The Law of the Garbage Truck

by David J. Pollay

p10 - Many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they look for a place to dump it. And if you let them, they'll dump it on you. So when someone wants to dump on you, don't take it personally. Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. Believe me, you'll be happier

HW p11 -i would gain more time. I would not lose time out with friends or myself wasted on the garbage. I would have a more productive life. I would feel better and be more happier more often. I would not have the stress i carry and be able to be a better friend, boyfriend, co-worker, neighbor. I would be able to live more the life i want to live and the life i believe i deserve. Instead of 1 hr a day where i can concentrate on what matters with rest of the time wasted on garbage, i can use 6 hrs a day on the relevant stuff and no time at all on the garbage.

p53 + p54 - in simple terms, displaced aggression boils down to taking out your frustration on someone else; you let a negative event in your life upset you to the point of disproportionately and inappropriately lashing out at someone else at their slightest provocation......a mildly annoying event is perceived as highly aversive and deserving of an aggressive response.

HW, p55 - How have GT stolen your happiness and success? def JK and then KB and also debt worries...they made me feel like shit. as if the most important, and nearly the only important thing in my life is fucked so life is, as result, fucked as well. they took away all my energy from everything else. no matter what i was doing, no matter how fun, i would quickly get slapped right back into that tense, unhappy moments....

p60 - We are given a choice every day in the way we respond to each other. When people sincerely apologize, show remorse, and attempt to make amends, we have the opportunity to show grace and forgive them. We may still hold them accountable and accept compensation, but we can forgive them.

- Appreciate being forgiven. Before you are able to forgive another person, a good first exercise is to appreciate an instance of when you yourself have been forgotten.

- Life is not a series of discreet events - it's fluid. How you conclude one interaction affects how you respond to the next. How you treat one person carries over to the next person, and that person will more often than not carry that energy to the people he or she encounters. When you forgive people their transgressions, you set in motion a wave of good feelings. When you punish them with your words and behavior, you set in motion a wave of ill feelings.

- The experience of forgiveness when it occurs is not just the notion of being relieved of a burden, but also a joyful eureka sense of having solved a problem. Suddenly, the fight-or-flight response of vengeance is replaced by the calming vision of green pastures and still waters of peace

HW p62 - Think of the people you may have judged too harshly in recent months for acting like garbage trucks. how did you turn their mistakes into major offenses. consider what role u played in the incident. In retrospect, write below how you could have offered real-time forgiveness to those people and let their actions pass by.
- labeling KB has a garbage truck is good in that i don't allow her negativity to bother me as much but in some ways, i am considering everything she does as negative or coersive with a hidden agenda....and this of course is prob how she sees me and all my actions...she has been sporatically helpful and i should not forget that. at times she has mainly been the messenger but i interpreted it as her negativity towards me....so instead of agreeing with what her message was (which easily could have been from the two-faced VP), i was a bitch about it and labeled her a garbage truck and i needed to fight back....in hindsight, at these times, i was more the irrational garbage truck than her.....during these times, i should have been a good listener, forgive that she has to be the one to tell me the info, take in the info and compromise with it to see what should be done with it....she didn't shove any garbage my way so why envision it as such....

p63 - The mature person...makes sure that his own conduct is correct and seeks nothing from others; thus he is never disappointed. He has no complaints against heaven and no blame toward other people. - Tzu-ssu

p65 - First and foremost, your positivity is energizing to those around you. It's a large measure of what makes you attractive. Also, it's contagious. When you share your own joy, it ignites joy in others, a process that can forge lasting social ties. The more you open up and share your heartfelt positivity with others, the stronger your connections to others become.

