Pickaxe Pickaxe Pickaxe Pickaxe Some of us are prompted to action by our circumstances, but then there are other people who seem to be able to intrinsically motivate themselves. And so this is a question that I always kind of wondered about, are these people fundamentally different or am I missing something? It turns out there is a methodology to this, this is something that you can level up.
There are two types of people in this world, people who think about doing stuff, and people who actually do stuff. And we're kind of aware of this, right? We sort of have this idea of extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation. Some of us are prompted to action by our circumstances. If we have a deadline, if we have a test to study for, if we have a particular project that needs to be completed, then we can act.
And there are other people who seem to be able to intrinsically motivate themselves, who are more disciplined and focused. And what's the difference? So I've always wondered, you know, are there two types of people? Is this like a fundamental difference, is this down to your genes, down to your personality? What separates people who think about doing things from people who do things? And you may have wondered this too, are thinkers fundamentally different from doers?
So you may get excited about something just like everyone else, but you and your friend both get excited about something. And a year later, you've sort of forgotten about it, you didn't really follow through, and your friend is actually stuck with it. What's the difference? That's what we're going to dive into today. And this is something that I've thought about a lot, because I myself was a thinker.
Right, I got super curious about things. I would get very excited about stuff, sometimes I'd order a bunch of books. I'd be like, okay, yeah, like this is going to be my thing. I'm going to learn to break dance. I'm going to learn to play a new instrument. And then a couple of weeks would go by in my sort of curious passion would end up dissipating completely.
And I looked around at other people, and I sort of noticed that some people when they get curious about stuff are able to follow through with it. Turn it into discipline and stay consistent. And so this is a question that I always kind of wondered about. Are these people fundamentally different? Or am I missing something? Which is why I was absolutely thrilled when I had the opportunity to work with not one, but two Olympic athletes.
So these are people who are literally the best in the world at the particular thing that they do. And as I was working with them on unrelated things, in the back of my mind, I was always wondering, okay, like, I'm going to try to figure out, how did this person accomplish this? How did this person develop such a passion? Have such strong intrinsic motivation? And I came to a couple of conclusions, which we'll share with you. But still, I wasn't quite sure, right?
Because in this situation, I have a sample size of two. I have two human beings who are incredibly high performing. So I can't quite extrapolate that out or form a conclusion about the population at large. Which is why I was thrilled to discover that we've basically figured this out. There's a bunch of novel research in neuroscience around extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation and how to turn from a thinker into a doer.
And this actually has four discrete steps that if you do something like work with an Olympic athlete, you'll discover that they went through these steps. And the tricky thing is that some of these steps aren't really visible. So we'll sort of see what someone else is doing. We'll look at someone who's like very disciplined and they get a lot of stuff done. And we'll think to ourselves, like, okay, I'm going to start doing what they do.
But when we try to do it, it doesn't seem to work out. And that's because the research has sort of shown us that there are internal cognitive steps that you need to take as well. And as you go through these cognitive steps, you will literally take something that you are curious about and turn it into sustained action. So the first step is something called a triggered situational interest.
So as we've learned more about the brain, we've sort of discovered that everyone starts with curiosity. But then there are certain things that you can do once you are curious to foster that curiosity and then eventually turn that curiosity into a sustained motivation. So the first thing to understand about phase one is that it's something that you don't control. It is triggered by the situation. So it is environmental in nature. And you kind of get curious about something.
So if you see someone playing a particular video game, you'll be like, oh, that's a pretty cool game. Like maybe I should learn how to play that game too. But there are a lot of things that we don't quite understand about curiosity. And there's one major pitfall that we tend to fall into. And that is oftentimes curiosity actually comes with negative emotions. And we tend to think about curiosity as a positive thing.
We think that curiosity sometimes attracts us to stuff, which is why we get confused when even when we get curious about things, we seem to not do anything about it. Why is that? It's because in the triggered situational interest, oftentimes we have some negative emotion that actually keeps us from pursuing it. So I'll give you all a simple example. When I was in college, I decided that I wanted to be cool, man. I'm going to be cool.
So I went to a break dancing class. And I was like, oh, man, like I'm going to learn how to break dance. I'm going to be a bee boy. I'm going to get the ladies. It's going to be cool. And I went to this break dancing class where a lot of people were break dancing. And I was like, damn, that's super cool. And I felt pathetic. I'm not that graceful. I don't have that rhythm in my body. I don't know if I can ever do this. It completely destroyed my confidence.
Which is something that is very common when we get curious about something. It actually comes with some degree of negative emotion. And so what a lot of people will then do is they'll say, like, oh, you have to overcome that negative emotion, right? Like that's what someone like Dr. K on the internet would tell you to do. Oh, you have some negative emotion, process that emotion, regulate that emotion, go to therapy, do journaling so that the negative emotion goes away.
