Dr. Kentaro Fujita

And I think that's a really important implication of understanding self-control not as an innate skill but something that you grow and cultivate over time with things that you learn.

I think what you're saying is really fascinating.

I love this idea of attractor states.

In my own work we don't have that kind of model and we don't use the language of warming up.

But we do know that there is a dynamic interplay between how you think about something and the motivation that you're experiencing.

So if a workout is another hour of pain, we're not going to get super excited about it, but if instead you change your mindset about it, and again this is the power of work that Alia Krum and folks who do growth mindsets think about, if you change sort of the cognitive orientation you have towards it, a different set of motivations can get activated.

So if I say it's not an hour of pain, but instead of me becoming the better me,

That set of cognitions, that set of thoughts activates a different set of motives that comes to bear and can then be applied to the task at hand.

Now, that's not quite warming up, but in some senses it is a warm-up.

It's sort of finding the right set of thoughts that are working through your mind to maximize the motivation that you're experiencing at a given time.

Another interesting thing to think about is that sometimes it's not just about the amount of motivation, but it's also the type of motivation.

For example, many sports have an offense-oriented component and a defense-oriented component.

And they probably require very different mindsets and they probably also require different motivational orientations.

One of the most important orientations that we know for motivation science is an orientation towards nurturance and advancement, moving forward gains.

versus an orientation towards safety and security, preventing losses.

And there's been some speculation, and there's been some research to support this, that having the right kind of motivation for the right kind of tasks enhances performance.

So if I'm playing offense, there's always that notion that you don't want to play not to lose, you want to play to win.

And that's particularly true of offense.

So in offense, you want to be about advancement, promotion, gains.

But when you're on defense, right, at times it very well might be about preventing losses.