Ayelet Fishbach

Summer break has ended for many of us and you are back at work or at school and have many goals you want to accomplish.

This might be a time of motivation or struggle.

You find yourself having trouble doing your work, exercising and eating healthily.

So you blame yourself for not having more willpower or for procrastinating too much.

According to behavioral science, you can stop worrying about your willpower and quit calling yourself procrastinator.

To stay motivated, you need to change your circumstances and outlook, not your personality.

I'm Mayelet Fischbecker, a behavioral scientist at the University of Chicago.

I've been studying what it takes to be successful in goal pursuit for over 20 years.

As an academic, a parent, and an immigrant, I've also struggled with motivation myself.

let me offer a few interventions that can increase your productivity at work, school, and beyond.

When monitoring progress, looking back is often the way to move forward.

For any goal, you can look back at what you have achieved as well as forward at what you still have to do.

When Min-Jung Koo and I surveyed people standing in a long line for an amusement park ride in South Korea, we found that when they looked back and saw how far they'd come, they were more motivated to wait.

Back at the University of Chicago, when uncommitted students look back at the materials that they have already covered for a final exam, their motivation to keep studying increased.

Beware of long middles.

We call it the middle problem.

We are highly motivated at the beginning.

We want to reach our goal and we want to do it right.

Over time, our motivation declines as we lose steam.

To the extent that our goal has a clear end point, as in the case of graduating with a diploma, our motivation will pick up again toward the end.