You are not the author of your biography. At least, not yet. Some combination of experiences along with present environmental factors is driving the vast majority of your behavior, literally writing the story in front of you. Becoming the protagonist means molding your environment so, as it continues its inexorable molding process, you progress, according to the tale you want to tell

The story of this began as you first learned how the world works. Taking a wide variety of actions, some were reinforced became more frequent while those that were inneffective or had negative consequences happened less. The reinforcement ranged from meeting core biological needs like hunger to the more abstract like praise from peers. At some point, these environmental factors put you on the career path that led to this point

Your Future Self Needs Help

Whatever your position on free will, it is not difficult to see that external influences shape your behavior. How challenging would it be to choose to read this paragraph if you were on fire? As a useful simplification, consider your future self as an agent with a limited ability to make the choices you want of them. As a result, in the present, set them up for success. To be alert and focused for a morning lecture, the tomorrow version of you will probably not be able to just achieve that through sheer force of will. Their experience will vary vastly depending on whether they had a full night’s sleep and a cup of coffee on the way there, versus an all-nighter with a hangover. You, in the future, will try your best, but cannot achieve great things without a little help. To go the distance, you will have to pull some strings beforehand

One of the fundamental challenges with building one’s agency is that our vices pay off now while lofty dreams will pay off much later. Even more troubling, values and goals aligned behaviors are associated with pain in the present. This means that switching from doing something according to your values and instead moving in the wrong direction triggers negative reinforcement of whatever alternative you started because it aleviates the discomfort. For example, scratching at a bug bite will not make it heal faster, but that knowledge will not make it any easier to avoid. Thus, we naturally steal pleasure from the future to the present, and find it devilishly difficult to keep salient the value of our later accomplishments if we hold the course. What can be done with the odds so stacked against you?

One tactic that you can use to improve your chances is to introduce additional reward, as an immediate consequence of the desired conduct. This reverses what naturally occurs. Instead of robbing reward from the later version of you by doing something unproductive, it instead reshapes your reality that doing the right things gets rewarded. So as you set a values-aligned task before yourself, also dangle an incentive for its completion that will take place immediately afterward. Now the behavior has a real chance because in addition to the “someday” prize you expect, there is also an imminent reward that effectively competes with the alternatives. The balance has shifted. Well, at least if you can accept the new reality where some good things are contingent on goal behaviors, and you are hungry enough for those rewards

Not Hungry Enough?

Have you ever begun a grocery run before a meal, and head out knowing that the trip is going to cost extra via unplanned purchases concocted by your hungry brain? Similarly, the effectiveness of a reward will vary based on when you had it last. Cultivate this “hungry brain”, because it can be motivated to perform actions that a more satiated psyche cannot fathom. This presents a challenge to people living in relative abundance because we never really want it that badly. Whenever a desire arises, the easiest path is to immediately fulfill it, but in that state goal-driven actions can be frustratingly out of reach. Furthermore, it builds a toxic association between desire and reward that cuts progress out of the loop entirely. This is the classic entitlement that you’ve seen rot the ambitions of people who get their way a little too easily. To break this cycle, identify one category of rewards that are effective now, in the sense that when the desire for them arises, they motivate you at least to fulfill it. Plan to reduce consumption to below satiety. Maybe even begin by withdrawing it entirely for a time. Afterward, it can be the sight of water in a desert that gets you moving in the right direction

Contingency and Abundance

Frog put the cookies in a box. “There,” he said. “Now we will not eat any more cookies.”

“But we can open the box,” said Toad.

(from Adventures of Frog and Toad)

Another key conflict between current plans and your future self’s ability to execute them manifests as “I can just get the reward now, why would I do something for it?”. Indeed, this is why for most people, conditioning by reward is only ever used against them and never intentionally by them or for them. External actors can make rewards actually contingent on the behaviors they are trying to create in people while you have to do a little more work. You can partially fix this by convention. If you’ve taken a category of reward off the table for regular consumption, that eventually weakens its association as a free source of pleasure. As long as you maintain exclusive connection between the reward and engagement with goal-driven behavior, going around the system will be less likely than you might imagine. Some may want to put up an additional fence against cheating the system, and enlist an assistant. Find someone who can act as the timely reward giver, available to immediately administer it when the task is complete. This person(s) should have access to the reward that you want, so you can only experience it when they give it

Reframing Pain in Homeostasis

Pain is not always your enemy. The human body naturally balances pain and pleasure over time. Thus, a single-minded pursuit of gratification will take you to a place where previously ecstatic experiences have no effect on your happiness. In fact, your body will amplify pain signals to bring back balance. This implies a surprising result: discomfort now leads to enjoyment later. Try the following framing: constructive pain is doubly beneficial since it brings benefit from whatever reason you chose to engage with the discomfort plus the shifting of your equillibrium back towards favoring pleasure responses. Is this the nail in the coffin for short-term hedonism? Probably not, especially if it has been engrained over a long period of time, but it’s a useful tool. Can we go even further? Yes, actually

Activate the Tactical Loot Goblin Within

At this point, you have a reward that you want, a goal behavior that can earn it, and a willingness to accept discomfort as a loan that will pay back in pleasure over time. Now randomly take the compensation away sometimes. What? In a counterintuitive result, rewards that are unpredictably triggered by the target action are more motivating than the transactional “I do A, I get B” deals. The brain motivates actions with uncertain results more because survival has relied on performing actions without guarantees. Your ancestors benefitted from this as they searched for food, interacted with each other, and experimented with new technology, and didn’t always see immediate success. When applied, you will notice a higher willingness to play the game to get a chance at the reward. You’ll see yourself going further than imagined because “I’m definitely due for it on my next roll”. We make an iPhone app to help with managing your random reward system, and it’s available for early access via TestFlight. Get your invite!

At this point, your decision looks like this:

Option 1. Go for short term

• Small enjoyment now. You’re not that hungry for it
• Pain later via homeostasis
• Pain later as you fail to advance towards your goals

Option 2. Earn the reward with a system

• Pain now, except reward possibility is motivating
• The reward, when you eventually get it, feels better because you want it more
• Pleasure later as you become the protagonist you have written for your story

Will you pick up the pen?