And then you can pursue your curiosity, turns out that's wrong. So what we want to do for, and there's a research that shows this, if we want to move past a triggered situational interest, I see something in the environment, and I'm interested in it, we don't actually need to engage with it further. We don't have to overcome anything with ourselves. What we actually need to do is just focus on continued exposure.
Continued exposure is what leads us to something called maintained situational interest. So this once again is an interest that is triggered by our environment. So we're still externally motivated, but the trigger is consistent, right? So it's maintained situational interest. And this is where it's like super cool, because if you're like me, you love learning about doing things instead of actually doing things.
Which is literally exactly what we want to do to eventually reach intrinsic motivation. It may seem like it's a step in the opposite direction, but when we study people who start off with curiosity and end up with a lifelong passion, this is a critical step. What we really want to focus on, if you're curious about something, is not overcoming the negativity, but just continue to expose yourself to that thing.
You don't have to conquer any internal thing. And the reason for that is very simple, because at this point, it is not worth it. The part of your brain that calculates the value of overcoming a negative thing doesn't think that this is worth it. So if I overcome that embarrassment and I go to class the next day and I'm really fighting and struggling with that embarrassment,
it's not like I learn how to break dense immediately after overcoming that emotional hump. Overcoming the emotional hump doesn't really get me anything at that point. Which is why we actually don't want to invest in doing it. All we want to focus on is continued exposure. So you should, by all means, go to the class again. You should learn about it. So this is what's really interesting.
Learning about the content that you're interested in qualifies as maintaining that situational interest. So you can actually watch YouTube videos about it. You can read a book about it. And notice what happens when I start watching YouTube videos or reading books or talking to people or hanging out with people who are break dancers. I'm not actually learning how to break dense yet. I'm not forcing myself to overcome that negativity. I'm just continuously feeding my mind.
And when I work with these Olympic athletes, I find that they had this too. So in the early stages of their training, they frequently had a parent who maintained their situation on their behalf. When we look at people who are exceptional, we tend to find that they start early and before they even develop a passion, oftentimes their parents forced them to do it. And if you've had parents that have forced you to do something and you may have wondered, why did this not become a passion for me?
That's because you probably didn't do steps three or four. So we really want to focus on is continued external exposure. Learning about the things sort of engaging with the thing. We can deal with some of the negative emotions. But you basically want to continue feeding your mind with more stuff about your curiosity.
So what we basically want to do in step two is continue that exposure because if we get super passionate about something, and let's say I go to like a guitar class or something, and then I order a bunch of like a guitar and a bunch of music, but then I never go back to the class, what's going to happen? The guitar is going to sit in my closet. So instead, what I need to do is just focus on continued exposure into a certain degree engaging with that community.
And this is when we transition from an externally oriented interest to an internally oriented interest. So phase three is called the emerging individual interest. And if you all are gamers, you are going to understand this incredibly well. So at some point, we're kind of focused on the external environment. We're watching people do it. We're sort of thinking about it.
Hopefully you engage in some way, right? So I'm not saying that you can be a complete bystander. At some point, you should pick up a guitar and try playing something, engage with the community, give it a shot, but you don't need a lifelong passion yet. And there is a critical step that triggers moving from extrinsic motivation to internal motivation. And that is theory crafting.
So let's think about this from an analogy of video games. So I see someone else playing a video game. Oh, like that's pretty cool. Like they're people playing Street Fighter 6. Like Street Fighter 6 seems like a fun game. So you don't have to actually play it right away, right? Then the key thing to do is let's continue hanging out with people who play SF6.
And then eventually I'll pick up the controller. I'll experiment around a little bit. I'll start to have a little bit fun, but I'm getting crushed because these people are way better than I am. And normally, I would sort of give up on it at that point. That's when the theory crafting steps in. So if you theory crafted, think about this for a second. Who are you engaging with when you theory craft?
You're not engaging with the external environment. You're not watching YouTube videos about it. You're sitting there when you go to bed at night. Instead of falling asleep, you're running through ideas in your head. You're like, okay, maybe I could do this. And maybe I could do this, or I should play this character.
If I did this, I could do it this way. If I build this character, I'm going to level up. I'm going to have a maximum strength. I'm going to use int as a dump stat. I'm going to use charisma as a dump stat because charisma's for noobs. Or whatever you're playing. If you're playing Elden Ring or like Shadow of the Urd Tree because that's coming out nowadays, you know, you're thinking about all this stuff.
