The Science of Productivity: Motivation

2020 has been a crazy year. The coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has impacted all major systems globally (health system, economic, education, research). Measures taken by countries, such as lockdowns and social distancing are effective measures to relieve the burden of the so-called ”saturation” of said systems. Since the lockdown started, we have been encouraged to work from home. For some people, working from home is a safe haven, where they can plan themselves accordingly and get things done with the flexibility of staying at home. Some others, like me (and maybe you, I do not know you), feel very productive some days while other days are just a painful/stressful experience that yields no sense of accomplishment. Additionally, let us not forget parents that are encouraged to work from home, while their children are home (a situation that may not help productivity). During most of the bad days, the problem that we can notice is the lack of motivation, and many of you will agree with me. Now, here is where we will perhaps disagree: is motivation evoked at will? or do we have no power over it? Maybe after reading this post, we will reach a middle ground.

Disclaimer: This post focuses on biological and behavioral aspects of self-motivation. Motivation, is a complex topic and this post only grasps the tip of the iceberg. This post does not focus on depression or other mental disorders, where motivation and many behavioral traits may be affected at a different extent. Mental disorders such as depression require expert opinion, consultation and medical treatment.

What if I told you that motivation to get things done lies in a specific part of your brain?

Imagine you are a 60-year old healthy man and decide to go on a well-deserved holiday with your wife. So you decide to travel to La Paz, Bolivia. As soon as you land, you start to act as if you were drunk. Some of your behaviors include annoying the other traveling companions with your speech and throwing coins to children at the airport. You say to your wife that the traveling and the altitude made you feel ”high”. The next day you feel drunk but continued to walk around, and during the day you start to show signs of lethargy (or lack of energy/enthusiasm). The third day you stay asleep. You and your wife leave Bolivia and go for a neurological consultation with the chief complain of: “a complete personality change”.

Physical examination was somewhat unremarkable and could not explain your personality change. You have your memory and language functions unaffected. Still, you do not get better with time and start to procrastinate on every detail and feel completely unmotivated. These changes affect you so much that you are unable to work in your business. A neurologist takes an electroencephalogram (to examine your brainwaves), which looks normal. Then you are administered a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and your scan shows small hemorrhages in the globus pallidus. These findings may explain your apathy.

Now let us get you out of character. This case was interesting for the attending physician because motivation and other higher mental functions were thought to be confined to the frontal cortex (frontal cortex is linked to voluntary actions). It was actually called the frontal lobe syndrome, when patients had significant deterioration of the frontal cortex. Curiously, this patient exhibited the apathetic variety of the frontal lobe syndrome without the frontal lobe being affected. After this case was published in 1989, numerous studies on the apathetic syndrome came out. Showing a role for the globus pallidus and striatum, important structures for the reward systems in our brain. Thanks to this evidence, there are strong claims that motivation has a biological foundation.

What if I told you that motivation to get things done is in the palm of your hand?

Behavioral scientists have proposed that motivation is more like a skill. You can get better at self-motivation if you practice the right way. Researchers suggest that believing that we have authority over our actions and surroundings should happen to improve motivation. To motivate ourselves we must feel like we are in control. Dr Tricomi and colleagues have studied how motivation is related to choice. They set up an experiment, it was a guessing game while they were inside an MRI (to track their brain activity in real time). Participants were given a number between one and nine. Before the number appeared, participants had to guess if it was going to be lower or higher than five. The researcher designed this game to be boring and dull. Also, the game was programmed so that all participants won the first round, lost the second, win the third and so on. Later they found out that the data of this experiment could identify which parts of the brain were active when playing a guessing game, but it would not say how were they motivated to play in the first place.

So they set up another experiment, now the participants were allowed to make their own guesses half of the time, the rest of the time the computer guessed for them. When participants guessed their brains became active, specifically the striata; when the computer guessed for them, their striata went silent. When the participants were asked about how they felt, they said they enjoyed themselves more when they were in control of their choices than when the computer was in charge. Researchers then concluded that allowing people to make choices transformed the game, and boosted their motivation because they believed they were in control.

From findings like these, a theory of motivation has emerged. The first step in creating drive is giving people opportunities to make choices to provide a sense of autonomy. It makes sense than in experiments, people are more motivated to complete difficult tasks when they are presented as decisions instead of commands. Motivation is triggered by making choices that demonstrate to ourselves that we are in control.

Do you wish self-motivation to get things done was as simple as this?

At least, I do. So far, we know that specific structures in our brain and that specific habits or practices can help us to find motivation in boring or dull situations. Some teeny-tiny behavior changes that may help based on these findings are:

Imagine that you have a to-do list but instead of starting with the top task, you choose the one that you feel like doing.

You have a bunch of stuff to write, choose to start on a different section than you otherwise would have started at.

Personalize your tasks, so that it shows a bit of your personality.

When regularly performed, these small tweaks form habits; they showcase how feeling being in control could potentially help bear with dull and boring tasks. This is especially encouraging in these times where mental stress, fatigue and burnout rates are so high among home-office workers. We will comment in upcoming posts some other aspects that shape our productivity, like team management, encouragement, psychological safety and innovation.

Until then,
Alejandro

Key References:

Strub RL. Frontal lobe syndrome in a patient with bilateral globus pallidus lesions. Arch Neurol. 1989;46(9):1024‐1027. doi:10.1001/archneur.1989.00520450096027

Tricomi E, Delgado MR, Fiez JA. Modulation of Cudate Activity by action contingency. Neuron. 2004. 281-292. doi:10.1016/S0896-6273(03)00848-1.

Duhigg Charles, Smarter Faster Better: The secrets of being productive in Life and Business., 2016