Brian JohnsonChairman & Philosopher in Residence at Heroic

Focusing on what's important now.

15 Jul 2023 · 1 min

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Brian Johnson explains motivation as a simple function (value × expectancy ÷ impulsivity and delay) and advises chunking goals into the nearest reasonable short-term timeframe to increase focus and intensity. He recommends setting aggressive, near-term deadlines (e.g., ‘end of this weekend’) to direct energy toward what matters now, and to adopt a playful 'experimenter/game' mindset when pursuing goals.

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Motivation is a function of value, times, expectancy, how much you want something and how much you expect to be able to have it, divided by your impulsivity and your delay in terms of the timing for the goal. So when I tell the team we want this done end of this weekend, that's a short term goal that's now going to focus your energy on doing things that if it was a year from now, you wouldn't focus with the same intensity. So we want to chunk down goals as much as we possibly can into the nearest reasonable timeframe and then go unreasonable with it, and then focus our energy on what's important now. Then it's all one big game, and you get to be the experimenter with a clipboard, really truly having fun with it. Go all in on it. But it's a game.