HW p68 - KB - when asking for what we doing for next lesson, i either ask what we will do which can be taken as I expect her to do all the work....or I can tell her my ideas which can be interpretted as "this is what we are doing" and i don't care what u think......better way is just to ask "what lesson are we teaching....then later when i have some ideas, i can say....can i ask your opinion on what you think is best to teach?...or something like that...

p69 - I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to. - Alice Walker

HW p 73 - I have labeled all whites and party-goers as garbage trucks...I don't care to get to know them and i avoid them at all costs....there are a few that i got to know and saw they are just as cool as other ppl....like gordon and kelly and other ppl like that that party all the time but on a normal occasion they are really cool...same with jenn and joan....then on the other side is whites like harry, skinny guy from orientation, and robert (UK guy), and bf and gf from scotland in my building and even tall simon from incheon...all super nice ppl that i liked a lot...but somehow i still keep this huge wall up and labeling all whites as permanent garbage trucks...i still avoid them at all costs, even the ones i mentioned...and even though tsubasa is half white, i am ok with him for some reason.....getting to know 2 more of them to knock down the wall is not enough.....hmm...speaking on the topic...there are a few teachers who just have a look about them and mainly cause they KB's friends that i just try to avoid..i got to talk to the nurse a lil and she was actually very nice.....somehow i am actually usually wrong yet i still don't care.....the wall has been around for too long...

HW p82 - GT is KB
can i perceive the good in her?
- not really, i need to be constantly reminded of the good she did behind the scenes or in the past as her attitude when i see her now is so bad...but if i try hard, i can see nice stuff she does everyday, like today, she brought up the dvds for me and without attitude told me what lesson we are doing...and she is the accountant of 4th grade teachers and she took the money nicely without fuss about how she does so much work because it is extra work without real appreciation from us...i should be thankful for all the nice things she decided our room needs...very nice of her...
....how could i be a GT to her? well...i fight back...i gave her trouble with VP and principle, especially when i said she was lying in front of all of her superiors in the cafeteria, and when she was the messenger for me not wearing a helmet when riding my bike...and i didn't listen to instructions "she gave me" such as when we had to clean the room...if students left the room in the same way i allow them to, KB and JK could have gotten really screwed over as it seemed like they are being slackers and don't know how to supervise the kids....and even when they cleaning and i told them not to clean my desk, it was me being a pain when all i had to do was give in and be compromising...but instead i again was her garbage truck by resisting direct orders she gave the kids..it made her look weak....and of course, i am also the burden to her as she can and is totally capable of teaching classes on her own, but because of the stupid gov't she has to babysit an untrained, ungrateful teacher who was born with great english, nothing to do with effort whatsoever....i will come in for 1 year, have fun in korea, do whatever to get out of real work at school, then leave without a care at all while she has to stay to clean up the mess, deal with all the politics related to school, and get paid shit....

so i am possibly the garbage truck to KB as she is the GT to me....weird how it can be so reciprocal...so what would the ideal person do in this situation? how do i fit the ideal? how do i fall short?
- ideal person would not give any attitute
- he would exercise compassion and expect nothing
- he would not compare KB to other teachers or other ppl...everyone is unique and who are we to judge...
- I would show appreciate for all the good and allow the bad to slide right past me.
- I would not avoid her but in fact try to work with her...i would not be the avoider...i would not make things worse
- i would try to be the most agreeable, least troubling co-worker she ever had....

and how do i fall short?
- mainly i am stubborn....i see things from my side and have no compassion towards her side...
- she has friends, maybe even more than me..definitely more than me at this school...must be some strong reasons why she is so likeable...
- and she is stressed...she needs a man..needs money....family prob on her back like crazy....and her english is not good either so she also feel insecure in that area as well....instead of thinking about how she can help me, i need to think about how i could help her...thats how i am with all the ppl i like and instead of letting it be me trying to like her first before being nice, i should try being nice to her before liking her....

- two ways in which i could change to improve the situation is:
1) stay in the classroom when she teaches
2) when she suggests something, instead of rejecting or giving in fully...mention what i like about it and then make it seem like a compromise so she feels like a winner
3)show compassion + expect nothing from her or anyone else for that matter.....only think about if i am doing the correct conduct.
4) be alert of how I can be helpful...(instead of just a immature burden)


HW p86 - i did the avoiding of KB and still do it today just like how the manager did to the author. and i am ashamed by it....me and KB prob dread talking to each other as badly as we each feel...and it needs to change....if i can observe her and find breaks in which she is super nice to other people or her students, then i can find times when i can compliment more to let her know that i am on her side, not against her...i tried this before and it worked a little, but definitely not superb...but that just might be because i didn't do it enough...i should to notice that not just do i put in lots of effort sometimes and her little but on other days, like today, she put in way more effort than me but it all comes unrecognized...


