, motivation to do X is proportional to the expected value of doing X. (Note the claim that motivation is tied to S1 models/beliefs/aliefs rather than S2. Motivation is arguably tied to the affection/emotional systems (I'll find you a reference if you really want) which also implies it's pretty S1 in nature).)

Why is motivation a challenge? We humans sure wrestle with it a lot.

A few thoughts:

1.

When we're struggling with motivation to do X, it's because only S2 predicts/believes that X will lead to reward. S1 isn't convinced. Your S2 models say X is good, but S1 models don't see it. This isn't necessarily a bug. S2 reasoning can be really shitty, people can come up with all kinds of dumb plans for things that won't help, and it's not so bad that their S1 models don't go along with them.

An upshot of this is that good planning (making plans which are sufficiently convincing to your S1, plans that you really, actually believe will yield reward) is essential for feeling motivated. The plan must be good (actions will lead to reward) and this must be loaded into S1. By my understanding, CFAR's propagating urges class (which might have been renamed by now) was about trying to load the connection between specific actions and the eventual reward into S1. But of course you've gotta make sure there is a real link.

In the absence of S1 believing that doing X will result in reward, there is this thing called willpower. I'm gonna say something like willpower is limited ability to override S1 when S2 doesn't think S1 isn't producing the right outcome (maybe S1's models are too simplistic, etc.) It's important that S2 doesn't have unlimited power to select our actions, and the same goes for S1. Checks and balances. If we had unlimited willpower (unlimited ability to override S1) then we'd probably do really dumb things like kill ourselves by not sleeping [LW · GW].

If you're using a lot of willpower, it's quite possibly because your S1 doesn't believe in your plans. Doesn't believe these actions will actually net desired outcomes.

(The connection likely isn't clear, but my ideas feel very congruent with what Nate Soares has described with his motivation. Trying to figure out what on earth Nate was really doing spurred my early 2015 bout of thinking about motivation. That's when I formed the core of my current motivation models).

2.

Motivation isn't just about your S1 believing that doing X will lead to reward, it requires that your S1 believe that doing X will lead to more reward than other actions you might be taking right now. Your S1 prioritizes possible actions and generates motivation towards the action with the highest expected reward. (Feeling conflicted about what to do happens when there is no clear winner.)

The expected reward calculation is probably slightly more sophisticated than "chance of reward" x "size of reward". Slightly. Could be the procrastination equation by Piers Steel hits most of it:

Motivation = (Expectancy x Value)/(Impulsiveness x Delay)

See Lukeprog's great summary [LW · GW].

So in any moment, your brain is evaluating all possible actions, weighing up the size of reward, likelihood that the reward will materialize, and how long off that reward is. Time discounting is probably reasonable, though it has been pointed out that humans might do this is an inconsistent way [LW · GW].

[An aside: many long-term plans do have some immediate rewards as soon as you start working on them (or even just plan to), namely, the social rewards. I've been working on writing a book. This is a large project or which I expect pretty good benefits, but actually already I get to talk about writing a book which might make me seem cool and interesting. I get some reward just for having the plan. This phenomenon is dangerous - if the social reward of our plans is immediate, then it can lead to optimizing our plans to look cool and sexy rather than being the ideal long-term plans. People don't have to necessarily prioritize social rewards over other kinds, social rewards can win out in our priorities simply because they can be so quick to materialize.]

So why do we struggle with motivation? Why do we procrastinate? Well, because probably our brains evaluate available actions and find that Facebook, Netflix, chocolate cake all yield high-reliability, decently-sized rewards very immediately. In contrast, trying to get an A on your term paper so you can graduate with good grades so you can get a good job so you can have a good life is a pretty damn tenuous connection between action and reward. Probably your motivation to do well on your term paper A is more strongly coming from your desire to maintain consistency with your self-narrative as a "good student". You fear not getting an A. But maybe Netflix is a better way to avoid that fear than actually doing the paper.

We live in times when we have so many sources of pretty good, high-reliability, instant forms of gratification alongside goals which are ever more long-term, distant, and uncertain. Is working this job the right thing to do? Will doing Y actually improve the world? Who knows. Not that motivating [LW · GW].

