Breaking Down Boulders

I have been doing a lot of work on goalsetting, habit creation, and other such CFARian life hacks recently, but even though I am getting to slowly understand some of the science of how our brains work in relation to these sorts of things, I still feel as if I am trudging along on a Sisyphean path.

Surely, we don't need to trick our brains all the time?

Surely, if I make it up a high enough mountain, with an ascetic enough guru, and train gruelingly enough through an epic enough montage of push ups and heavy metal guitar, I will actually just know my brain and its limitations, and my well-trained grey matter any I will be able to hold hands and skip off happily into the sunset once we get back down off of the mountain?


And yet, here I am, signed up for things like Malcolm McCulloch's "Complice" -- a goal-progress-tracking program, and some Stanford scientist's week-long course on Habit Creation (called Tiny Habits).

According to Dr. Fogg's short explanation, "The easier the behavior, the less it depends on motivation. 

“Hey!” you might say. “What’s wrong with motivation?”  

Well, motivation is not very reliable, going up and down, often unpredictably. And it often takes a lot of work to sustain motivation. In the end, I’ve concluded that relying on motivation to create a habit doesn’t work."

Ugh, WHAT?!?  motivation doesn't WORK?!?   That is so against everything I want to believe, as I feel I've been putting my all into rolling this damn rock up a hill, forcing myself even when I don't want to, etc. etc. ... and eventually succumbing to evenings where all I do is watch Star Trek TNG.  (Oops.)  

I guess that the long and the short of it is, though, that on things that are bigger than tiny habits -- things like getting grading done or accomplishing life goals, the good doctor is right; motivation often isn't enough.  I'm currently tricking myself into grading by breaking up everything I'm doing into more manageable Pomodoro-sized chunks, having a happy lamp and a space heater on, listening to an instrumental mix John made, and drinking sugar-substitute laden diet ginger ale which is basically the reason why baby Jesus cries but it's still not enough -- because the moment that I get a text, that my glass is empty or I'm sent chance to blog instead, I take it.

My hypothesis for myself is that, in order to accomplish things I sometimes don't wanna -- or things that I do wanna, but are overwhelming, I need these four things:

1. to feel like my surroundings are supportive.  Music helps, full spectrum light is amazing, and having a table all to myself is just the best.
2. to feel like I am accountable to someone.  For my goals, right now, it's Mal and his Complice e-mails; for grading, I've told the kids their grades will be un-fucked by Monday.
3. to feel like I have a road map of how to get to where I've accomplished my goal, or at least that huge tasks have already been broken up into manageable chunks.  This one's often the hardest; since the smaller chunking process often takes time and energy of its own (and I seldom know how long it takes, so generally don't even think to consider it work and Pomodoro it), I sometimes spend a whole day just getting to the place where the things I need to do look even remotely doable.
4. to feel like I can do it; meaning I have the time, mental preparation, emotional capacity, and physical wellness enough to accomplish the work that needs to get done.   It is for this reason that I've been spending so much time looking into the sustainability of teaching as I am now -- I often feel as if the time it takes to accomplish the things I want to do in order to do my job well and the time it takes to let my batteries recharge adds up to more than 7 days' worth of time per week.

I'm not sure what system to use to get there.  I'm not sure how to remind myself to take the 5-10 minutes to set up a supportive place and to create a manageable, prioritized to do list, rather than just clenching my fists, running up the hill, and trying to move my boulder by brute force... but perhaps I'll get there.  

Be it through Tiny Habits or daily e-mails or maybe even just a modified montage of mindful reminders of my own, even though I can't always do all I want, I hope to remember sometimes to make things easier by getting what I need.


What do you need in order to accomplish your goals?  How do you view motivation, or motivate yourself?  Should we just make habits out of everything?   Are goals accomplished through the martyrdom or strict self discipline more valuable than those accomplished out of things we made automatic?

With love and curiosity,

~k