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Why is Taking Action Hard? | Scott H Young
Confidence
- Your motivation to complete a task depends on the value of the reward and your expectation of success.
- Your expectation of success depends on your motivation.
If your projects tend to fail, your expectations are low, and motivation fades. If your projects tend to succeed, your expectations go up, and motivation stays strong.
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Taking action = eventual success
Inaction is the biggest cause of our failures and our miseries. If we could consistently do the things we know we should do, we would be more successful, and our lives would be better. Yet we struggle to take action.
Explaining inaction
Some possible but weak reasons why action is hard:
- Talent. But the world is full of brilliant stars that flame out and mediocre minds that build empires.
- Preferences can explain our failure to try, but don't explain our inner struggles with inaction.
- Capacity for effort. If your capacity for doing things is lower, it does not explain chronic bursts of activity with inevitable crashes in your goals and projects.
- Motivation. Some people with the most reason have the hardest time taking action.
Social-Desirability Bias
Our conscious mind may be functioning more by making reasonable-sounding explanations for its behavior rather than actually making decisions.
This means that we fail because the unconscious parts of our mind have decided not to take action. You might be convincing yourself that you want to pursue a goal when your unconscious mind is not committed to it.
Daydreams and Reality
We have two characteristic modes of viewing things—an abstract (or far-mode) and a concrete (or near-mode) view.
Because of the two modes, many big goals have a far-near incompatibility that can make it difficult to take action on. The person who dreams up the goal is different from the one who executes it.
Sticking Your Neck Out
Our nature may be to view the cost-benefits of taking actions and be willing to retreat to conformity instead of getting punished.
Some ventures into different kinds of actions are discouraged if they don't yield big rewards. It may explain inaction to start your own business, but a strong expectation to show up on time to work.
We're Short-Sighted
Procrastination may be a delaying tactic to avoid wasting energy here and now, even if you think you might work harder later on.
Get Better at Taking Action
Traditional approaches often focus on human will alone. But, our minds are complicated things, with many conscious and unconscious control mechanisms.
To take action, we need to not only have new inputs to turn us in the right direction, but also the ability to keep headed in the chosen direction.
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Theories of motivation
- Rational motivation, which reflects our preferences. We're motivated by the opportunities we can notice.
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Why we miss opportunities
Some theories of motivation claim we're naturally biased. It may happen because we can't consider all the angles. At other times, as the world advance, the usual criteria no longer apply.
There may be only a few exceptional people like Elon Musk because we can't grasp the idea that one person can create wealth or drive progress. We don't notice opportunities and more easily dismiss them.
Motivation: listen or nudge
If you think motivation is mostly rational, pay attention to what motivates you. You might not feel motivated because your current opportunities aren't that good.
If you think motivation is biased and nudging is necessary, create rules, systems, and habits to move you ahead. If you can't motivate yourself for months or years, your project may be at fault.
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“It ain’t what you know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
Mark Twain
The most useful learning
The most useful learning isn’t usually a strict addition of new knowledge, but first unlearning something false or unhelpful.
Types of Unlearning
- Straightforward refutation of the old idea. This complete refutation is atypical. More likely the new knowledge doesn’t contradict the old one, but it may modify it in some way.
- The new knowledge revises a simpler picture by filling it with more complex details. This is similar to adding new knowledge, although because the older, simpler view of the issue has been overwritten with more detail, there is some unlearning going on.
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