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We can think of motivations in terms of three things. There is the <em>content</em>: what things motivate us. Then there is the <em>process</em>: how things motivate us. And lastly, we have those things that <em>maintain</em> our motivation.

Motivation pt. II: Stickytaping it all together

Article

I needed to do a little refresher on motivation for another audience, so I’m going to subject you to it as well. It’s a messy subject, but at a high level, there are some interesting frameworks for understanding what makes people do things. This is part two of a two part series, where I’ll outline theories that try to make the mess all work together, with mixed success.
We can think of motivations in terms of three things. There is the content: what things motivate us. Then there is the process: how things motivate us. And lastly, we have those things that maintain our motivation.
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betterment on-leadership somatic-architecture wealth-architecture

article

Individually, the disconnected dichotomies of intrinsic vs extrinsic, normative vs motivating, ‘cognitive’ and ‘biological’, and the like have little utility. But when you put them together, you can get some quite juicy fidelity on why people do what they do.

Motivation pt. I: Haphazard Dichotomies

Article

I needed to do a little refresher on motivation for another audience, so I’m going to subject you to it as well. It’s a messy subject, but at a high level, there are some interesting frameworks for understanding what makes people do things. This is part one of a two part series, where I’ll outline the main thing motivation theory has produced: a series of haphazard dichotomies. And then I’ll show you how you can use them best.
Individually, the disconnected dichotomies of intrinsic vs extrinsic, normative vs motivating, ‘cognitive’ and ‘biological’, and the like have little utility. But when you put them together, you can get some quite juicy fidelity on why people do what they do.
Read this article

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betterment on-leadership somatic-architecture wealth-architecture

article

Bias reduces noise—if you know <em>roughly</em> what to expect, then being biased by those expectations means you won’t get distracted by less relevant data points.

Bias is good

Article

If you haven’t heard of System 1 and System 2, you’ve probably heard one of its analogues. People who say ‘don’t let your amygdala hijack your frontal lobes’, or ‘get out of the sympathetic and into the parasympathetic nervous system’, or ‘something something vagus nerve’ are using pseudo-brain science to get at the same thing. But the thing everyone seems to have taken away from this book is the thing we always take away—System 1 stuff, a.k.a. bias is a bad thing. This is not what Kahneman was going for. Kahneman was trying to show us how both System 1 and System 2 have their place.
Bias reduces noise—if you know roughly what to expect, then being biased by those expectations means you won’t get distracted by less relevant data points.
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betterment gratification on-being-fruitful on-thinking-and-reasoning somatic-architecture thought-architecture wealth-architecture

article

We usually complain about systems ‘getting in our way’, with arbitrary criteria that determine success. But this goes the other way too. Much of my success and that of those around me is similarly mechanical. Not luck, effort, or nepotism.

Mechanical success vs nepotism and luck

Article

People will often say something along the lines of: “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” Largely this is true. Nepotism is a very greasy grease. But I want to talk about some under-rated alternatives. An alternative that often looks a little like luck. Bad luck, to be specific. But we can flip it.
We usually complain about systems ‘getting in our way’, with arbitrary criteria that determine success. But this goes the other way too. Much of my success and that of those around me is similarly mechanical. Not luck, effort, or nepotism.
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betterment gratification on-being-fruitful wealth-architecture

article

The utility of violence isn’t in the violence itself, but only in the threat of it. It creates immediate behaviour change, but only for so long as the threat is active.

The value of violence

Article

Violence is such an unavoidable feature of life that it tends to appear in any conversation that starts about half a bottle in. And in any given wine-fuelled conversation that broaches the subject of violence people usually assume that violence is necessary, or that it’s some kind of pathology. What these perspectives mean is that any conversation that circles the issue of violence will end in a fight between people who are for violence (or inured to it), and people who are against it (or don’t think it’s real). This isn’t really a very interesting conversation to me. A more interesting question to me, is when is violence actually useful? So, rather than asking questions about the necessity of it, we might be better served asking questions about the utility. Because looking at utility highlights something that would probably make us think of violence a little differently.
The utility of violence isn’t in the violence itself, but only in the threat of it. It creates immediate behaviour change, but only for so long as the threat is active.
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betterment collective-architecture on-being-fruitful on-politics-and-power somatic-architecture wealth-architecture
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