Ayelet Fishbach: The Art of Goals, Incentives, and Motivation

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I'm Guy Kawasaki and this is remarkable people. I'm on a mission to make you remarkable. Helping me in this episode is the remarkable Ilet Fishback. She's an expert in motivation and decision making. More precisely, Ilet is a professor of behavioral science and marketing at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. She's also the former president of the Society for the Study of Motivation. She has served as an associate editor of several journals including Psychological Science and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. She earned her bachelor's degree, master's degree and a PhD in psychology from Tel Aviv University. Today we're going to discuss her new book get it Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation. In this book she provides a powerful new framework for self motivated action. Here's what Angela Duckworth has to say about I don't know anyone, scientist or otherwise, who knows more than Ilit Fishback about the psychology of goals. I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is remarkable people. And now here is the remarkable Ilit Fishback. I would like your take on the concept of involuntary service in Israel.

That's a difficult question. This is the first. Like you don't want to like ease in with like, you know, how are you? What's the weather in Chicago? Well, let me know.

I want to know what you think of involuntary service in Israel. It's one of the few countries that does that.

Yes. And I didn't like it when I had to do it. This would be an understatement. I really didn't like it. I ended up meeting my husband there. So it ended up working just fine. But I would say that the best solution for a society is probably to have some requirement to give back. But it should not be restricted to military service. Some people can contribute their talents in different ways. You can put young people to work in hospitals. They might be more useful there as teachers. They might be able to support education. Contributing through the military. That just one way and probably not my personally favorite way of giving back to society.

So you clearly weren't in unit 8200 and started a billion dollar tech company. That wasn't the path.

Yeah. And you know some people are allowed to go to academia from that unit. So I, I was on this path. Yeah.

Okay.

You, you did your homework. It is the, the unit in Israel that feeds the high tech and a bunch of academia.

I, I thought that venture capitalist funded that unit, but that's.

When I was there. It was still a secret. You were not allowed to say the number.

Oh, oh really? Excuse me. The Mossad's gonna come after me? Oh, no, I think the Mossad is busy with Russia right now. So I think I'm low on the totem pole for them. In the book, you discuss this concept of a glass half full or half empty, whether it marks an optimist being half full or a pessimist half empty. And I just want to tell you a story that may influence how you use this metaphor in the future. And the story is that about a month ago I interviewed Neil DeGrasse Tyson and I don't know how we got on the subject of a glass half empty or full. But he explains that a glass half empty or full is determined by what you are trying to do. So if you're trying to fill up the glass, it's half full. And if you're trying to empty the glass, it's half empty. So that may influence whether someone is an optimist or a pessimist. You have to know what they were trying to do in order to make that judgment.

This is interesting. You see, you take some saying and you can use it in so many different ways. I use it in a way that's not that. And also not being an optimist versus pessimist, it's basically how you monitor your progress toward a goal. So I think that you were referring to an approach goal, in which case you are filling up your glass, or an avoidance goal, in which way you are trying to move away from something. You are trying to empty this, like bad stuff. I think about it in terms of getting somewhere. Let's say that you're pursuing a college degree or you are saving for a down payment. You want to be somewhere sometime. And now as you make your progress, you can look back and you can look ahead. As it turn out, looking at the right direction will affect your motivation, such that if you look back at the beginning, your progress will seem faster than if you look ahead. If. Let me give an example. If you're thinking about a four year college degree and you are finishing your first year, then you are already one year into it, which seems to have greater impact on the goal than if you think that you still have three years to go. Now move to after you already completed three years. And now you can either say, I only have one year left, oh, I've completed three years. And at that point the one year will be more motivating than the three years. So you can be strategic in how you monitor your progress.

So if we combine your concept and Neil DeGrasse Tyson's concept, if the task was to drink all the water in the glass when the glass is half empty. You have made progress towards that goal, so you should be positively reinforced, right?

