Get it Done: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation

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Ayelet Fishbach is a leading expert on motivation—her research has consistently produced insights that are both surprising and useful. In this engaging book, she shows what it takes to close the gap between your intentions and your actions.” So how do you motivate yourself to pursue your dreams and desires when life is in full swing? It all starts with choosing the right goal.

One, it boosts your confidence in believing that you can achieve your goal. You’ve made it this far, right!? People are most enthusiastic about working toward a goal at the beginning and end of pursuing it—when they're energized by the newness and excitement of the goal, and when they're finally close to achievement. In between is the dangerous long middle. Motivation lags; you can see you've accomplished some, but not enough; there's still so much to do to reach the goal…

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And so, here’s a little advice from the book: if you’re new to or uncertain about a commitment, try to stay motivated looking at it with a glass-half-full mindset. Self-control strategies counteract temptation, canceling out the influence of temptations on your goal. This works either by increasing your motivation to adhere to the goal or decreasing your motivation to give in to temptation." One way to sustain motivation is to pursue activities that feel like ends in themselves—activities you're intrinsically motivated to do for the sake of doing them, that are fun or enjoyable or exciting. For these activities, Fishbach says, P211 “As with all others in your life, your role model’s stated goals for themselves and others are going to motivated you even more than their actions. So you’ll want to choose a role model who doesn’t only do well, but also expects themselves and others to do well.”

Break the goal down into smaller chunks and find milestones that are rewarding and motivating. The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. And after the first 100 miles, maybe reward yourself with a ice cream cone or something to celebrate your progress. We move toward and away from people as we prioritize or deeper towards the goals they can help us achieve. When it's the right time to attend to a goal or when we feel we're falling behind, a goal gets high motivational priority. As a result, we draw closer to those who are instrumental to achieving it. Once the goal has sufficiently progressed and its motivational priority reduces, we feel less close to those people." In Get It Done, psychologist and behavioral scientist Ayelet Fishbach presents a new theoretical framework for self-motivated action, explaining how to: Finally, we hold goals for other people, and they hold goals for us. Marie and Pierre Curie wanted their two daughters to do well in school. We assume they cared mostly about science, which could have prepared their oldest, Irène, to win her own Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1935. Irène, too, won with her husband, with whom she was working.goals are powerful tools and, as such, they should be handled with care; powerful goals pull you to new heights relationships: understand the aspirations of people around you; make your desires known; share interests be patient for the sake of others; it is much easier to accomplish things when they are for someone else P40 “According to the dilution principle,” the more goals, including incentives, a single activity serves, the more weakly we associate the activity with our central goal and the less instrumental the activity seems for this goal.” Dacă vrei să schimbi ceva în viața ta primul lucru pe care trebuie să îl faci este să evaluezi situația actuală iar daca o schimbare este necesară, trebuie sa creezi circumstanțele pentru a duce la schimbarea dorită.