HW p92 - score: 54
- surprised how high it was..i thought i did better than this...but i guess everything i say is rude are all garbage trucks i need to pass...biggest was how mannerisms bother the hell out of me...if i can allow that to pass, i will be much better off.....brian and angela's mannerisms are stuff i should have just let pass by...i need to start labeling garbage trucks more often so i can be aware of it and let it pass...and mainly i think i am my own garbage truck and rules of mannersisms

HW p97

Switch

by Chip Heath + Dan Heath - good book, but not great...easy to read and good writing + formatting style though

(unfinished notes...need to start with p10 of scanned image)

- What good is a 5 minute session of cleaning? Not much. It gets you moving, though, and thats the hardest part. Starting an unpleasant task is always worse than continuing it. So once you start cleaning house, chances are you won't stop at 5 minutes. You'll be surprised to take pride in your accomplishment

- One way to shrink change, then is to limit the investment you're asking for - only 5 minutes of housecleaning, only one small debt. Another way to shrink change is to think of small wins - milestones that are within reach. The overall goal - cleaning the whole house - is too distant to be motivating, but if you can engineer a small win in the first 5 minutes, it might buy enough enthusiasm to pursue the next milestone.

- The value of the miracle scale is that it focuses attention on small milestones that are attainable and visible rather than on the eventual destination, which may seem very remote.
It's like climbing a tall ladder and focusing on the next step rather than gawking up at the top. There may be many more steps to go, but you can take comfort that you're making real progress
in the right direction.
Notice, once again, how often Elephant appeals and Rider appeals can overlap. In this case, your son's Rider is getting very clear direction-Ask the clerk about the toothpaste-at the same time as his Elephant is getting little boosts of hope-Maybe I don't have to be so shyforever.
By using the miracle scale, you always have a clear idea of
where you're going next, and you have a clear sense of what the
next small victory will be. You're moving forward, and, even better,
you're getting more confident in your ability to keep moving
forward.

-When you set small, visible goals, and people achieve
them, they start to get it into their heads that they can succeed.
They break the habit oflosing and begin to get into
the habit of winning.

-Former UCLA coach John Wooden, one of the greatest college
basketball coaches of all time, once said, "When you improve
a little each day, eventually big things occur.... Don't look for
the quick, big improvement. Seek the small improvement one
day at a time. That's the only way it happens-and when it happens,
it lasts."

-No one can guarantee a small win. Lots of things are out of
our control. But the goal is to be wise about the things that are
under our control. And one thing we can control is how we
define the ultimate victory and the small victories that lead up
to 1t.
You want to select small wins that have two traits: (1) They're
meaningful. (2) They're "within immediate reach," as Bill Parcells
said. And if you can't achieve both traits, choose the latter! (The
5-Minute Room Rescue wasn't very meaningful by itself, but it
made great change possible.)

-Paul Butler didn't
shrink the change. Instead, he grew the people. He made the St.
Lucians swell with pride over their parrot-a species that exists
nowhere else. He inspired them to feel more determined, more
ready, more motivated. And when you build people up in this
way, they develop the strength to act.

-March says that when people
make choices, they tend to rely on one of two basic models of
decision making: the consequences model or the identity model.
The consequences model is familiar to students of economics.
It assumes that when we have a decision to make, we weigh the
costs and benefits of our options and make the choice that
maximizes our satisfaction. It's a rational, analytical approach.
In the identity model of decision making, we essentially ask
ourselves three questions when we have a decision to make: Who
am I? What kind of situation is this? What would someone like me
do in this situation? Notice what's missing: any calculation of costs
and benefits. The identity model explains the way most people
vote, which contradicts our notion of the "self-interested voter."
It helps to shed light on why an auto mechanic in Oklahoma
would vote against a Democrat who'd give him health insurance,
and why a Silicon Valley millionaire would vote against a Republican
who'd cut her taxes.

-Because identities are central to the way people make
decisions, any change effort that violates someone's identity
is likely doomed to failure. So the question is this: How can you
make your change a matter of identity rather than a matter of . '
consequences?