Yes. So you are just. My mind is, like, blown away by, like, drinking the water in the glass. You know, I think that metaphor is that you're accumulating water in the class, but you're right. Yes. I think that you have done half of the work or you still have to do. Let me tell you an experiment that we ran more than 10 years ago in which we basically ran a charity campaign in South Korea. And we started collecting donations when we were actually, like, halfway through the campaign. We needed half the money, which is pretty typical for organizations. And we told some people that we have half of the money, and we actually presented this nice figure in which they could see that this is our goal, and we are halfway. We filled it, and we told the other half that we. We are still missing half of the money. And what we found is that for regular donors, people that were giving to this organization all the time, they were more motivated by thinking about that glass half empty, by thinking about all the money that we still need. They are contributing efforts when others are not doing enough. The new donors, the people that never gave money, they were more likely to give when they got information that other people are giving, that the glass is half full, that we already have half of the donation. So these framings matter. They influence our motivation.

So if you're running a direct mail campaign, if you were really sophisticated, you would cross reference your campaign to, is this a past donor or a new donor? And then they would get different kinds of appeals.

Yes, we already give people different kind of appeals. So you don't need to be super sophisticated. Everybody does that. And this is one way in which appeals are being tailored. Whether we tell you that things are going well, that many people are helping, versus we really need your help. Not enough people are helping. Depends on who you are moving on from the glass.

Let us now go to the bagel. So if I read this right, if you made progress in the line at Einstein's burgle, is it Einstein or Einstein?

Yeah, I'm from Israel, you know, you decide. I think Einstein. I think it's Einstein prose bagels. But this is how I would say that.

So if you've made a lot of progress in the bagel line to avoid that question, then the thinking is that you anticipate that the bagel will taste better if you haven't made a lot of progress. So you're at the back of the line, you think that the bagel may not be as good. Did I get that right?

Yes. Although I don't think that you decrease your expectations from the bagel. It's mainly that as you're going to get your bagel sandwich, you have certain expectations. And then as you wait in line and more people are behind you, then you feel like you've invested efforts. You feel like, this must be an amazing bagel because I'm making progress and I'm investing in it. Must be a really good lunch.

So how about an alternate explanation? So let's say I get in the line and now I'm near the front and I look behind me and there's a long line. So one interpretation is what you said. How about another interpretation is I look at all the people behind and I think I've made a good choice. This is the wisdom of the crowd. They all think it's a good bagel place. So that's why my expectation of the taste of the bagel is higher. Not because of progress, but because of the wisdom and confirmation of the crowd.

Yeah. So this is what Bob Cialdini refers to as a social proof. If there was line, if people are there, that's a signal that it's good. It is often why stores would like to have a line. They would like you to wait a little bit so that you will make this inference that this is a worthwhile product. But what we did in our studies is comparing the number of people that are behind you to the number of people that are ahead. Few. So we are actually holding the length of the line constant. We are either serving the people that are already getting to the cashier and the people that just joined the line and the people that are already the cashier, they invested personal efforts. So everybody has the same information which is valuable, which has some effect. Now we are looking on top of it. What is the effect of you personally invested in it or you think that you're invested in it? In some studies we just had people look back or look ahead and report the number of people in line and we see the same effect. When you look back, you think, okay, I guess I really want that. I've been studying here for a while. When you look ahead, you're not quite making the same in France.

So if I'm a bagel retailer, I should have a long line that moves fast and that way it would encompass both theories, Right?

Exactly. And you can also be sophisticated and give people information about the number of people that are behind them. And here I'm thinking more about lines where you know which number is being served or which number has joined the line. Okay, so you might not be actually standing there, but you know how many callers are behind you. And knowing that there are 20 callers behind you is more likely to keep you on the call than knowing that there are 20 people ahead. So you can be sophisticated in how you monitor lines to get people to appreciate what they're waiting for.

Now we've covered glasses and bagels and now I want to ask you about the difference on videos of likes versus views, which is a more powerful number.

Yes. So this is interesting because you could predict that what should matter with the number of views. What should matter is what people do and not so much what they say. We often say that the actions that speak louder than wars, but not what we find is that people are more responsive to likes or to stars rating to information about what other people are doing what, what they are buying, what they are viewing, what they are listening to. We care about others valuations, which is interesting. I can explain why that happens and which also informs who is the best role model.

And I have a theoretical question. So the concept of social facilitation. At the most recent Olympics there was limited social facilitation. So has anybody done a study that performing to a lack of crowds led to fewer records or better or worse performance?

That is a great question. That definitely what the fear we predict, controlling for all other variables. I don't know. There were a few other things that happen in the world over the last couple of years. Yes, there's that maybe athletes, we're not getting the training that they used to get before the COVID pandemic. So we don't know. But I will look at it after we finish talking.