A couple more items supporting that the motivation you experience stems from the relative S1 prioritization by your brain:

a) There's a great paper An opportunity cost model of subjective effort and task performance by Kurzban. Kaj Sotala summarizes it here [LW · GW]. The basic idea is that staying focused on a single task is hard because because your brain starts saying "hey, we've been doing this thing for a while now - maybe there's something else even better we could be doing?" and your S1 starts pushing with greater force to go and check for the greater rewards elsewhere that might be had. Given that your phone is in your pocket and Facebook is a click away, your brain isn't wrong.

b) The Oxford Handbook of Human Motivation (a really fascinating book) has a chapter on Neuroscience and Human Motivation (read here). A model I took away from it is that there's the part of your brain where motivation lives (dopamine system, ventral tegmental area, striatum - doesn't really matter) and multiple other system feed into it with different levels of priority. Among them you have a) relatively automatic motivation states which maintain homeostasis such as the desire for food and water (and I'd guess sleep), b) motivational states based on associative learning (close to automatic) - through a few repetitions, you've learned that FB is yummy, c) motivational states because S1 predicts that an action will yield reward, and so, d) motivational states because S2 sees an action (towards a goal) as valuable. The sources of these different motivations all feed into the same place and therefore come into conflict with each other. The order listed here is seemingly their usual order of their strength. Hunger, thirst, and tiredness are good at disrupting your ability to work on long-term goals, so are conditioned expectations of immediate gratification like FB.


Figure from Neuroscience and Human Motivation chapter in The Oxford Handbook of Human Motivation depicting different systems involved in motivation.

An inference I take from this model is that you are best able to focus on long-term S2 goals (those which have the least inherent ability to influence you) if you have taken care of the rest of things which motivate you. Eat enough, sleep enough, spend time with friends. When you're trying to fight the desire to address those things, you're using willpower, and willpower is a stopgap measure.

These days, I definitely allocate all my effort to being well-rested over trying to get myself to keep working even once I'm tired.

3.

Seemingly I've been quite motivated over the last five years to work towards big, long-term important goals. I've learnt much, gained skills, improved myself. Yet as described at start, doing so was usually relieving some source of presently-existing pain, something I was dissatisfied with. Even if the things I was working on weren't going to be completed any time soon, when I worked on them I experienced the reward of not feeling as bad (because I was making progress). Immediate reward providing motivation.

What do I do now that I'm feeling quite satisfied with life? I'll be thinking about this for a while, but I think part of the anwer involves making the actions I want to take feel immediately rewarding for reasons other than not feeling bad.

Rummaging around in the folders of motivation papers I was reading back in 2015, I also found The Fundamental Need to Belong: On the Distinction Between Growth and Deficit-Reduction Orientations. In the language of that post, much of my past motivation seems to have been sourced in deficit-reduction. I believe this distinction between deficit-reduction orientation and growth orientation is commonly made. Hardwiring Happiness by Rick Hanson asserts that you brain can neuroplastically be in a green brain or red brain (responsive vs reactive) state corresponding to the above two orientations.


Figure: Hanson's green brain (responsive) and red brain (reactive)

So part of what I need to do now is really figure out how to do green-brain, growth-orientation motivation over red-brain, deficit-reduction motivation. Linking back to the earliest sections of this post, that translates to making the actions I want to take seem they will result in some good reward which isn't just not feeling bad for some existing reason.

I'm uncertain about how to do this, but a couple of ideas:

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comment by Qiaochu_Yuan · 2019-02-27T09:30:46.803Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Glad to see you're writing about this! I think motivation is a really central topic and there's lots more to be said about it than has been said so far around here.

When we're struggling with motivation to do X, it's because only S2 predicts/believes that X will lead to reward. S1 isn't convinced. Your S2 models say X is good, but S1 models don't see it. This isn't necessarily a bug. S2 reasoning can be really shitty, people can come up with all kinds of dumb plans for things that won't help, and it's not so bad that their S1 models don't go along with them.

I think these days S1 and S2 have become semantic stopsigns [LW · GW], and in general I recommend that people stop using these terms both in their thinking and verbally, and instead try to get more specific about what parts of their mind actually disagree and why. I can report, for example, that CFAR doesn't use these terms internally.

Anna Salamon used to say, in the context of teaching internal double crux at CFAR workshops, that there's no such thing as an S1 vs. S2 conflict. All conflicts are "S1 vs. S1." "Your S2," whatever that means, may be capable of engaging in logical reasoning and having explicit verbal models about things, but the part of you that cares about the output of all of that reasoning is a part of your S1 (in my internal dialect, just "a part of you"), and you'll make more progress once you start identifying what part that is.

---

Here's an example of what getting more specific might look like. Suppose I'm a high school student and "my S1" says play video games and "my S2" says do my homework. What is actually going on here?

One version could be that I know I get social reinforcement from my parents and my teachers to do homework, or more sinisterly that I get socially punished for not doing it. So in this case "my S2" is a stopsign blocking an inquiry into the power structure of school, and generally the lack of power children have in modern western society, which is both harder and less comfortable to think about than "akrasia."

Another version is someone told me to do my homework so I'll go to a good college so I'll get a good job. In this case "my S2" is a stopsign blocking an inquiry into why I care about any of the nodes in this causal diagram - maybe I want to go to a good college because it'll make me feel better about myself, maybe I want to get a good job to avoid disappointing my parents, etc.