-When you think about the people whose behavior
needs to change, ask yourself whether they would agree with this
statement: "I aspire to be the kind of person who would make
this change." If their answer is yes, that's an enormous factor in
your favor. If their answer is no, then you'll have to work hard to
show them that they should aspire to a different self-image. And
that's exactly what Paul Butler did in St. Lucia. He convinced the
island's citizens to think, "This is our bird-if we want to be good
St. Lucians, we'd better protect it."

-One of IDEO's designers even
sketched out a "project mood chart" that predicts how people
will feel at different phases of a project. ~t'sa U-shaped curve with
a peak of positive emotion, labeled "hope," at the beginning, and
a second peak of positive emotion, labeled "confidence," at the
end. In between the two peaks is a negative emotional valley labeled
"insight."
Brown says that design is "rarely a graceful leap from height
to height." When a team embarks on a new project, team members
are filled with hope and optimism. As they start to collect
data and observe real people struggling with existing products,
they find that new ideas spring forth effortlessly.Then comes the
difficult task of integrating all those fresh ideas into a coherent
new design. At this "insight" stage, it's easy to get depressed, because
insight doesn't always strike immediately.
The project often feels like a failure in the middle. But if the
team persists through this valley of angst and doubt, it eventually
emerges with a growing sense of momentum. Team members
begin to test out their new designs, and they realize the improvements
they've made, and they keep tweaking the design to
make it better. And they come to realize, we've cracked this problem.
That's when the team reaches the peak of confidence.

-Notice what team leaders at IDEO are doing with the peaksand-
valley visual: They are creating the expectation of failure.
They are telling team members not to trust that initial flush of
good feeling at the beginning of the project, because what comes
next is hardship and toil and frustration. Yet, strangely enough,
when they deliver this warning, it comes across as optimistic.

-Edmondson found that the
teams who failed made the mistake of trying to "get it right on the
first try" and were motivated by the chance to "perform, to shine,
or to execute perfectly." But of course no one "shines" on the first
few tries-this mindset set the teams up for failure. By contrast,
the successful teams focused on learning. They didn't assume that
mastery would come quickly, and they'anticipated that they'd
face challenges. In the end, they were the ones who were more
likely to get it right.
Failing is often the best way to learn, and because of that,
early failure is a kind of necessary investment.

-Under her new system the
only grades offered at Jefferson County High School were: A, B,
C, and NY.
Not Yet.
In Howard's view, the students at Jefferson had accepted a
"culture of failure." In a fixed-mindset way, they acted as though
they were failures to the bone. Students often didn't do their
homework, or they turned in shoddy work. Getting a D or an F
was an easy way out in a way. They might get a poor grade, but
at least they would be done.
In the new system, the students couldn't stop until they'd
cleared the bar. "We define up front to the kids what's an A, B,
and C," said Howard. "If they do substandard work, the teacher
will say, 'Not Yet.' ... That gives them the mindset: My teacher
thinks I can do better. It changes their expectations."
The school was reborn. Students and teachers became more
engaged, the school's graduation rate increased dramatically, and
student test scores went up so much that remedial courses were
eliminated.
Howard transformed her students. She cultivated a new identity
in them. "You're all college-bound students. Then she flipped
Jefferson from a fixed-mindset school to a growth-mindset
school. She believed that every student was capable of doing acceptable
work, that no student was doomed to failure. There's no
"never"at Jefferson anymore, only a "Not Yet ."

-In trying to minimize the risk of bad outcomes, injury prevention
experts often turn to the Haddon Matrix, a simple
framework that provides a way to think systematically about accidents
by highlighting three key periods of time: pre-event,
event, and post-event .•
Let's say our goal is to reduce serious injuries from car wrecks.
Pre-event interventions would include anything that would tend
to prevent wrecks from happening: installing bright lighting on
highways, painting clear lane markers on the roads, popularizing
antilock brakes, launching advertising campaigns against drunk
driving.
With event interventions, we accept that crashes will happen
and ask ourselves how we can reduce the chances of injury. Seat
belts and air bags are classic event interventions, but also think
about breakaway light poles and those big orange barrels that line
exit ramps (which are intended to soften collisions).
With post-event interventions, we acknowledge both that
crashes will occur and that people will be injured. The goal of
post-event interventions is to minimize the severity of the injuries