But conceptually, if everything else were the same, and for some bizarre reason, the Olympics was held not in front of a live audience, the expectation is that they would not perform as well.

Yes. And there is plenty of evidence that athletes don't perform as well when they are not in front of live audience. So live audience in general facilitates athletic performance and any other performance of experts.

Now we're going to move on to Covid. I think in the United States, to a large degree, the avoidance goal of avoiding Covid did not work for many people. And do you have an explanation why the avoidance goal didn't work?

Well, avoidance goes are not great to begin with and avoidance calls are not great. Whether it's not avoiding like eating certain things or thinking certain things. Avoidance goals don't work very well because they bring to mind the thing that we are trying to avoid. So you know, I'm trying to avoid whatever. I'm trying to avoid red meat. And how do I know that I avoided red meat? I ask myself, are you avoiding it? And I based that bring it back to mind. And we also rebels. And we are all rebels, adolescents more than adults. But we never quite outgrow the rebellions phase. And with COVID we saw a lot of that. I want to do something just because you told me not to. I want to take off my mask just because you told me that I should not take off my mask. So when avoidance goals are good, when they convey urgency. And using my red meat example, if I tell you that you should stop eating red meat, then you think that you should probably stop eating it today. If I tell you that you should eat more vegetables and you think, well, I can probably do it in a week or so. It doesn't seem so urgent. Now we take Covid and the avoidance score was working very well when it was urgent in March 2020, we were all very cautious for a couple of weeks. Maybe not all of us, but many people around the country washed their hands, their veggies and didn't touch their main. We did everything that we thought we were supposed to do when it was urgent. Then it became the way we live our lives. And that meant that approach goals, that approaching health is much more motivating in the long run than avoiding sickness.

Well, so now for a more generalized question, which is, so basically, what are the qualities of a good goal?

Oh, there are many. So try to summarize what makes a goal good. Well, let's first define good in terms of motivating, because good can also mean that it's good for you. So hopefully you chose a goal that is good for you. Okay. That will not involve extreme sports, that causes injury. You're not risking your life. It's not like unhealthy diet. It's something that's good for you. And then we are trying to create a goal that is motivating. And that goal should probably be an end state that you want to achieve and not the means to get there. So it's the destination, okay? It's what you want to achieve. It is a goal that has a number attached to it, usually how much and how soon. It is a goal that has the right incentives. It is a goal that is intrinsically motivating, that while you know exactly where you are going, get value from doing it from going there. And in my book I give that as an example that the goal of getting to the summit of Mount Everest, which by the way is not always a good goal. Some people are trying to get to the summit of Mount Everest when the weather is bad. Yeah, I don't recommend that goal for everybody and in every condition, but it's very motivating goal because you, if you want to get to the summit of Mount Everest, you are not doing it because you're trying to take train for another mountain. That's the thing itself. The target is very clear. There is a very specific spot that if you were standing there, then you achieved that goal. There are great incentives, great people will admire you even more than they are now. You would be yet even more remarkable. And you're probably intrinsically motivated. That is, you get value from doing it and not just from achieving it. And each of these elements is something that we can think of, we can evaluate when we set a goal and understand whether we did it right, whether it's motivating for us.

And you would also throw into this qualities of a good goal, that it's an approach goal as opposed to an avoidance goal.

Yes. I don't know how you would even think about this. An avoidance goal, like avoiding. Not climbing Mount Everest, avoiding walking on flat surfaces. It's the thing that you want to achieve. In general, no avoidance goals. We see them mainly with eating, with diseases, smoking, alcohol, the main things that people want to avoid. And. And it's better if they can think about what they want to approach instead. I don't like diets. And I don't like diets because they. Well, first, because I like food, but second, because they're often like framed in terms of removing items from your menu and not doing certain things. And I think that it's much easier to follow a regimen of doing something that is exciting, that's fun, that's getting you there, than removing parts of your life.

But let's take a health goal. So you said put a number on it. So are you saying my goal is to have such and such a level of cholesterol versus my abstract goal is to be healthy? So which one would be a better goal or does it depend on who you are?

They both sounds bad.

What should I tell my patient who is grossly overweight and about to have a heart attack?

