Neither strategy is necessarily better or worse – but it is useful to be able to know when to implement one over the other.

She argues, essentially, that activities associated with goals are a zero-sum game. I don't see why that must be the case—why can't an activity be associated with two goals and be equally important for both? Maybe that would work for two intrinsically motivated goals? I wasn't entirely satisfied with her explanation. When I first studied behavioral economics 30 years ago, I often thought, “This is just economists trying to figure out what we already know in advertising.” Today, I think behavioral economists have gotten further away from understanding people how think. Economists have become a lot like mathematicians studying string theory. They spend more and more of their time talking about things that only matter to their academic colleagues, with little application to the real world, and with experiments that don’t prove a thing but are only interpretive events, a sort of intellectual dancing. 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.There are many problems with this book. The short review is that if you’d like a long lecture from a dishonest, uncreative, Liberal, Jewish-Puritan, this is the book for you.

Social isolation is so unnatural to humans that it's considered a harsh and often cruel and unethical punishment." 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." Whether starting a new diet, running a marathon, or gunning for a promotion, Get It Done illuminates invaluable strategies for propelling yourself in whatever direction you want to go—so you can achieve your goals while staying healthy, clear-headed, and happy. And it just so happens that it’s one of the main things I need help with. And you probably need some help, too, right? Because, seriously, why does it take so much effort to start a new habit or actually finish a project. Tell me I’m not alone, and that boring life-admin tasks stay on your to-do list for months, too, because you think they will probably take hours. And then when you actually sit your butt down and do them, it’s all done in an hour. To reach the finish line, set compelling, specific goals – and have fun! be patient for the sake of others; it is much easier to accomplish things when they are for someone elsegreat goals: are not proxies/means to other goals, are specific, have potential to fail, great incentives, intrinsic It’s a surprising anecdote to be offered by an expert in the realm of setting and achieving goals, but her message gets right to the heart of one of the deceptively simple lessons in her book: choose your goals wisely. You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead pursue the things you love doing and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off of you.” The author’s Liberal leanings really come through strongly in the last third of the book. Too bad. It destroys her credibility. In the aggregate, Liberals have recently lost their minds. This is the reason Chicago has become so bleak. There’s a strange mental schism in which Liberals continue to believe their party and their ideas are virtuous, no matter how crappy the observable results from their ideas being put into practice by their party.

The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.” Second, keep your goals abstract. Be careful not to be too vague, though. For example, “Improve my mental health” is better than “be happy” because it points you toward your next step: in this case, perhaps, starting therapy. 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, A refreshing read and reminder of ways to get things done. Start with motivational methods and incorporate adequate support. “Trying to stay motivated and make serious progress in whatever you’re trying to achieve in life can sometimes feel like an impossible task. But it doesn’t have to be. There’s a simple fix – and it just so happens to be in your control. It all starts with changing your circumstances. Most importantly, you need to define your goals. You need to pay attention to maintaining momentum, stay focused when you’ve got a billion other things on your plate and get your friends and family involved. And when you make your behavior and environment work for rather than against you, your goal of getting that raise, or that strong healthy body, or that tax return form sorted, or that new language learned, will be yours in no time! Finally, think about times that you’ve been successful and unsuccessful in achieving your past goals. Thinking about successes is kinda easy, right? But we’ve all messed up at one point. I know I have. I’ve tried, I’ve failed, I’ve tried, I’ve failed again. So, how about learning from those failures? If you’re someone who struggles to lean into your mistakes, you’re not alone – but you are missing out on a bunch of important information.

Review

Below, Ayelet shares 5 key insights from her new book, Get It Done: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation. Listen to the audio version—read by Ayelet herself—in the Next Big Idea App. 1. Set a goal, not a means to a goal. P88 dynamics of “commitment promotes consistency” i.e. Alcoholics Anonymous vs. “progress promotes balancing” i.e. most dieting programs We can use this principle to increase patience. All we need to do is introduce more time before the smaller-sooner option becomes available. P224 “friendly taking” - In close relationships, people focus on how much ‘we’ (their team) get in total, rather than who gets more. One concept Fishbach discussed that I thought was cool was the concept of self-other overlap, i.e., the perception of a psychological overlapping between ourselves and others. People often conform to the group. You often internalize the views and goals of the people around you because they're part of you. This is why role models are so important:

set positive goals, as opposed to “do not do” goals; avoidance goals are chores that lead to thought suppressionStep number one is setting a goal. Second is monitoring progress, third is assessing and weighing it against the many other goals in your life, and fourth is leveraging social support. 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…