-our habits are
essentially stitched into our environment. Research bears this out.
According to one study of people making changes in their lives,
36 percent of the successful changes were associated with a move
to a new location, and only 13 percent of unsuccessful changes
involved a move.
Many smokers, for example, find it easier to quit when they're
on vacation, because at home, every part of their environment is
loaded with smoking associations. It's like trying to quit smoking
inside a Camel advertisement-everywhere you look are reminders
of the habit. There's that drawer in the kitchen where
the lighters are stashed, the clay pot on the porch that's become
an archive of ashes, the ever-present scent of smoke in the car and
the closet. When a smoker goes on vacation, the environment recedes
toward neutrality. That doesn't mean it's easy to quit, but it's
easier.

-When you're leading an Elephant on an unfamiliar path,
chances are it's going to follow the herd. So how do you create a
herd?

-Well aware of the power of contagious behavior, a group of social
psychologists persuaded a hotel manager to test out a new
sign in the hotel bathrooms. The sign didn't mention the environment
at all; it simply said that the "the majority of guests at
the hotel" reuse their towels at least once during their stay. It
worked-guests who got this sign were 26 percent more likely to
reuse their towels. They took cues from the herd.

-In situations where your herd has embraced the
right behavior, publicize it. For instance, if 80 percent of your
team submits time sheets on time, make sure the other 20 percent
knows the group norm. Those individuals almost certainly will
correct themselves. But if only 10 percent of your team submits
time sheets on time, publicizing those results will hurt, not help.

-Reinforcement is the secret to getting past the first step of
your long journey and on to the second, third, and hundredth
steps. And that's a problem, because most of us are terrible reinforcers.
We are quicker to grouse than to praise. At work, we love
to bond with our colleagues through communal complaining.
(Sutherland calls this behavior "verbal grooming.") But this is all
wrong: We need to be looking for bright spots-however tiny!~
and rewarding them.

- Learning to spot and celebrate approximations requires us to
scan the environment constantly, looking for little rays of sunshine,
and it isn't easy. Our Riders, by nature, focus on the negative.
Problems are easy to spot; progress, much harder. But the
progress is precious. Shamu didn't learn to jump through a hoop
because her trainer was bitching at her. She learned because she
had a trainer who was patient and focused and reinforced every
step of the journey

-"If you want your child to do two
hours of homework on her own every night, you don't withhold
praise and rewards until she does two hours of homework without
being asked to." Instead, you set small goals and gradually
build her up. And when a child doesn't get something right,
Kazdin advised: ''Ask yourself, 'Was there anything about it that's
a component of what I'd like her to do?' If the answer's yes, and
it almost always is, then jump on that component: It was great
that you did X."

-The most important lesson we can learn from Kazdin and the
animal trainers is this: Change isn't an event; it's a process. There
is no moment when a monkey learns to skateboard; there's a
process. There is no moment when a child learns to walk; there's
a process. And there won't be a moment when your community
starts to invest more in its school system, or starts recycling more,
or starts to beautifY its public spaces; there will be a process. To
lead a process requires persistence.

-When change works,
it tends to follow a pattern. ~he people who change have clear direction,
ample motivation, and a supportive environment. In
other words, when change works, it's because the Rider, the Elephant,
and the Path are all aligned in support of the switch.

Nudge

*incomplete reading...stopped reading at chapter 3 (hard back cover with white cover)

Introduction

• the libertarian aspect of our strategies lies in the straightforward insistence that, in general, people should be free to do what they like - and to opt out of undesirable arrangements if they want to do so.
  
• if private companies or public officials think that one policy produces better outcomes, they can greatly influence the outcome by choosing it as the default. Setting default options can have huge effects on outcomes.