If someone is about to have a heart attack, then this is aerogen. Okay. And this is when you can say like something has to change immediately and let's work on that because your life is at risk. But many people, probably most of us, need to eat healthier food. So let's think about what that means. That certainly means that some food, foods need to get off our plate and others need to get on our plate. And it's better to think about this in terms of what you do need to eat, what should go on your plate, what would make your next meal fun and exciting and experience that you will enjoy and will nevertheless be healthy. It's a very American Western idea that taste and health are conflicting goals. It's part of our culture. It's not in the food. Like, it's certainly not in our evolution. We are supposed to be attracted to foods that are good for us. So it's a learning and this person needs to learn to enjoy healthy diet.

Okay, so how do I verbalize this? Do I tell them to get your cholesterol to a certain number, to get a certain bmi, to get a certain body weight or to eat more healthily or eat more carrots? And what's the goal? What should I tell my patient?

Yeah, so I hear your struggle and then you're trying to put a number. So the target is the number. Okay. Like the goal is to eat the healthy diet. Okay. Target is the numbers that we are going to use. And I hear you'll struggle because the numbers that we are using are very not actionable. When you talk about counting calories or BMI or cholesterol, this is really hard to monitor. When I look at the cake, I don't see cholesterol and I don't see calories and I don't see, see bmi. So I'm expected to monitor my consumption based on something that I don't see there. Okay, Think about the goal, the daily goal of walking a certain number of steps. This is easy because when I walk, I can see that I make steps. It's very easy to intuitively understand what it is. So now we are in a place where we don't have great targets when it gets to food, but we are working on it. One thing that we see now is the, the red light, green light system and having apps or stores or, you know, restaurants that would provide this ranking that would tell you whether that the food is a green or red. Green light means you can eat it. Red light, you should try to, to minimize that. In Israel, they had a law that, I wonder, it might still be there, but the certain foods have a red tag on them that you cannot buy it without the red tag that says this Is not good for you. And it worked, I believe. So I don't really have the data in front of me. But no, let's say it's hard to ignore. The package tells you that this is something that you should consume in moderation.

Well, people still smoke. But let's say I am a huge food manufacturer. Why would I make anything that has a red tag unless I believe that there's some segment of the population who's gonna eat it because it is red tagged?

Yeah. So a few things. First, people smoke much less in the U.S. smoking is really interesting because if we think about the successful change, successful behavioral change in the world, we definitely reduce the smoking in the U.S. other successful behavioral changes, we definitely increased vaccination. People did not use to get vaccinated. People are now vaccinated. Hand washing was introduced sometimes at the beginning of the 20th century and definitely caught up. So there are behavioral changes, seat belts that we see people are doing now. But this was not your question. Your question was why would you mark your product with a sign that says you should not eat it? You probably are only going to do it if you are required by law. But that creates the incentive for you to make products that are healthy for people. So find a way to make money from desserts that are not going to kill us.

That's a worthy. Talk about an avoidance goat.

Okay, yeah, Yep. Sorry.

So it seems to me that if you watch what politicians do, the overarching goal is get re elected. That's the goal. As opposed to dent the universe, make the world a better place, create a, you know, personal history that you can be proud of, etc. Etc. So is getting reelected a good goal?

It's good for whom.

Well, good for the politician, but good for society. Both because the two are different. Right?

Exactly right. So you ask for whom. That's good. And I think that what you are pointing out is that often the incentives are not the same and that they're not aligned. And that's a problem because what's good for politicians as people is not what's good for the people who elect them. They want to be re elected. They want to have some impact that will be shown in the next two years or maybe four years where there is a serious under investment in anything that will materialize like 10 years from now or 20 years from now. Right. So why investing in in roads or education. Okay. When it will take so long to see that the effect. If you are just trying to maximize your selfish motive, which is getting elected again in a couple of years when incentives are not aligned. People are pursuing their personal interests that don't align with what's great for the group.

How would you change systemic goals where a large group of people share a goal?

