Have you ever been told something that when you heard it you felt like you already knew it, but you didn’t know you knew it? For me, that happened recently while watching a lecture on motivation. The lecture was long and covered far more topics than I could hope to summarise in a blog post but the one thing that stood out for me and made me think ‘but I already knew that, didn’t I?’ was that at it’s most basic level, human motivation is very simple – we chase anticipated pleasure and we avoid anticipated pain.
At first glance this seems wrong – perhaps offensively so – that might be how animals are motivated but we humans are far more complex and subtle! Surely our motivations are vast and varied and specific to each individual! How can someone possibly claim that the history of mankind and the story of each individual who has lived, is living or will ever live can be summed up as a pursuit of pleasure and an avoidance of pain? The answer, is in the repeated qualifier – ‘anticipated’.
We’re all prophets now
Humans can see the future! Sort of. We can use our knowledge and experience to foresee the outcome of a given action and predict the consequences. If I see a lit candle I don’t need to touch the flame to to know that if I do so it’ll hurt. This doesn’t have to come from my own experiences either – I can use books, videos, the internet and direct communication to learn things from others and incorporate them into my predictive model so that e.g. I don’t need to have had personal experience of Uranium-235 to be able to predict bad things in my future if I were to swallow some. Although the last 2 examples were pretty universal, different people’s background and experiences will also lead them to build up different predictive models, so that e.g. while I might anticipate nausea from playing a VR game, others will anticipate fun and excitement, or while I might see a chilli pepper and anticipate eating a tasty meal, others may anticipate a burning mouth and stomach pain.
The choice
So let’s consider an example. Say, I find myself with an hour where I have nothing to do – no work that needs to be done, no appointments, no expected visitors, no expectation of any calls on my time. I might then consider two options for how to spend that hour – I could do some exercise, or I could sit on the sofa watching TV.
If what I’m saying is true, the answer seems obvious. Exercise hurts! I’ll get sweaty, out of breath and might even still be sore when I’m done and have to deal with that pain for the rest of the day. On the other hand, my sofa is comfortable and I will receive pleasure from whatever entertaining TV show I choose to watch, therefore I should pick the sofa every time, right? But people (even me) do exercise sometimes, rejecting the pleasurable experience of sitting on the sofa for the painful experience of exercising, so does the theory fall apart?
Actually, no – it just needs further analysis. As a human, I can anticipate things over a much longer time-scale than the next hour – the long term consequences of my actions. I can anticipate that if I never exercise then I will eventually become unhealthy (pain), I can anticipate that if I exercise enough then I might mange to reduce my beer belly a little and I’ll feel more attractive (pleasure). I can anticipate that if I spend all my time watching TV my wife might yell at me and call me a lazy slob (pain) and I can anticipate that if I exercise now I’ll feel less guilty about having a dessert tonight (pleasure).
On the other hand, if I exercise, I might over-do it and injure myself (pain), or if I watch the TV I might discover a new TV show I can tell all my friends about tomorrow (pleasure). Clearly, whichever option I take has the potential to both a source of pleasure and a source of pain and the longer the time scale we consider, the more sources will come into play. Some of those sources are guaranteed outcomes, like the pleasure of sitting on the comfortable sofa, others are only possible outcomes, like losing the beer belly and this also impacts the decision. Naturally, as a human I’m going to want to maximise my likely pleasure over the entirety of my remaining lifespan.
Well?
So will I choose to exercise or not? Ultimately it’s going to depend on how I prioritise the many sources of pleasure and pain I can think of associated with each of the choices at the time I’m making the decision. If I’ve been worried about my health recently I’m going to give the anticipated ‘becoming unhealthy’ pain a high priority. If I’ve been feeling lonely I might prioritise the anticipated ‘introduce friends to a new show’ pleasure. Perhaps I’ve already exercised today, in which case I may well prioritise avoiding the anticipated ‘over-do it and injure myself’ pain but if I’ve just had to order a larger pair of jeans I’m almost certainly going to prioritise the anticipated ‘lose the beer belly’ pleasure. Depending on how lucky I’m feeling, I may prioritise less pleasurable guaranteed outcomes over more pleasurable possible outcomes or the other way around. And all these priority decisions are going to be specific to me – someone else, with a different set of values, beliefs and experiences then mine will have different priorities.
So, in the abstract, If the total anticipated pleasure of option A, plus the anticipated pain of option B (weighted by my current priorities) is greater than the total anticipated pleasure of option B plus the total anticipated pain of option A (also weighted by my current priorities) then I will go with A, otherwise I’ll go with option B. Simple, and yet very complicated and specific not only to the individual and their life’s total of experiences but also the time the decision is being made and more recent experiences of the person making the decision.
So what does this have to do with software development?
Well, something needs to motivate us to get out of bed on a work day! Plenty of employers like to talk about how they want to hire ‘motivated’ people (perhaps not realising that all people are motivated – just some might not be motivated towards things that are positive for the company!). Ultimately though, it’s important to understand our own personal motivations – both so we know whether we’re in the right job or would be better off working somewhere else, and so that it’s easier to push on when we’re going through a hard patch by focusing on what motivates us in the good times.
Work comes with its own set of pleasures and pains, including:
Pleasures:
- Money (and don’t let anyone tell you being motivated by money is a bad thing)
- Respect (from co-workers or the wider community)
- Interacting with the ‘good’ co-workers
- Sense of purpose/achievement
- Enjoyable challenges
- Belief in the company/product
- Bragging rights (job title or employing company)
- Learning new skills
Pains:
- Time apart from family
- Commute
- Interacting with the ‘bad’ co-workers
- Takes time that could be used for more pleasurable activities
- Frustrating problems
- Boredom
The lists are deliberately unordered as everyone’s going to place different priorities on each of these pleasures and pains. You might not even consider some of the things I’ve listed to be pleasures or pains and it’s very likely you’ll be able to think of things for both lists that I’ve not included.
The important thing is that where possible you want to be working in a job where your highest priority pleasures are increased, and your highest priority pains are reduced. If, for example, one or your highest priority pains is ‘time apart from family’ then you might not be happy in a job that requires a lot of overtime. However if one of your highest priority pleasures is ‘belief in the company’ you might not mind the overtime so long as the company is ethical/innovative/a market leader etc.
And when you’re struggling to get out of bed to go into work on a cold, wet morning? Focus on your highest priority job pleasures – Are you looking forward to seeing at least some of your co-workers? Are you hoping that one day you can put senior widget wrangler on your Linked In profile? Do you have plans for the money you’ll make by working today? Somewhere there’s a motivation that aligns strongly enough with your own personal priorities that the anticipated pain of getting up is less than the anticipated pleasure that you will achieve by making the choice to go to work, you just have to find it!