So this is really important to understand because in the first two phases, we are sort of getting external input. Our input is from the outside and we sort of have this internal reaction. We're also reacting to the outside. But when we start to develop an emerging individual interest, we are now dealing with ourselves. We are playing around with the information. We are reflecting on the information. We are now focused within us. And if you theory crafted, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
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It's like, oh, I'm thinking about this. I get excited about my mind really enjoys it. And this is a critical step from becoming a thinker to a doer. Doers are people who think about things and reflect on things internally. Whereas I know it sounds kind of weird. Thinkers continue to expose themselves to the external environment. Now you may think to yourself, but isn't to think or internal? No, no, no, no. This is what is so paradoxical and so revolutionary about it.
Someone who continuously watches videos about self improvement on the internet, but doesn't do the internal work. Don't pay attention to themselves. Don't theory craft their own solutions. They're continuously watching one video after another video after another video after another video. They're engaged with the external environment. There is not that transition. So you can watch every single video on this channel and never change unless you start to do the internal work. Make sense, right?
So for anything that you want to develop an intrinsic motivation for, what you really need to focus on is reflecting on what you've learned. And of course you have to try stuff out that's usually in phase two. But we really want to reflect on what we've learned to sort of foster and really support that internal interest.
And if you do that, you'll eventually move to the last phase, which is a well developed individual interest. So this is kind of phase four where at this point, you're going to look at someone else and you're going to see like when this person is passionate or disciplined or call it whatever you want to. They have a sustained interest, which is intrinsically motivated at this point. They appear to be doers because they're engaging with this stuff over time.
So for anything that you want to develop intrinsic motivation for, you need to reflect on what you've learned and ask yourself questions about it. So at this point, once again, it's individual. It's intrinsically motivated, but at this point, it is well developed. It has a certain degree of resilience and stability to it.
This is where all the Olympic athletes that both of the Olympic athletes that I work with are. This is where esports professionals I work with are. This is where a lot of doctors that I work with are entrepreneur CEOs. They're all sort of in this phase where they have a highly developed sense of this thing and it's sustainable over time.
Now the really interesting thing is that this phase is characterized by two steps, which oftentimes we try to do way too early, which can have paradoxically negative effects. So the first thing about this phase is this is when we start to appreciate the contributions of others. So I'll give you all a simple example.
So let's say you theory craft a particular build and you have all your ideas about this build and why it'll work and why it won't work. And then the interesting thing is once you've done some theory crafting, you are far more likely to understand the theory crafting of someone else.
You're far more likely to appreciate the theory crafting of someone else. You know what it's like to construct your own build. So when someone else comes up with a build, you're like, oh, that's really interesting. How did they come to that conclusion? Why do they why do they have the stat distribution that they have? Why do they have the item timings that they have? Why are they choosing to play this combination of characters?
Whatever the game is, it doesn't really matter. But I don't know if this kind of makes sense, but this is when you start to really appreciate the contributions of others. Since you've developed your own thought process, your own internal meta or strategy, you can appreciate the meta or strategy of other people.
So for me, for example, you know, I read a ton and what drives my reading is not necessarily that I just want to learn. It's not that I'm an empty vessel. I actually have a lot of my own ideas about clinical work, psychiatry, neuroscience, spirituality. So now when I read someone else, when I read a textbook, whether it's Aaron Bex, like book on cognitive behavioral therapy, or it's, you know, the bug bug, Guita by Krishna.
So whoever I read, Krishna, Morthy, it doesn't really matter. Like now I have my own perspective. And now I absorb that information so much more and it'll keep that momentum going. And as I'm sure y'all can imagine, the more of this stuff that I read, the more of an expert I become. The problem is that if we engage in this stuff too early, it's important to get some degree of exposure. And I recognize that earlier I said it's okay to watch a YouTube video.
We need some kind of external input, but there's a big difference between an external input that fosters my curiosity and really having the bandwidth and background to digest another way of thinking, right? We're not experts at the beginning. We don't understand someone else's meta. We don't understand like this person is break dancing this way. This person is break dancing this way. When I don't know how to break dance.
We just want to watch five minute YouTube videos that are like, wow, that's pretty cool. Like I want to learn how to do that. Later on, we want to go more in depth. And what I find is that when people who are in phase one or phase two and they try to read a lot of books about something, what they actually do is like this is kind of boring. It's not really that engaging.
The second thing that we want to do to maintain phase four and to really be sort of committed to something is ask for feedback. Now this oftentimes confuses a lot of people because we have this idea in life that we should all be asking for feedback. Can I get feedback? Can you give me feedback feedback feedback feedback feedback feedback about the relationship? Why didn't you like to date? Why did you like to date? Why aren't you texting me?
Why did I go to you? What am I doing right at work? What am I doing wrong at work? What am I doing? We're all so feedback obsessed. But it turns out that feedback can be bad for you. So remember that in phase one, when we're first getting curious about something, when I go to the break dancing class and I feel intimidated because all these people there are so strong and so graceful.