Yeah, so it's a difficult question, and it's an important question because the goals that are important, important are often not individuals goals. There are very few goals that we pursue as individuals. Okay, maybe I want an academic degree or I want to get a job. Important goals are something that we are doing with other people. We might work in a company, we might start a family, we might work as a society to make sure that this is a healthier place, it's a cleaner place. And then, you know, there are the really difficult goals which involve a very large group of people, such as environmental goals and taking care of the planet, which is where we are truly struggling to get a group to work together. Well, you need to overcome social loafing. So this is the tendency to work less hard when other people are working free riding, which is just the extreme version of that. Free riders feel that they don't need to contribute anything because others are doing the work. You need people to see themselves as part of the group. So group cohesiveness is really critical. And to the extent that you are part of, you know, a neighborhood or society where you feel that this is part of who you are, you are Chicagoan for me, okay, that you are a member of the University of Chicago and you want to be part of this community, you want this community to thrive. You identify with that, and it is easier to get people to help the group. One thing that I will mention that really matters is how much your actions are identifiable, how much each group member contributed. We see that, like the big social loafing effects, the big effects where people are not doing because other people are doing. When individual contribution is dropping the bucket and no one will see that. So it's taking long showers and wasting a lot of water. I don't know how long is your shower? Right? Like, that's not. No. No one knows. Okay. It's. It's a private behavior. And so this is much harder than getting people in public to recycle. Because if you are putting your trash somewhere in front of many people, then it's more identifiable. Going back to my donation studies, when people sign their name, they are giving more. And if you think about this, pretty trivial when your name is attached to it and then you want to give. You want people to know that guy is a generous guy. If it's anonymous, it's Tempting not to.

Help, but how do you thread the needle between Cialdini and Fishback? So Fishback is concerned about social loafing and Cialdini is concerned about social proof. So guy gave money. That's social proof. Guy gave money. I don't have to give money because guy gave money. How do you thread that needle?

This is again where we get to the whether you should tell people that other people are doing or that other people are not doing. If other people are doing, this is social proof. What that tells you is that this goal is worth pursuing. It's mainly going to be effective if you don't already know that the goal is worth pursuing. If you're not committed and then everybody is doing something and you get this information everybody is doing, you say, well, I guess that's important. Everybody recycles. I guess that's important. Everybody's giving money. The guy gave money to this cause. I guess the cause is important. If you are already committed, if you already know that this is important, this is when your motivation is more affected by what's missing, by what other people are not doing. So let me give you, I think, an intuitive example. If you are in a new environment and you don't really know whether people in your new office, whether they keep it clean or whether it's very messy, you follow what other people are doing. If they leave a mess in the sink, then you don't wash your mind as well. It's a messy environment. Okay? If everybody is super clean, then you make sure not to leave coffee stains anywhere. If it's your home, your family, the group to which you are more committed to than any other group in the world. Now we see that you coordinate with those. Like, if they're already doing the dishes, then you know, you can check off for tonight. If. If no one is volunteering, then you will do the work. You compensate in your behavior to what other people are doing. If my spouse is already making dinner, then I don't make dinner. I will read a book. If he reads a book, then I will step in. You see this coordination that is less Cialdini's social proof and more of me talking about how we coordinate efforts with others.

Somebody should tell teenage kids because so far social proof of me doing dishes hasn't worked and me not doing dishes and assuming coordination has not worked. So do you have any. How do you get that done?

Yes. So this is interesting. So there is work on financial goals in couples that comes to mine by John List and. Sorry, John Lynch. John List is another person John Lynch. So John lynch, who does financial decision making. And what he finds, which is really interesting, is that couples tend to divide the financial responsibility, such as one person is doing the finance and another person doesn't know anything. And that means that the longer they've been together, the more the person that's responsible for the finance becomes more financially knowledgeable, and the more the person that's not doing the finance becomes financial dummy. And so couples that were together for 10 years, you see this huge disparity. One person knows a lot, the other person knows nothing. Couples that were only together for a couple of years, they are pretty similar in how much they know. Why am I telling you about that? Because I think that with our kids there is often this pattern where if you are doing the dishes and bringing the food and doing the laundry and provide all the services, the more you provide a service, the less they even develop the abilities to do that. They are just in this ecosystem where someone else is serving their needs and then we are in a system. I have a friend that once told that, like, raising children is like running a hotel that's about to lose a star every day. Right? The food that you made is not good enough. The soap that you provided is not like smell good enough. It's a key. You have clients and you need to serve them. And this is because you kind of divided the work, such as someone is doing all the work and the other person, the adolescent, is the customer. So, you know, you need to change that. I need to change that for my household.

