How to Keep Working When You’re Just Not Feeling It

img

Continuous

Sustain Progress

保持进步

人们在设定目标后，刚开始执行时干劲十足，但目标进行到一半时，大部人从中期开始泄气，之后就很容易偃旗息鼓。本文给出了两种办法来客服这种落差：

第一是将很长的目标分为多个小的目标，将每个目标的执行时间缩短

第二个方法是改变对所取得进步的看法。当我们已经取得进展时，目标似乎触手可及，我们就会更努力。

另一个心理技巧是将关注重点，当你离目标还很远时，关注于自己取得了多少的成绩，当离目标越来越近时，关注于离最终目标还差多少。例如，在高频顾客促销活动中，强调已完成的步骤（“您已完成10次购买中的两次”），能在早期促进销量；随着买家接近目标，强调未完成步骤（“您只需再购买两次就能获得免费奖励”），能刺激消费。

When people are working toward a goal, they typically have a burst of motivation early and then slump (骤降，暴跌) in the middle, where they are most likely to stall out (停滞不前，拖延). For instance, in one study observant Jews were more likely to light a menorah (烛台) on the first and last nights of Hanukkah (光明节) than on the other six nights, even though the religious tradition is to light candles for eight successive days. In another experiment, participants who were working on a paper-shape-cutting task cut more corners in the middle of the project than they did on their initial and final shapes.

Fortunately, research has uncovered several ways to fight this pattern. I refer to the first as “short middles.” If you break your goal into smaller subgoals—say, weekly instead of quarterly (季度的) sales targets—there’s less time to succumb to (屈从) that pesky (讨厌的，麻烦的) slump.

Giving advice may be an even more effective way to overcome motivational deficits.

A second strategy is to change the way you think about the progress you’ve achieved. When we’ve already made headway (前进；进步), the goal seems within reach, and we tend to increase our effort. For example, consumers in loyalty programs tend to spend more when they’re closer to earning a reward. You can take advantage of that tendency by thinking of your starting point as being further back in the past; maybe the project began not the first time you took action but the time it was first proposed.

Another mental trick involves focusing on what you’ve already done up to the midpoint of a task and then turning your attention to what you have left to do. My research has found that this shift in perspective can increase motivation. For example, in a frequent-buyer promotion (推销), emphasizing finished steps (“you’ve completed two of 10 purchases”) increased customers’ purchases at the beginning, and emphasizing missing steps (“you are two purchases away from a free reward”) spurred consumption as buyers neared the goal.

This tactic (策略) can work for rote (死记硬背；生搬硬套) tasks (such as sending out 40 thank-you notes) as well as for more-qualitative goals (becoming an expert pianist). The person writing the notes can gain motivation from reminding herself how many she’s sent until she passes 20; then she should count down how many she has left to do. In the same way, a novice (初学者，新手) pianist should focus on all the scales and skills she has acquired in her early stages of development; then, as she improves, focus on the remaining technical challenges (arpeggios, trills and tremolos, and so on) she needs to master.

取得进展；有进展: made headway

See you tomorrow