Are you one of those highly motivated individuals who always wanted to learn a new skill to advance your career? Or wanted to lose a few pounds to be fit and healthy? Whatever your desires were, I am assuming you would have set periodic goals and started working on it. But, soon you would have lost the steam and come back to the place where it all started, isn't it?
I have faced such situations a number of times - set clear goals, split the bigger goal into smaller ones, created detailed weekly action plans and then following on it for a week or two then see it falling apart right in front of me. I have always cursed me for not being able to stick to a commitment, but little did I know that our brains had been hardwired for it.
If we look at the anatomy of goals, motivation plays a bigger picture. Human brain acts on those tasks or goals which have a push motivation but it tries it's level best in procrastinating anything to do with pull motivation.
What are these push and pull motivation?
Push Motivation: Push motivation is based on loss prevention. You are motivated to accomplish something to avoid the loss or pain associated with it.
For instance, If you don't show up to work regularly or work as your boss expects you could be fired. Same goes with studying for exams as well - If you don't study well you could lose grades.
Pull Motivation: Pull motivation is a desire to gain or achieve something. Here is where the magic lies. These are the motivation factors which makes you a better person, moves you from an old point to a new one.
For instance, Losing 20lbs, gain new skills or knowledge to improve your career.
As you all may agree to pull motivators are the ones which make a big impact on us in moving forward. But, the problem is if we don't achieve these goals we don't lose what we have.
So, the trick lies in converting your pull motivation to a push motivation so that you can not ignore it.
How can we do it?
stickk is one such tool which helps in achieving exactly the same - it does it in 3 simple steps
1. Create a commitment:
Say, you want to learn a new skill. In stickk, you create an active commitment that you will be learning a new skill for X weeks.
For Example, I have created a commitment to learning algorithms at least 5 days a week for 7 weeks.
2. Pick an accountability partner:
This is an optional step but I would highly recommend doing it. An accountability partner is one who has a genuine interest in your growth. He/she has to make sure that you did what you said you will do. It is like picking your own referee. My recommendation is not to pick someone who would excuse you so easily.
3. Putting money on the line: This is the most important step in the process. Here is where your pull motivation converts into a push motivation. Put money at stake - if you don't do what you said will do then an amount that is at stake will be contributed to the charity. Even worse you could also choose to go to anticharity.
Now, see which of these statements makes you stick to the commitment.
If you exercise 3 days a week you could lose 2 lbs and feel healthy by the end of the month.
Or,
If you don't exercise 3 days a week you could lose 100$ by the end of the month.
I am assuming the later motivates you more- makes you wake up early, cut the TV time and so on.
What's your commitment contract ? Leave it in the comments or add me in stickk
PS: Few tips on creating a commitment in stickk
- Once you have created a commitment you cannot edit it. So, review your commitment before finalising it.
- Select an amount which really makes you fear losing it.