So how is it on a kibbutz then?

The kibbutz that I grew up on is very different than the kibbutz right now. Okay, like the kibut where I grew up was completely socialist. There was no private property. I didn't own my clothes, I didn't have my own shower. All the kids were showering together until third grade. Very different than how I live now. Now I get the best shower in the world. It's big. It has several shower heads. I really overcompensated. But anyways, it was a different system where we did not have private property. And we were very much responsible for like knowing how to work and make our food. We were pretty independent, definitely compared with my own children.

And people live their whole lives this way. Or is this a thing that you just.

Well, I guess my parents generation lived most of their lives. The whole experiment did not hold for a long time. So like my grandparents generation, they started this whole kibbutz business. They grew up in their non Socialist families. And then they were the generation that started the experiment. My parents generation lived like that most of their lives. And. And I guess that my generation was the generation that wounded.

Now you got long showers.

Yeah. And I'm at the University of Chicago, which is the opposite.

This story has nothing to do with anything, but the first time I went to Israel. Everybody in Israel has at least three cell phones, right? So there's all these cell phone conversations going on. And I keep hearing people say, ken, Ken, Ken. I'm thinking, how come so many people in Israel are named Ken? And it took me quite a while to figure that out. And if you haven't been to Israel and you're wondering what the hell this, this story is about, you go figure it out. But anyway, that was my experience in Israel.

And you're not going to tell the listeners what can.

Nope. That's why God invented Google, so they can go figure that out. Up next on Remarkable People.

It sounds like one of the issues that high tech companies are struggling with is the interest, the growth, the allowing people to do something meaningful and interesting. And they're not necessarily struggling because they are worse than other companies, but because they are hiring people that really care about that. And so their employees are the people that on our survey say they want to do something meaningful, they want to make impact in the world. Hello, I'm Jane Goodall and I just want to tell you that I've been on Guy's podcast twice now and had a great time. And I really hope that you'll listen to it. Of course, especially the one when I'm on, but the other great too.

You're listening to Remarkable people with Guy Kawasaki. Now, what makes a good incentive?

What makes a good incentive? Well, incentives are mini goals. So presumably you usually when you motivate yourself, at least you don't work for the incentive, you work for something else. And the incentive is something that you get along the way. You want to go to the gym to be healthy. And the incentive is that you'll get yourself some nice cups of coffee after the exercise. Ideally, the. The incentive is coming close to when you provide the action, okay? So that often creates the intrinsic motivation that you enjoy what you're doing because part of it is enjoying the incentive. So this is like listening to music or listening to your podcast while running, doing homework while drinking a nice a cup of something and like really bringing the incentive to the activities so that they are together, if not in proximity. The ideal incentive is probably just one incentive and not too many of them. Too many incentives can confuse us as to why we are doing this action in the first place. They create what we refer to as either over justification or dilution of the the connection between the activity and the original goal. You are not really sure why, why you do that. The ideal incentive is not confusing you as to the purpose of doing what you're doing. And then the last thing is that it is probably a bit of an uncertain incentive. So there is some excitement that comes from whether I will win it today, whether I will get a chance to get that incentive, whether I'm giving it to myself or I'm getting it from others like that. A bit of excitement about whether will happen and the challenge of making it happen makes incentives work better. So I just gave you a lot of abstract information. I don't know if we should elaborate.

One of your discussion points about the right kind of incentive is, if I may venture my understanding of it, is that something like cash is not necessarily a good incentive. And I want to ask you a question, since we've brought up his name already, that it seems to me that John List did his study about educating poor people in Chicago and he found out that giving them cash to go to school actually worked and it was effective and useful. So, you know, cash or no cash.