If I ask for feedback, what impact do you think that will have if I feel some degree of negativity towards the subject? I'm excited about it and I feel intimidated. And if I ask someone, hey, what do you think about my break dancing and they give me honest feedback? Yeah, it seems like you're pretty early and you have a lot to work on. If I have that negative emotion, feedback early on will actually destroy my motivation and kill my curiosity.
They will not develop into a passion in order to receive feedback and utilize feedback pretty well. What we really need is confidence in the subject at hand. The more stable and confident, the more sustained our interest is negative feedback won't be able to squash it.
In fact, since I have a stable interest in something when I receive feedback, then I can incorporate that feedback because I have that foundation and then I can grow. Now there are absolutely cases where early on you want feedback. But what we sort of know from scientific studies is that feedback becomes more and more and more important, the further in your journey you are.
And that early on, if I take a six year old kid and I say, hey, you got a bunch of these math questions wrong or I'm telling them you did this wrong in chess and you did this wrong in chess and you did this wrong in chess, they're much less likely to ever want to play chess again. And if you've given feedback to some students, you know, even if you're playing a video game, what you'll find you'll observe the same thing is that not all human beings are capable of receiving feedback.
We have this idea that it's such a wonderful thing and we should be giving it and receiving it all the time, but it requires a lot of confidence and stability to actually receive and incorporate feedback. So if you follow these four steps, it will transition you from a thinker to a doer. We have neuroscience studies that literally show us, okay, when a human becomes curious, this is what activates in their brain.
And curiosity is not the same as intrinsic motivation. Curiosity is a desire for more external exposure. Let me go see more of it. Let me touch it. Let me play with it. I'm looking for information from the outside. The problem is that from so many of us, we get so excited because we get excited about this thing and we want to play around with it, but we don't quite know how to make the transition from temporary excitement to sustained intrinsic motivation.
And what we really need to do is follow these four steps, just exposing ourselves more. We want more and more input to feed our curiosity. But if we're not careful, our brain will eventually get bored of that and it'll be like, that's enough. Let's move on to the next thing because it'll naturally get curious about something else. And then it'll be drawn to that thing. So how do you avoid switching over to the next thing? That's when you need to switch to an intrinsic motivation.
And then you start reflecting asking your questions, theory crafting. And as you all know, I don't know if this makes sense, but if you ever theory crafted something, the more you theory craft, the more you want to play. But think about how powerful this is because you're not getting external environmental exposures at that point. All of the drive is transitioning to intrinsic.
Once that drive to intrinsic is there, then we can help it grow and excel. Like you will start to excel as you start to think about other thinkers in the space, appreciating the other ways that people make builds, as well as soliciting and incorporating feedback.
But if you're someone who's struggled with intrinsic motivation, if you're someone who's just a thinker instead of a doer, I strongly encourage you all to follow these steps. And I can't guarantee that you'll become an Olympic athlete. But I certainly know that I was a 19 year old kid who was failing out of college who got curious about a thousand things.
I ran for student government. I was joined a fraternity. I was trying to climb the Warcraft III ladder. I was trying to date and all of it was a mess. It's like everything is going well for me gratefully. So I have a job that I'm relatively happy about. I have a relationship that I'm relatively happy with. I have a family that I'm relatively proud of. I still play video games. I'm climbing rank in MMR. And that's the really crazy thing.
Because when we look at other people in the world, it seems like there are two camps of people. And this was something that was so confusing to me because at the beginning, I thought like, okay, during character creation in life, everyone gets the same amount of points.
So like I can level up strength, but then that comes at the cost of int or charisma. The problem is that in the real world, it seems that the opposite is true. Having a successful career that you love makes it more likely for you to develop a healthy relationship.
And if you have a healthy and successful relationship and you have a healthy and successful career, then you are more likely to be happy in life. So the real crazy thing is that if we look in the real world, it seems lopsided. It is completely imba.
Some people have it all and some people don't have any of it. And we look at this and we think to ourselves, how is this? Or some people just fundamentally luckier? Do some people get the short straw and some people get the long straw? But it turns out that no, that's not actually the case.
That there is specifically a neuroscience based skill progression that allows you to take a simple curiosity and turn it into a sustained motivation. And people who learn this process, because these Olympic athletes that I worked with, by the way, one of them was a student at Harvard Medical School. And it's like, holy shit, that's so OP. How is it these people are so good at all of the stuff? And I am so bad at all of the stuff.
I literally mentored someone whose resume was like three times as good as mine. It's wild. And it turns out there is a methodology to this. There is skill behind it. It just like cooking or playing a video game or learning how to talk to other human beings. This is something that you can level up. And follow these steps and we hope that it will work for you.
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