Dr. Maya Shankar

This is one of my favorite ones because this is about the science of motivation, which you said we'd come back to.

So a couple of things you can do.

One, the beginning of the new year is actually a great time to set forth these goals because of what's known as the fresh start effect.

So there's a couple of techniques that I have in my motivation toolkit that I use all the time.

The first is to break big goals into small goals.

So big goals are very psychologically daunting.

When I signed my book deal, I never thought I was ever gonna write a book, Hala.

I swear to God, for those first four or five months, I was like, okay, I'm gonna have to give my advance back.

I don't know if I'm gonna make this happen because all the big goals we have are often multi-year goals, right?

And so you don't feel a sense of accomplishment or completion in the short term.

And it can be very discouraging to only see returns on our investment

months and years down the line.

Now, if you can take a big goal and break it into mini goals.

So for example, okay, I'm not going to write the whole book today, but let's say I just search for really fascinating people over the next two weeks, just to try to identify amazing humans that I can interview.

And that's one of my concrete small goals.

One, I'm going to feel a lot of pride having accomplished that two weeks later.

So that's going to give me a boost in my motivation.

But two, I'm

it helps avoid what's known as the middle problem.

So the middle problem refers to the idea that motivation levels do not remain stable and consistent over time.