Yeah. So the difficult thing with incentive is that often we don't know how they will work unless we try. Like policymakers don't like to hear that because your incentive might have the effect that you anticipate or the opposite and try and see what happens. Okay, so you can pay people to go to the gym. Either they will start going to the gym or that they will stop going to the gym. Of course, once you remove the incentives, right. As long as you are paying, people are going to do what they are paid to do because this is how they make money. But presumably are not going to pay people for education because people pay for education. It's costly. So you're not going to do it forever. You're just trying to introduce them to the activity, or they pay to go to the gyms, or that you induce them to the activity. And it might work, it might not. Theoretically, the incentive will work if it allows you to try something that it allows people to try something that they wouldn't try anyways. So maybe it's at the gateway drug like it gets you to education. And then you will discover that, oh, I'm good at it, and it opens doors and let's do will backfire if you take something that the person is Already doing and they enjoy doing. And you confuse them as to why they are doing it. Like paying kids to do something that they like doing, like drawing in the old overjustification study, like playing an instrument. If you pay them, you confuse them. They're trying to understand, like, why do I play the piano? Do I like playing the piano? Is this something that I'm required to do so they can get the dessert? Or is it something that I'm required to do to make money? And kids will get confused. Now, an adult that already knows if she likes playing the piano will not get confused. Like a pianist when you pay her for her performance, doesn't think that she likes playing less because you pay there. She already knows that she likes playing and she wants to make. Make a living out of it. And these people will actually play more if you, if you pay them. So it's a bit of a long answer, but you, you will need to analyze what your incentive does in, in the context and then run the experiment.

So let's suppose that Tim Cook calls you up and says, I am truly facing a great resignation. 10% of my workforce. Now that I said, you have to come in one day a week and soon you'll be coming in three days. I am having a great resignation. So help me solve this problem. How can I motivate this? How can I get this done? What kind of incentives, what kind of goals, what kind of targets? What do I do so that people aren't quitting Apple? What do you tell him?

Yeah. When he calls me, when I'm supposed to say that we talk every month or so. Right. But I talk with other many managers, not him, that are dealing with resignation and we're trying to understand what's going on and whether the resignation is even healthy. Maybe people were stuck in jobs that they didn't like that weren't good for them. And maybe we have a bit of a shift in some music culture where people are going to find a better match. Maybe some people discover that they don't like to work outdoors, and other people discover that they only want to work outdoors. And people are just shifting and moving and that's good. We had this great disruption and we are repositioning ourselves when it gets to keeping your employees satisfied. We know that there are three basic needs that people are trying to satisfy at work. They are trying to get money. They want salaries. They want perks. They want to do something that is interesting. They want to use their mind or at least not to be too bored. So they want to be Interested and they want to make relationships. They want to make relationships with, with other workers. They want to maybe have power. They also get their status. So their relationships with their neighbors depend on their job. If someone works for Google, then their family and neighbors might have different relationships with them because they can say that they are Googler. I would try to understand what is missing from their recipe for your employees. And it sounds like one of the issues that high tech companies are struggling with is the interest, the growth, allowing people to do something meaningful and interesting. And they're not necessarily struggling because they are worse than other companies, but because they are hiring people that really care about that. And so their employees, all the people that on our survey say they want to do something meaningful, they want to make impact in the world. And when you are working for a giant, it's often hard to see that. And when you're working for a company that in the past were mainly focusing on the social aspect and making work fun and like food and clubs and whatever, and that was supposed to compensate. So there were salaries great. And the social aspect was fine. And that was supposed to compensate for maybe lack of interest. Now the social aspect is less there. People are working from home. They want to know whether they make a difference in the world. How can you help with that?

But it's interesting, you didn't exactly say pay on more money, which seems to be kind of the knee jerk reaction.

The thing with paying more money is that usually everybody else is matches. So it doesn't quite. It just leads the industry to pay more money. I mean you can pay more money for a specific employee that you are trying to keep, but if you're just like increasing the pay for everyone, then no, Facebook will have to do the same. And it will be good for the people, for the high tech employees. So sure. But it's not going to create a competitive advantage for you usually.

I want you to talk about forming a good connection with your spouse using this concept of getting things done and goals and mutual goals and supporting your spouse's goals. So pretend you're a marriage counselor right now and let's bring in this topic of goals with your spouse.