Chapter 1 - biases and blunders

• we can influence the figure you will choose in a particular situation by ever-so-subtly suggesting a starting point for your thought process
• in many domains, the evidence shows that, within reason, the more you ask for, the more you tend to get. clever negotiators often get amazing deals for their clients by producing an opening offer that makes their adversary thrilled to pay half that very high amount
• a good way to increase people's fear of a bad outcome is to remind them of a related incident in which things went wrong; a good way to increase people's confidence is to remind them of a similar situation in which everything worked out for the best
• unrealistic optimism is a pervasive feature of human life; it characterizes most people in most social categories. when they overestimate their personal immunity from harm, people may fail to take sensible preventive steps
• people hate losses. roughly speaking, losing something makes you twice as miserable as gaining the same thing makes you happy.
  
• what this means is that people do not assign specific values to objects. when they give something up, they are hurt more than they are pleased if they acquire the very same thing
• loss aversion operates as a kind of cognitive nudge, pressing us not to make changes, even when changes are very much in our interests
• for lots of reasons, people have a more general tendency to stick with their current situation.
• those who are in charge of circulation know that when renewal is automatic, and when people have to make a phone call to cancel, the likelihood of renewal is much higher than it is when people have to indicate that they actually want to continue to receive the magazine
• the combination of loss aversion with mindless choosing implies that if an option is designated as the "default", it will attract a large market share.
• framing works because people tend to be somewhat mindless, passive decision makers. their reflective system does not do the work that would be required to check and see whether reframing the questions would produce a different answer
• people adopt sensible rules of thumb that somewhat lead them astray. because they are busy and have limited attention, they accept questions as posed rather than trying to determine whether their answers would vary under alternative formulations.
  

Chapter 2 - resisting temptation

• when sally is hungry and appetizing aromas are emanating from the kitchen, we can say she is in a hot state. when sally is thinking abstractly on tuesday about the right number of cashews she should consume before dinner on saturday, she is in a cold state. we will call something "tempting" if we consume more of it when hot than when cold. none of this means that decisions made in the cold state are always better. sometimes we have to be in a hot state to overcome out fears about trying new things
• when we are in a cold state, we do not appreciate how much out desires and our behavior will be altered when we are "under the influence" of arousal.
• people are far more likely to splurge impulsively on a big luxury purchase when they receive an unexpected windfall than with savings that they have accumulated over time, even if those savings are fully available to be spent

Chapter 3 - following the herd (READ STARTING HERE)

Drive (ch 6 - end)

Chapter 6 - Purpose

• According to United Nations data, a sixty-year-old American man can expect to live for another twenty-plus years; a sixty-year-old American woman will be around for another quarter of a century. In Japan, a sixty-year-old man can expect to live past his eighty-second birthday, a sixty-year-old woman to nearly eighty-eight. The pattern is the same in many other prosperous countries.
• Neither generation rates money as the most important form of compensation. Instead they choose a range of nonmonetary factors—from “a great team” to “the ability to give back to society through work.”⁴ And if they can’t find that satisfying package of rewards in an existing organization, they’ll create a venture of their own.
• The aims of these Motivation 3.0 companies are not to chase profit while trying to stay ethical and law-abiding. Their goal is to pursue purpose—and to use profit as the catalyst rather than the objective
• Gary Hamel, whom I mentioned above, says, “The goals of management are usually described in words like ‘efficiency,’ ‘advantage,’ ‘value,’ ‘superiority,’ ‘focus,’ and ‘differentiation.’ Important as these objectives are, they lack the power to rouse human hearts.” Business leaders, he says, “must find ways to infuse mundane business activities with deeper, soul-stirring ideals, such as honor, truth, love, justice, and beauty.”⁸ Humanize what people say and you may well humanize what they do.
• First, many psychologists and economists have found that the correlation between money and happiness is weak—that past a certain (and quite modest) level, a larger pile of cash doesn’t bring people a higher level of satisfaction.
• a psychologist at the Harvard Business School, how people spend their money may be at least as important as how much money they earn. In particular, spending money on other people (buying flowers for your spouse rather than an MP3 player for yourself ) or on a cause (donating to a religious institution rather than going for an expensive haircut) can actually increase our subjective well-being.¹¹ In fact, Dunn and Norton propose turning their findings on what they call “pro-social” spending into corporate policy.
• According to The Boston Globe, they believe that “companies can improve their employees’ emotional well-being by shifting some of their budget for charitable giving so that individual employees are given sums to donate, leaving them happier even as the charities of their choice benefit.”¹² In other words, handing individual employees control over how the organization gives back to the community might do more to improve their overall satisfaction than one more “if-then” financial incentive.
• Another study offers a second possible purpose-centered policy prescription. Physicians in high-profile settings like the Mayo Clinic face pressures and demands that can often lead to burnout. But field research at the prestigious medical facility found that letting doctors spend one day a week on the aspect of their job that was most meaningful to them—whether patient care, research, or community service—could reduce the physical and emotional exhaustion that accompanies their work. Doctors who participated in this trial policy had half the burnout rate of those who did not.¹³ Think of it as “20 percent time” with a purpose.
• What’s more, graduates with profit goals showed increases in anxiety, depression, and other negative indicators—again, even though they were attaining their goals.

