Motivating Persistence – Design Small Steps
Scientific American has a short article that does a good job summarizing the Three Critical Elements that Sustain Motivation. While we have covered the elements extensively on the Cognitive Design blog, it is worthwhile to review. The elements that sustain motivation include self-determination, value and competence. To keep going on tough tasks it is important to feel in charge, that the activity is worthwhile, you have the skill to get started and those skills improve with time. This helps to explain why some children avoid math and spend hours on video games.
While this seems simple, a complicating factor is that many of the challenges we face are forced on us by external factors. There is a change at work that requires we learn new skills or the doctors tells us its time for a lifestyle change. In both cases there is no sense of autonomy, a differed sense of value and a perception of incompetence. Many of the motivational remedies offered seem straight forward but take considerable skill to use in practice, especially on groups.
For example, to help me feel like I am setting direction my boss puts me on a team to help define the details of the change or my doctor lets me select a plan of exercise and diet. The hope is I will become engaged in making critical decision and develop a sense of ownership. After a while I might even think it is my idea. Of course I need to have enough motivation to work on the team or make the lifestyle decisions. And unfortunately, I was assigned the task, won’t see the immediate value to it nor feel particularly competent at it. Not much motivation for doing the task that is suppose to help me get motivated. A bit of a regress.
This is where small steps come in. The fact is I have very little motivation for the task so you best not ask me to do much. Doing something small that stills produces a positive outcome avoids the regress and gives motivation a chance to build. Perhaps I will even get enough lift to try the next small step on my own thus gaining autonomy and even more motivation.
Once I am fully motivated for a task I can take slightly bigger steps but step-size is still critical for persistence. For example, if I go too long without getting the feel-good that makes the task worthwhile or see an improvement in my skills I will start to lose energy, interest and motivation.
To make the small-steps idea concrete, I use 3×5 cards to script out small experiences designed to create and sustain motivation for learning a new skill or adapting to change. Each card includes a compelling title, motivating quote and a single thought and behavior to try. The cards take less than a minute to read and should take no more than 3 minutes of effort to try. For example, a card aimed at improving customer service will ask you to practice smiling. Simple yes but smiling produces immediate positive results. Most employees will feel motivated to practice smiling. Or if they are not they can exercise their autonomy by selecting another card to try. The “big bang” change to a customer service organization is now reformulated into fifty small steps scripted out on 3×5 cards.
One worry with the small-step approach is that it takes too long or limits the size of change you can take on. I will argue in future posts that this limit is not inherent to the small-step approach but it is imposed by how we learn. All we ever really do is small steps. Stated positively, small-steps are optimized for how our minds work. Just what cognitive designers look for.
