The Three Motivational Sweet Spots: Attainability, Respectability, Greatness
Imagine a war general saying, “It’s theoretically possible for us to win the battle and the war, so let’s attack right now!” Victory may evade him, as possibility does not guarantee success and he appears to be attacking blindly. Instead, consider this advice, spoken by a legendary war general:
“First lay plans which will ensure victory, and then lead your army to battle; if you will not begin with stratagem but rely on brute strength alone, victory will no longer be assured.”
~ Sun Tzu
The proper mindset isn’t, “Anything is possible, so I’m going ahead full speed.” Instead we must say, “My ultimate goal is possible with the proper strategy, and I will develop it to ensure success.” Great strategy comes from superior understanding of the battlefield, so we’ll begin with a dissection of how goal motivation works.
Goal Motivation: A Breakdown
If asked why they pursue goals, a person might say, “for the benefits.” That’s a valid reason to pursue a goal, and benefits do motivate us. But there’s one other source of motivation to consider. Let me explain with a couple of whimsical (if mildly disturbing) questions.
1. If you had to either punch a wall or walk on your ceiling right now, which one would you attempt?
Do you have your answer?
I’d bet that you’d punch a wall. Even though punching a wall carries mostly downside, it has the advantage of being imminently more attainable than ceiling walking. I think anyone would be impressed if you suddenly started walked on the ceiling, so why not do it? Because while walking on the ceiling is almost certainly more rewarding than punching a wall, it’s not attainable because of gravity. You would have to get special equipment to attempt ceiling walking. This highlights attainability as a key factor in what motivates us to choose one action over another.
2. If you had to choose between punching a wall and attempting to kiss a rattlesnake (placed in front of you for your convenience), which one would you choose?
I think you’d punch another hole in the wall. In 2017, a Florida man actually did attempt to kiss a rattlesnake. It bit his face and he was airlifted to a hospital. BBC news reported, “It is still not clear why Mr. Reinold tried to kiss the rattlesnake.”15 Indeed, it’s difficult to come up with a good reason for kissing an aggressive and highly venomous creature. There’s no real value in doing it, only pain, I imagine. I mean, I laughed hard when I read the story, but the snake kisser went to the hospital, so it couldn’t have been too funny for him.
Trying to kiss a rattlesnake, however, is as easy as leaning in and puckering your lips. It’s even less effort than punching a wall! But we will choose wall-punching again, this time for a different reason. Punching a wall takes more effort and thus could be said to be slightly less attainable, but also benefits us more than kissing a rattlesnake (by harming us less). This highlights action value as another key factor in what motivates us to take action. Action value is determined by our perceived pain and/or reward from doing it.
Peak attainability and maximum goal value represent two motivational “sweet spots.” A motivational sweet spot is a particular level of achievement that contains something specific that we want. If something is extremely attainable and offers even a small benefit, the high attainability can motivate us to action. We want to always reach our goals. If something is extremely valuable but difficult to achieve, the sheer value of achieving it can motivate us to action. We want greater satisfaction and big goal benefits. By sizing our goals strategically, we can place them right in these sweet spots to encourage action. Then we’ll have a buffet of appealing options when it’s time to act.
A smart strategy won’t require you to conjure up motivation out of thin air. Instead, it will take you to where motivation naturally lies. That’s what an elastic habit does. An elastic habit can expand or contract in any direction; unlike single-aim goals, it can reach more than one motivational sweet spot. Let’s take a closer look at these motivational sweet spots.
Motivational Sweet Spots
Maximum Attainability (Small Wins): It’s desirable to succeed in your pursuits, whatever they are.
Motivated thought: “I can definitely do that.”
The first thing we consider when thinking about action is usually, “Can I do it? Can I succeed?” It sounds a little bit silly, given that most pursuits are a matter of deciding to act or not. But within the question of “Can it be done?” is the question of “Can I actually get myself to do it?” And in terms of long-term goal pursuit and habit formation, it becomes, “Can I get myself to do it every day?” That question is a lot tougher than the one we started with.
It’s possible for you to succeed in ways and in magnitudes up to and beyond your wildest dreams. Absolutely, this is a fact. People throughout history have proven it by living fascinating, exciting, and inspiring lives. But possibility can be cruel, too, because if you muse too deeply into what’s possible in the future—possibilities for your life are infinite in number—you might miss what’s possible in your life right now. Actions you can take now are the sure path forward to a better life, and they lead to better future possibilities.
“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”
~ J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
The insatiable lust for theoretical possibility over current reality is a dark and treacherous path into perfectionism and depression. And yet, we live in a world that encourages and celebrates the rejection of reality. People say, “You can do anything if you put your mind to it!”
