The Motivation Hacker - Deepstash
The Motivation Hacker

Ishank R's Key Ideas from The Motivation Hacker
by Nick Winter

Ideas, facts & insights covering these topics:

15 ideas

·

23.6K reads

170

Explore the World's Best Ideas

Join today and uncover 100+ curated journeys from 50+ topics. Unlock access to our mobile app with extensive features.

The Hack Technique

First pick your goals, then figure out which motivation hacks to use on the subtasks that lead to those goals—and then use far more of them than you need, so that you not only succeed, but that you do so with excitement and joy.

The Formula: Motivation = (Expectancy x Value) / (Impulsiveness x Delay)

  • Expectancy = confidence of success.
  • Value = how rewarding a task will be when you finish it & how fun it is when you’re doing it.
  • Impulsiveness = distractibility, how likely you are to put a task off and do something more pressing.
  • Delay = how far off the reward seems to be.

325

2.74K reads

NICK WINTER

By increasing Expectancy or Value, or decreasing Impulsiveness or Delay, you hack motivation.

NICK WINTER

258

2.88K reads

Willpower

The will is a process of making personal rules for ourselves that will help us reach our goals, and how much willpower we can muster is precisely how good we are at setting up these personal rules so that we prefer to keep our rules than break them.

254

2.25K reads

The Success Spiral

  • Make a tiny achievable goal that you can’t forget to do.
  • Track your success doing this goal.
  • Give your goal a completion date.
  • Once you complete your goal, up it to a bigger goal.

Focus on input based process goals (write for five minutes) rather than output-based results goals (write one page). And keep the required inputs minimal at first.

292

1.85K reads

JOHN TEMPLETON

The four most expensive words in the English language are, “This time it’s different"

JOHN TEMPLETON

251

2.27K reads

The Playbook Of Motivation Hacking

  • Precommitment: Using a commitment device to choose now to limit your options later, preventing yourself from making the wrong choice in the face of temptation. Putting money on the line, publicly announcing your goals, etc.
  • Burnt Ships: List out all of your possible distractions, and then make it so that it’s impossible to do those things when you want to be working toward your other goals. This saves you from having to use willpower to resist them.
  • Rejection Therapy: Get over your fear of starting things by going out and trying to get rejected by asking for odd things from people.

273

1.2K reads

Exercise: Goal Picking

Imagine your ideal day. What do you do? Whom do you talk to? Where do you go? Pick a few goals that will bring you closer to that ideal day.

Make a list of every crazy goal you can think of. Then rate each goal on three factors: how much the goal excites you, your probability of success if you tried as hard as you could, and how long it would take in hours. Sort them by excitement x probability of success / time and pick the most efficient goals.

Imagine you’re another person more competent than yourself who has just dropped into your current life at this moment with none of your issues.

285

1.01K reads

The CSI Approach

  • Challenging (motivating and exciting)
  • Specific (not abstract)
  • Immediate (avoid long-delayed goals and focus on what you can do now)
  • Approach-oriented (as opposed to avoidance goals)

If you track your happiness during activities, you’ll get a more accurate picture of how much you enjoyed it without giving in to the peak-end effect.

260

1.1K reads

How To Learn Any Skill

  • Get excited about a skill
  • While you’re excited, make time and hack up motivation to practice it
  • Learn how to practice it from reading or from a teacher
  • Start doing it right away

Whatever goals you pick, you should have some way of measuring the results. Many goals are about making you happier, so make sure you’re measuring your happiness.

256

1.03K reads

Increasing Expectancy

  • Success Spirals: Win at something small then keep leveling it up
  • Vicarious Victory: Hang out with motivated people
  • Mental Contrasting: Visualize the success you want to have and then contrast it with where you are now
  • Guarding Against Excessive Optimism: Don’t get trapped by the planning fallacy

249

931 reads

Increasing Value

  • Find Flow
  • Find Meaning: Look for ways to connect tasks to major life goals
  • CSI Approach goals(mentioned above)
  • Optimize Your Energy
  • Productive Procrastination: If you can’t do your main work, get other little tasks out of the way
  • Create Rewards: When you succeed, celebrate it, by congratulating yourself or giving yourself a treat
  • Focus on Passion: Know what you’re passionate about and steer your life towards those passions
  • Task Trading: If you don’t want to do something find someone who will trade that task with you

255

713 reads

Reducing Impulsiveness

  • Make a recommitment
  • Burn your ships
  • Set goal reminders
  • Timebox your tasks
  • Build useful habits
  • Schedule play before work, so you know when you’re taking a break

255

987 reads

Reducing Delay

  • Break your goals down so the ends feel nearer
  • Let yourself plan fallaciously so you’re more motivated

249

1.07K reads

NICK WINTER

To precommit is to choose now to limit your options later, preventing yourself from making the wrong choice in the face of temptation. Publicly announcing your goal is a common form of precommitment.

NICK WINTER

261

1.9K reads

NICK WINTER

The motivation hacker learns to steer his life towards higher Value and to have fun demolishing boring necessities in his way.

NICK WINTER

239

1.7K reads

IDEAS CURATED BY

ishank

Bacon scholar. Avid reader of all things self help.

CURATOR'S NOTE

Craft your life structure.

Ishank R's ideas are part of this journey:

Sleep Better

Learn more about personaldevelopment with this collection

The benefits of a bedtime routine

How to improve your sleep quality

How to create a relaxing sleep environment

Related collections

Discover Key Ideas from Books on Similar Topics

How to Survive a Horror Film

6 ideas

17 Anti-Procrastination Hacks

20 ideas

Essentialism

10 ideas

Essentialism

Greg McKeown

Read & Learn

20x Faster

without
deepstash

with
deepstash

with

deepstash

Personalized microlearning

100+ Learning Journeys

Access to 200,000+ ideas

Access to the mobile app

Unlimited idea saving

Unlimited history

Unlimited listening to ideas

Downloading & offline access

Supercharge your mind with one idea per day

Enter your email and spend 1 minute every day to learn something new.

Email

I agree to receive email updates