Transcription
[Applause]
A little while back, I was walking on my way from school to home when I suddenly realized that I had a 1,000-word paper due the very next morning. So, in a panic, I ran home. I sat at my desk and I stared blankly at my computer screen. To be perfectly honest, I wished I could be anywhere but here, doing anything but this. So I sat there like a rock, waiting for magic to happen, waiting for inspiration to just hit me. Unsurprisingly, it didn't.
Now, as any reasonable person in my position would do, I told myself, "You know what? You should take a short 5-minute break." No less, no longer. Before I knew it, I was knee-deep into this and a whole lot of this. They say that optimism is telling yourself and managing to convince yourself that you can watch a full 20-minute episode of Netflix in less than 5 minutes. Well, if that's true, then I'm quite an optimist.
But all seriousness, I think this is a classic example of the trade-off between motivation and procrastination, and it goes a little bit like this: You keep procrastinating and procrastinating until one day, something gives. Maybe you pull one too many all-nighters, and then you suddenly realize that you just can't afford to keep putting your work off to the last minute. Whatever it is, you realize that your intent and your actions don't meet. So you make the resolution to commit to something new. And it might work for a few days, maybe a few weeks, or maybe even a month if you're lucky. But chances are, sooner or later, you'll end up relapsing. And then the all-too-familiar feelings of guilt, anxiety, self-loathing will set in. And what do you do? You go back to your resolution. And so the process repeats, and it repeats. You're basically like Tarzan, swinging from vine to vine, from the person you used to be and the person you want to be.
So why is it so hard to stay resolute on a resolution? Well, there's a simple answer and a not-so-simple answer. So I'll start with a simpler answer. Simply put, motivation is finite. So when you're, say, when you set your goals way too high, often times you run out of motivation too quickly. So I'll start with a personal example: If I told myself that I wanted to wake up every morning at 4:00 a.m. and exercise for 45 minutes every day, I might wake up bushy-eyed every morning for two days. But two weeks later, we know that that motivation will be replaced by, "Eh, I'll do it later." What's the problem here? I set my sights too high. What you really need to do is tell yourself, "You know what? I'll wake up at 5 and I'll exercise for 10 minutes every day." And then you do that for a week. Once that habit is formed, you make that into 15 minutes, and then 20 minutes, and so the habit is formed. If you start small and work and form that habit, and then you work your way up, it's a lot easier.
So I've given the simple answer. So what's the not-so-simple answer? Because the answer is not so simple, I'll take some help from a study that was conducted by professors from MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and the University of Chicago. The study was quite interesting. It looked at the effects of extrinsic rewards on individual performance. What they found was that people completed tasks the best when they did them for their own sake, when they did them because they enjoyed them, not because they wanted an extrinsic reward. Now, at the time, this was groundbreaking because, why do people exercise? Because they want to get fit, and it's that end goal which motivates them to exercise, right? Or so we thought.
What this study tells us is that the most important thing to maintaining a habit is getting buy-in from yourself. It's not enough to just enjoy the outcome; you have to enjoy the process, and only then will the outcome follow. Think about it. Think about examples from your own personal life. That time when you wrote that essay or you submitted that assignment that you were really proud of. Did you write it on the back of a napkin in the five minutes before the deadline just because you wanted to get it over with? Or did you work tirelessly at it? Did you work so hard that you didn't even notice the time going by? That is what motivation is: when you're so emotionally invested in the process that the outcome ceases to become important. If you look at people who are truly motivated, they don't need to force themselves out of bed every morning to do work; they just work, and it just comes to them.
But you might be asking, "Sure, it may come to certain people, but what if I'm not one of those people?" Well, here's the thing: motivation is a skill, and like any skill, it can be taught and it can be learned. What this study told us is that the key secret to motivation is changing a little thing about the task or assignment that you're given so that it becomes a little less tiresome and a little bit more enjoyable. Here are a few examples: If you want to exercise, skip the treadmill. Maybe go outside for a run, and that'll make it a little less hard for you to exercise in the morning. If you want to get that homework or that assignment done on time, don't lock yourself in a room and do it alone at a desk. Maybe find a group of friends and do it with them, or do your homework in a different location so that your work is a little bit less monotonous.
And look, I don't profess to be a master of the art of self-motivation. I, like any other person, watch my fair share of cat videos, and I'm still trying to find the perfect balance. But what's the message here? The message here is that self-motivation, when done right, can be truly transformative because it enables us to find that inner spark so that we enjoy every little thing we do in our lives.
I'll leave you all with a quote from Carl Jung, one of the world's leading psychologists: "He who looks outside dreams; he who looks inside awakes."
Thank you.