Approach Motivation, Round Two with Ari Tuckman, PsyD

Let's I want to talk about some practical structural stuff, because last time we talked about, you know, approach motivation in the form of the list of things that we have to do in our lives and deleting things without doing them.

Right.

I think that is.

A lot of folks who are listening might be saying, I get it.

I get that people are complicated.

I get that values-driven motivation is really hard and there should be some guardrails because sometimes, as you said, we have to learn to do hard things.

But also, it's 8 a.m. Monday morning.

what do I do, right? Like, how do I approach the things that I'm looking at on this list right now? And some of that is a mental model thing.

And some of that is a practical organizing my time and space thing.

And I'd like to pull apart sort of both sides of that from both of you.

How do you approach that argument with folks sitting across from you?

And it's hard, right? And I've spent a lot of time thinking about it.

I don't think there's any clear answers in this, in the sense that, you know, there you are at 8 a.m. on Monday.

There's all sorts of different things you can do.

Right.

And stuff about work, stuff in your personal life, stuff about self-care, stuff about other people.

So like, how do we decide what is the one thing I'm going to do right now? Like, I honestly, I have no idea.

I have no idea how that neuroscience works.

But like, you know, I think in the bigger picture, I think it's about.

Having some sort of clarity about what is important to me, what am I working towards, and then using that to sort of guide, yes, this will get some of my time, or no, this won't, or this will get a little bit, but not much, or this thing comes before that thing.

You know, so that we can kind of prioritize and figure out, you know, what do we do in each next moment? And I think with some clients, what I've found is when they're just drowning and scrambling all the time, that they don't really have that bigger picture goal in mind.

So they're doing a lot of things, but they're not necessarily the best things.

But it often becomes very sort of reactive to whatever's coming at them.

Um, and they haven't yet figured out like a rubric for saying, okay, yeah, this makes the cut.

And that, that is a nice idea, but it ain't going to happen, you know? And instead they're just saying yes to whatever hits them the loudest, you know? And I

Let's I want to talk about some practical structural stuff, because last time we talked about, you know, approach motivation in the form of the list of things that we have to do in our lives and deleting things without doing them.

Right.

I think that is.

A lot of folks who are listening might be saying, I get it.

I get that people are complicated.

I get that values-driven motivation is really hard and there should be some guardrails because sometimes, as you said, we have to learn to do hard things.

But also, it's 8 a.m. Monday morning.

what do I do, right? Like, how do I approach the things that I'm looking at on this list right now? And some of that is a mental model thing.

And some of that is a practical organizing my time and space thing.

And I'd like to pull apart sort of both sides of that from both of you.

How do you approach that argument with folks sitting across from you?

And it's hard, right? And I've spent a lot of time thinking about it.

I don't think there's any clear answers in this, in the sense that, you know, there you are at 8 a.m. on Monday.

There's all sorts of different things you can do.

Right.

And stuff about work, stuff in your personal life, stuff about self-care, stuff about other people.

So like, how do we decide what is the one thing I'm going to do right now? Like, I honestly, I have no idea.

I have no idea how that neuroscience works.

But like, you know, I think in the bigger picture, I think it's about.

Having some sort of clarity about what is important to me, what am I working towards, and then using that to sort of guide, yes, this will get some of my time, or no, this won't, or this will get a little bit, but not much, or this thing comes before that thing.

You know, so that we can kind of prioritize and figure out, you know, what do we do in each next moment? And I think with some clients, what I've found is when they're just drowning and scrambling all the time, that they don't really have that bigger picture goal in mind.

So they're doing a lot of things, but they're not necessarily the best things.

But it often becomes very sort of reactive to whatever's coming at them.

Um, and they haven't yet figured out like a rubric for saying, okay, yeah, this makes the cut.

And that, that is a nice idea, but it ain't going to happen, you know? And instead they're just saying yes to whatever hits them the loudest, you know? And I