Yes, thanks for asking. You know, it's one of the the new hot areas in motivation science and in studying relationships. We have more people that are studying the intersection and a greater understanding that relationships are built on supporting each other's goals. That a relationship usually starts when you're helping each other. We often meet people around now doing something together. It could be like a hobby that we help each other with it could be anything. Certainly when two people start family, then they are instrumental for each other. But also I might help my partner's educational goals, they might help my financial goals. And this is really important for relationship maintenance. Like the relationship will stay strong and good as long as we are relevant for the other person's goals. That, you know, we are instrumental in a way. People that move away, that are no longer helping each other with their goals, their relationship tends to suffer. What we also find is that, well, we are all a little bit egocentric. And so we tend to focus too much on how much we are being helped by the relationship and ask too little of what makes us necessary for the other person. And so my relationship satisfaction, and this is something that we find with some recent studies. Relationship satisfaction is a function of how much the relationship supports your goals. Okay. How much the other person knows who you are and less so by how much you know them, how much you support their goals. However, it's mutual if you support them and then support you, that both parties are happy in their relationship. I also want to say one more thing is. Let me actually present this as a question. I often ask people, will they ever ask someone to accept the pay cut or even quit their job so that they themselves will get a better position? Just a stranger. Would you ask a stranger to quit their job so that you will have a better job? And most people say no. Right? Like that sounds terribly selfish. But then you say, and what if that stranger is your spouse? And this is when people say, yeah, I guess I will ask my spouse.

Then this comes up when one of the spouses gets transferred or offered a job in another place.

Exactly. Yes. Yes. So in the relocation, you know, we are willing to be more selfish with the people that are close to us because we see ourselves as part of one unit. Great. It's not that you versus me, it's us. Be aware that in this us there are two people. And if one of them is not being said, served by their relationship, if their goals are not supported, then this relationship is not going to work.

Now, I just want to point out or make an observation and you tell me if I'm right or wrong. But this past discussion about spouses has been about supporting the other spouse's goals. That's different than she sharing goals. My wife likes to hike, I like to surf. We don't share hiking or share surfing. But I should support her love of hiking and she should support my love of surfing. Is that what you're saying?

Yes, yes. And when you do something together, then it's very intuitive that when you are both on the kayak, then of course you're supporting each other's girls, but it's not necessary if your wife goes to school and you keep working to pay the bills, that's a very common way of supporting. So most couples are not like, at least not all the time working on the same thing. There is certainly some division of labor and like different interests and that's good, that makes the person interesting. You need to be useful for them.

No, I just thought of one last question. I promise this is my last question.

I promise you I'm enjoying myself. You know, just don't ask about astrophysics.

Probably most podcasts don't go this tactical and this specific. So we discuss spouses. What about kids? How do we help them set good goals? How do we help them get things done and make progress?

Yes, how do we help them? I think that a lot by an example, by an encouragement, a lot by supporting their intrinsic motivation. One of the common mistakes that we observe is that parents rely on extrinsic motivation. So you should eat that food because it's healthy, because it will make you bigger and stronger and smarter. Or you should study math because in few years you will want to go to college. This is like telling an adult that like you know, in a million years you'll want to do something and therefore you could work now. Right? Like why should that someone who's 12 year old worry about college try to make the healthy food tasty, the homework fun and that is engaging. That is something that maybe we do with the family, maybe we we do well playing music with sports. Actually, often parents have the right intuition that sports for children should be fun. It's not about running the trade millage, about playing something that they enjoy. Help your child find their passion. They're identifying the goals that they enjoy pursuing that they are willing to be passionate about. And then lots of personal example. Don't tell your kid to do something that you don't do.

Like wash dishes. I wash dishes. I wash dishes. I swear I washed dishes.

I would say that, yes. Let me add that. Tell your child to wash dishes. Tell your child that the families is a group of people that is working together.

I got it, I got it. It was very useful and in my mind you're in that category of Cialdini, Duckworth, Milkman, Acher.

Wow. I am happy. They are good friends, they are inspiration and maybe with your help we could make the world a better place. We are counting on you because we don't talk to the public as much.

And I look forward to the day when you win your MacArthur Award. And I'll say I knew her before she won her MacArthur Award.

Okay, that might be as close as I'm going to get, but thank you, guys.

You know, everybody needs goals. That's like climbing Mount Everest. Well, don't die trying to get a MacArthur Award. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Islet Fishback. If you want to be remarkable, you have to accomplish goals. Ilot Fishback is truly an expert in this field. My thanks to Jeff C, Peg Fitzpatrick, Shannon Hernandez, Madison Nismer, Alexis Nishimura, and Luis Magana. They help me accomplish my goals. I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is remarkable, people. Until next time, be safe, be healthy, and remember, vote as if your rights depend on it, because they do. This is remarkable people.