“These findings are rather striking,” the researchers write, “as they suggest that attainment of a particular set of goals [in this case, profit goals] has no impact on well-being and actually contributes to ill-being.”¹⁵

• “One cannot lead a life that is truly excellent without feeling that one belongs to something greater and more permanent than oneself.”

MIHALY CSIKSZENTMIHALYI

• the findings suggest that even when we do get what we want, it’s not always what we need. “People who are very high in extrinsic goals for wealth are more likely to attain that wealth, but they’re still unhappy,” Ryan told me.

Or as Deci put it, “The typical notion is this: You value something. You attain it. Then you’re better off as a function of it. But what we find is that there are certain things that if you value and if you attain them, you’re worse off as a result of it, not better off.”

• Failing to understand this conundrum—that satisfaction depends not merely on having goals, but on having the right goals—can lead sensible people down self-destructive paths. If people chase profit goals, reach those goals, and still don’t feel any better about their lives, one response is to increase the size and scope of the goals—to seek more money or greater outside validation. And that can “drive them down a road of further unhappiness thinking it’s the road to happiness,” Ryan said.
• “One of the reasons for anxiety and depression in the high attainers is that they’re not having good relationships. They’re busy making money and attending to themselves and that means that there’s less room in their lives for love and attention and caring and empathy and the things that truly count,” Ryan added.
• The profit motive has been an important fuel for achievement. But it’s not the only motive. And it’s not the most important one. Indeed, if we were to look at history’s greatest achievements—from the printing press to constitutional democracy to cures for deadly diseases—the spark that kept the creators working deep into the night was purpose at least as much as profit. A healthy society—and healthy business organizations—begins with purpose and considers profit a way to move toward that end or a happy by-product of its attainment.
• The science shows that those typical twentieth-century carrot-and-stick motivators—things we consider somehow a “natural” part of human enterprise—can sometimes work. But they’re effective in only a surprisingly narrow band of circumstances. The science shows that “if-then” rewards—the mainstays of the Motivation 2.0 operating system—not only are ineffective in many situations, but also can crush the high-level, creative, conceptual abilities that are central to current and future economic and social progress. The science shows that the secret to high performance isn’t our biological drive or our reward-and-punishment drive, but our third drive—our deep-seated desire to direct our own lives, to extend and expand our abilities, and to live a life of purpose.
• We’re designed to be active and engaged. And we know that the richest experiences in our lives aren’t when we’re clamoring for validation from others, but when we’re listening to our own voice—doing something that matters, doing it well, and doing it in the service of a cause larger than ourselves.

Part 3 - The Type I Toolkit

Type I for individuals: nine strategies for awakening your motivation:

• Set a reminder on your computer or mobile phone to go off at forty random times in a week. Each time your device beeps, write down what you’re doing, how you’re feeling, and whether you’re in “flow.” Record your observations, look at the patterns, and consider the following questions:

• Which moments produced feelings of “flow”? Where were you? What were you working on? Who were you with?

• Are certain times of day more flow-friendly than others? How could you restructure your day based on your findings?

• How might you increase the number of optimal experiences and reduce the moments when you felt disengaged or distracted?

• If you’re having doubts about your job or career, what does this exercise tell you about your true source of intrinsic motivation?