What if I put my mind to time travel? *Pushes time-travel button after 35 years of work* Hmm … nothing happened. Now I’m sad and someone owes me 35 years.
Perfectionists are often depressed because their reality never meets its full potential. It never will. You, I, and everyone else in the history of the world have (or had) unreached potential in every area of our lives. Yes, we could be better at [everything], but we’re not, for many reasons. That’s okay, it’s the nature of a life of limited time and resources. That gap of possibility will always be there. We can browse possibilities for fun, but let’s not get lost in them.
The spectrum of goal attainability goes all the way from automatic win to automatic loss. If you try to clap your hands one time today, you will succeed. It’s easily attainable. If you try to swim to the bottom of the Mariana Trench wearing a penguin costume, you will fail (we’re talking rattlesnake-kissing levels of failure here). It isn’t attainable. Penguin costumes are simply too hard to find. Oh, and the Mariana Trench is 26,850 feet deep.
As your goal moves away from easy attainability, toward improbability, and into impossibility, your motivation to pursue it naturally decreases. The small goal motivational sweet spot lives where the goal is an easily attainable, slightly rewarding step forward. Accomplishing any goal is rewarding because it’s a lot better than nothing; it either starts a winning streak or keeps one going.
Small goals can withstand practically any deterioration in conditions (whether internal or external). They act as a safety net to catch you on a down day. Anyone who has tried a small step approach like Mini Habits knows it’s extremely refreshing to win easily every day. Your small accomplishments might not look good on paper, but they can change the brain when linked, generate momentum, and are 100% attainable. That’s attractive. That’s why small goals (when understood and implemented correctly) can naturally motivate us into action. That’s one sweet sweet spot.
As we move up the ladder to consider bigger and better things, we need to ask ourselves where the next sweet spot is. Small wins offer the power of ultimate attainability. As we increase the goal’s size, at what point will it generate a wholly new benefit? Attainability will decrease as we increase the size of the goal, but will another source of motivation increase to make up for it?
Moderate Attainability Meets Respectability (Medium Wins): A respectable day’s work is satisfying and meaningful.
Motivated Thought: “This is a respectable accomplishment.”
Respectability is the next motivational sweet spot. I’m not saying that a mini habit is unworthy of respect. The consistency, brain-change results, and overall intelligence of the strategy make it a very respectable practice in the scope of long-term habit development and goal pursuit. But in the isolated context of a single day, a mini goal may feel insignificant.
Since everyone’s goals are different, I’ll just use myself as a real-life example. If I do a few push-ups, I keep my exercise streak alive. It’s great in the scope of my long-term plans, but not a number I’d boast about to my friends the next day. But if I do 30 push-ups, tomorrow I will look back on that amount and feel good about it. Not great. Not ecstatic. Just good. For me, 30 push-ups is decent and that amount of exercise has tangible value in my goal to be healthy and fit.
While medium-sized goals aren’t a sure victory as a mini habit is, they are attainable on most days. With the added benefit of being respectable and somewhat substantive, medium goals draw some motivational oomph from both attainability and value. As we move higher up the ladder, attainability will decrease even more. But there’s something to make up for it.
Greatness (Large Wins): Who doesn’t want greatness? Big wins are thrilling. This is the dream.
Motivated thought: “This is a significant victory and an exciting step forward in my quest for greatness!”
The next motivational sweet spot can simply be called greatness. Whoever you want to be and whatever you want to do is found here. This is because, if you train at something extensively every day, you will master it in time. You will not merely become good at it, but very good or elite. Doing something significant on any given day connects you to this dream.
This doesn’t apply only to obvious practices like mastering fitness or a new language. You can master having a clean home. You can master idea generation. You can master business correspondence. You can master gardening, playing piano, writing, (speed) reading, mindfulness, and more.
This is the most rewarding, most desirable goal size to reach on any given day, but it’s also the least consistently attainable. The people who fail with elastic habits will be the ones who eschew small and medium wins for the idea that “only large wins are acceptable.” If you do that, you’re merely following every other piece of goal advice that has never worked for you (or at least, it never worked well for me).
This is a special system, because the three distinct goal sizes have their own motivational allure. When you’re having a down day, you’re going to climb into the arms of attainability. When you’re frustrated with mediocrity, you’re going to respond by fighting hard for a large and valuable win. When you’re somewhere in between, you’re going to take the middle ground and be thankful the option is there.
Having three vertical options effectively triples your motivation by opening it up to the full spectrum of attainability to value. But it gets even better. Your motivation will be amplified even more than threefold because of phenomenon I call goal anchoring, covered next.
Chapter 5 Closing Thoughts: Motivation has been falling out of favor in habit circles, but that’s because rigid goals offer only one form of it. Now that we have three distinct motivators—attainability, respectability, and value—we can find motivation in almost any situation.