That's on the S2 side, but "my S1" is also blocking inquiry. Why do I want to play video games? Not "my S1," just me; I can own that desire. There are obvious stories to tell about video games being more immediately pleasurable and addictive than most other things I could do, and those stories have some weight, but they're also a distraction; much easier to think about than why I wouldn't rather do anything else. In my actual experience, the times in my life I have played video games the most, the reasons were mostly emotional: I was really depressed and lonely and felt like a failure, and video games (and lots of other stuff) distracted me from feeling those things. Those feelings were very painful to think about, and that pain prevented me from even looking at the structure of this problem, let alone debugging it, for a long time.

(One sign I was doing this is that the video games I chose were not optimized for pleasure. I deliberately avoided video games that could be fun in a challenging way, because I didn't want to feel bad about doing poorly at them. Another sign is that everything else I did was also chosen for its ability to distract: for example, watching anime (never live-action TV, too uncomfortably close to real life), reading fiction (never nonfiction, again too uncomfortably close to real life), etc.)

An inference I take from this model is that you are best able to focus on long-term S2 goals (those which have the least inherent ability to influence you) if you have taken care of the rest of things which motivate you. Eat enough, sleep enough, spend time with friends. When you're trying to fight the desire to address those things, you're using willpower, and willpower is a stopgap measure.

Strongly agree, except that I wouldn't use the term "S2 goals." That's a stopsign. Again I suggest getting more specific: what part of you has those goals and why? Where did they come from?

So part of what I need to do now is really figure out how to do green-brain, growth-orientation motivation over red-brain, deficit-reduction motivation.

If I understand correctly what you mean by this, I have a lot of thoughts about how to do this. The short, unsatisfying version, which will probably surprise no one, is "find out what you actually want by learning how to have feelings."

The long version can be explained in terms of Internal Family Systems [LW · GW]. The deal is that procrastinative behaviors like playing a lot of video games are evidence that you're trying to avoid feeling a bad feeling, and that that bad feeling is being generated by a part of you that IFS calls an "exile." Exiles are producing bad feelings in order to get you to avoid a catastrophic situation that resembles a catastrophic situation earlier in your life that you weren't prepared for; for example, if you were overwhelmed by criticism from your parents as a child, you might have an exile that floods you with pain whenever people criticize you, especially people you really respect in a way that might cause you to project your parents onto them.

Exiles are paired with parts called protectors, whose job it is to protect exiles from being triggered. In the criticism example, that might look like avoiding people who criticize you, avoiding doing things you might get criticized for, or feeling sleepy or confused when someone manages to criticize you anyway.

Behavior that's driven by exile / protector dynamics (approximately "red-brain, deficit-reduction," if I understand you correctly) can become very dysfunctional, as the goal of avoiding psychological pain becomes a worse and worse proxy for avoiding bad situations. In extreme cases it can almost completely block your access to what you want, as that becomes less of a priority than avoiding pain. In the criticism example, you might be so paralyzed by the possibility that someone could criticize you for doing things that you stop doing anything.

There are lots of different ways to get exiles and protectors to chill the fuck out, and once they do you get to find out what you actually want when you aren't just trying to avoid pain. It's good times. See also my comment [LW(p) · GW(p)] on Kaj's IFS post.

comment by Gordon Seidoh Worley (gworley) · 2019-02-25T20:46:13.529Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Nice. I think one of the largest challenges I see people facing when it comes to motivation is that they don't have access to the ability to manipulate their motivation, in part because they don't have (or have but don't believe in) models that suggest ways in which motivation can be manipulated. This doesn't mean having those models will make working with motivation easy, but it does at least make it possible so that you don't flail around going "I have no idea why I'm doing what I'm doing" (and not because you deeply "don't know", but because you just can't even look to see enough of what's going on to really "not know" in any meaningful way other than simple unawareness).

I'd say the deep insight here is seeing that both what you do and what makes you do what you do is not part of the self, and in being not part of the self (i.e. not a thing you're identified with) you are unattached to it and free to work with it as needed. Easier said than done, though, as always.

comment by mingyuan · 2019-02-24T21:05:44.083Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Fixed your images and a bunch of obvious typos :)

Also, great post! I'm still digesting it so I don't have much to say, but a lot of this resonates, and it's always useful to me to see people write down their explicit models for things I've spent a lot of time thinking vaguely about.

Replies from: Ruby
↑ comment by Ruby · 2019-02-25T01:57:02.878Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Thanks, really appreciate that! Both the fixes and your thoughts. :) Updates me towards it being worthwhile to post things with lower levels of polish rather than not at all.