• One way to orient your life toward greater purpose is to think about your sentence. Maybe it’s: “He raised four kids who became happy and healthy adults.” Or “She invented a device that made people’s lives easier.” Or “He cared for every person who walked into his office regardless of whether that person could pay.” Or “She taught two generations of children how to read.”

As you contemplate your purpose, begin with the big question: What’s your sentence?

• At the end of each day, ask yourself whether you were better today than you were yesterday. Did you do more? Did you do it well? Or to get specific, did you learn your ten vocabulary words, make your eight sales calls, eat your five servings of fruits and vegetables, write your four pages? You don’t have to be flawless each day. Instead, look for small measures of improvement such as how long you practiced your saxophone or whether you held off on checking e-mail until you finished that report you needed to write. Reminding yourself that you don’t need to be a master by day 3 is the best way of ensuring you will be one by day 3,000.

So before you go to sleep each night, ask yourself the small question: Was I better today than yesterday?

• So every seven years, Sagmeister closes his graphic design shop, tells his clients he won’t be back for a year, and goes off on a 365-day sabbatical. He uses the time to travel, to live places he’s never been, and to experiment with new projects. It sounds risky, I know. But he says the ideas he generates during the year “off ” often provide his income for the next seven years. “Taking a Sagmeister,” as I now call it, requires a fair bit of planning and saving, of course. But doesn’t forgoing that big-screen TV seem a small price to pay for an unforgettable—and un-get-backable—year of personal exploration? The truth is, this idea is more realistic than many of us realize. Which is why I hope to take a Sagmeister in a couple of years and why you should consider it, too.
• Figure out your goals—mostly learning goals, but also a few performance goals—and then every month, call yourself to your office and give yourself an appraisal. How are you faring? Where are you falling short? What tools, information, or support might you need to do better?

Some other hints:

• Set both smaller and larger goals so that when it comes time to evaluate yourself you’ve already accomplished some whole tasks.

• Make sure you understand how every aspect of your work relates to your larger purpose.

• Be brutally honest. This exercise is aimed at helping you improve performance and achieve mastery—so if you rationalize failures or gloss over your mistakes instead of learning from them, you’re wasting your time.

• Follow these steps—over and over again for a decade—and you just might become a master:

• Remember that deliberate practice has one objective: to improve performance. “People who play tennis once a week for years don’t get any better if they do the same thing each time,” Ericsson has said. “Deliberate practice is about changing your performance, setting new goals and straining yourself to reach a bit higher each time.”

• Repeat, repeat, repeat. Repetition matters. Basketball greats don’t shoot ten free throws at the end of team practice; they shoot five hundred.

• Seek constant, critical feedback. If you don’t know how you’re doing, you won’t know what to improve.

• Focus ruthlessly on where you need help. While many of us work on what we’re already good at, says Ericsson, “those who get better work on their weaknesses.”

• Prepare for the process to be mentally and physically exhausting. That’s why so few people commit to it, but that’s why it works.

Type I for Organizations: Nine ways to improve your company, office, or group

• You’ve read about the wonders of “20 percent time”—where organizations encourage employees to spend one-fifth of their hours working on any project they want. And if you’ve ever used Gmail or read Google News, you’ve benefited from the results. But for all the virtues of this Type I innovation, putting such a policy in place can seem daunting. How much will it cost? What if it doesn’t work? If you’re feeling skittish, here’s an idea: Go with a more modest version—20 percent time . . . with training wheels. Start with, say, 10 percent time. That’s just one afternoon of a five-day workweek. (Who among us hasn’t wasted that amount of time at work anyway?) And instead of committing to it forever, try it for six months.
• Kimley-Horn and Associates, a civil engineering firm in Raleigh, North Carolina, has established a reward system that gets the Type I stamp of approval: At any point, without asking permission, anyone in the company can award a $50 bonus to any of her colleagues. “It works because it’s real-time, and it’s not handed down from any management,” the firm’s human resources director told Fast Company. “Any employee who does something exceptional receives recognition from their peers within minutes.” Because these bonuses are noncontingent “now that” rewards, they avoid the seven deadly flaws of most corporate carrots. And because they come from a colleague, not a boss, they carry a different (and perhaps deeper) meaning. You could even say they’re motivating.