This book was received as an ARC from Little Brown Company - Little Brown Spark through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Opinions and thoughts expressed in this review are completely my own. 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."

The word “we” suffers intense abuse in this book. The author writes “we do abc”; “we like def”; and “we avoid xyz.” But in her use of “we” she really means most people. She should write “most people.” I hate zucchini. I mean I really hate it. If 99% of people love zucchini, this author would write “we love zucchini.” The hell we do. I’m not a part of the group called “we” when it comes to zucchini. When using the word “we,” all authors should use this Zucchini Test. Any idea failing this test calls for the use of a few more words, “most of us” or “most people,” etc. This test is especially important when we think of cultural differences. The author writes as though all people act as the educated class does in the U.S. and Europe. This generality is carried throughout the book. This type of approach doesn’t only apply to summiting a mountaintop. Each year over one hundred CEO’s in the S&P 1000 retire after reaching what can feel like a pinnacle in their career, leaving them feeling unprepared for the next phase.Adam Grant, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of Think Again and host of the TED podcast WorkLife 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. The problems come in when you have two goals in conflict—for instance, eating healthy by only buying organic food, and also staying on budget. Fishbach relates two strategies: First, compromise. You might make progress on all fronts but not satisfy anything completely. Second, prioritize one goal at the cost of the other. She says we tend to compromise when we feel like we've made some amount of sufficient progress. We prioritize when we feel our actions need to express commitment to the goal, when we want our actions to reflect who we are as people, and when we think our actions say something about our identity. Compromising in this case would send a mixed message. Another guideline in choosing a goal with staying power is to frame it as something you intend to do (an “approach goal”) rather as something you don’t want to do (an “avoidance goal”). You’re more likely to detect a temptation when you make a decision that affects multiple occasions; we call this using a broad decision frame. If you decide in advance what to eat for lunch every day this month, you’ll probably choose healthier foods than if you decide on each lunch each day. Thirty lunch decisions are more consequential than one, so you’ll notice any self-control problems.

Ayelet Fishbach is a leading expert on motivation—her research has consistently produced insights that are both surprising and useful. In this engaging book, she shows what it takes to close the gap between your intentions and your actions.” While making progress is important, how you monitor it also matters. The question is: Should you focus on how much you’ve already done, or how much you still have left to do? The short answer is: both.

Review

Fishbach argues that intrinsic motivation is decreased by extrinsic rewards because of how goals and activities are associated. At first, the goal of intrinsically motivated activities may be enjoyment or self-expression. When you add the reward, the activity becomes associated with getting the reward as well—a second goal. Fishbach argues that having multiple goals associated with an activity dilutes the importance of the activity in working toward the goal. She writes, Expensive coffees have been demonized as the reason people aren’t saving enough money. Some joke that lattes and avocado toast are the reasons millennials can’t buy houses, and yet: here we are buying our flat whites and lattes. You know why? Because they feel like a reward, whether it’s for the sometimes arduous task of getting out of bed or for having a productive morning of work. I’m sure we can always find a good reason. In Get It Done, psychologist and behavioral scientist Ayelet Fishbach presents a new theoretical framework for self-motivated action, explaining how to:

With fascinating research from the field of motivation science and compelling stories of people who learned to motivate themselves, Get It Done illuminates invaluable strategies for pulling yourself in whatever direction you want to go—so you can achieve your goals while staying healthy, clearheaded, and happy. Intrinsic motivation is a matter of degree,” Fishbach said. “It’s a matter of how much the thing feels right as you do it. Then we can allow goals that otherwise don’t seem intrinsic, like exercising or studying, to become intrinsically motivating.” I had this professor once who I really looked up to and they kept giving me these tasks that I didn’t think I was qualified for. And when I said, “Hey, I don’t think I can do this. I’ll probably need your help,” they said, “Jasmin, I wouldn’t give you these tasks if I didn’t believe you’d be able to do them and to do them well. I don’t want to see you fail. But I think you can do much more.” To this day, having a role model who believed in my abilities more than I did was the best motivator I could’ve asked for. I worked my butt off for that professor. 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.

Some of her suggestions felt like commonsense. For example, break goals into sub-goals. Break large projects into weekly assignments so you don't lose steam midway through. Set milestones, so you're always at the beginning of a new milestone or close to reaching the next one—minimize time that's just "in the middle". 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.

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!

About Ayelet Fishbach

P224 “friendly taking” - In close relationships, people focus on how much ‘we’ (their team) get in total, rather than who gets more. Maybe you’ve also pulled yourself through a major life change before, like ending an unhealthy relationship or switching careers. All of these are things that need to get done, even when motivating yourself to do them can be tough.