Change, Trains & Flywheels

Photo by Jake Sloop on Unsplash

A friend of mine is an engineer. Let's call him Sam. Somewhere in the bowels of Sam's current work place, is on old steam engine. Obviously, this steam engine is pretty heavy, it is not made of feathers and it is not easy to move. I know, because Sam tried. He pushed it with all the force he could muster but...no movement. Then, one day, Sam decided to lean against the train for a while and...lo and behold...it began to roll. Thankfully the wheels were braced, otherwise that old steam engine woulda rolled right outa that place with Sam clinging on to the rear. Anyway, get to the point you say, what does this have to do with change?

As any therapist worth their salt will tell you, the pace of change for most folks is pretty slow. We loop through unsuccessful patterns over and over, we get stuck in ruts, we engage in self defeating behaviour because 'that's just the way we are'. Sometimes we are aware we are doing these things, and sometimes we are not. Like Sam's train, it's pretty difficult to get people to change or move forward by just pushing (unless you give them an almighty HUGE push equivalent to a speeding train). Major life events like deaths, births and break-ups are the psychological equivalents of speeding trains. Of course, change is still possible without these events. But in this instance, a more effective strategy is to adopt the metaphorical lean, it might take a while, but eventually, it will get the job done.

So, what does this have to do with flywheels you say? Other than rhyming (sort off...) with automobiles (you know, as in Planes, Trains and....erm, yeah, I'm a genius).

A flywheel is a mechanical device that uses a significant moment of inertia for rotational energy. A moment of inertia is a measure of an object's resistance to changes in its rotation. Flywheels resist changes in their rotational speed to help steady their rotation. To put it more simply, flywheels, like people, resist change to remain steady. Because, let's face it, change is hard. It is the opposite of steady, it rocks the boat, it capsizes us, it sends us hurtling forward, or backward or sideways into new and uncharted territories. And yet, change is essential and unavoidable. So, have patience with yourself and others when attempting to change internal or external states. And resist the temptation to push too hard, as this will often have the opposite effect.

The Mystery of Motivation

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about motivation. Not surprising, given that I have an occupation that requires a great deal of the stuff. As most free-lancers know, motivation is a slippery old fish. When working from home, procrastination often rears its ugly head. The lure of the snooze button is a constant, and planning, shopping and cooking always seem to eat into a large portion of the day. Finally, one's impeccably neat office suddenly seems in need of further tidying when there's work to be done.

Note the following case in point. A friend of mine (now a very successful Hollywood director) once confessed that he spent an entire year sitting around the house playing video games and watching films when he was supposed to be writing screenplays. What's odd is that this guy loves writing and making films pretty much above all else. So, what gives?

The Neuroscientist Candace Pert claims that the brain is primarily motivated by the pursuit of pleasure. Yet, as in the case of my friend the director, even when an activity is pleasurable, people still struggle with motivation. Furthermore, the path to pleasure can be circuitous at best, and often includes a fair amount of pain. For instance, what motivates someone to climb Everest when the journey is so treacherous and, let's face it, uncomfortable? Is it the moment of bliss at the summit? Or the pleasure that results from the achievement of something so arduous?

There seems to be a relationship here between a task's relative difficulty (i.e. how challenging does something need to be in order to motivate) and our enjoyment of it. If something is too easy, we get bored. But if the mountain is too high to climb, motivation wanes. So we need to feel like something is both challenging and achievable in order to feel motivated and we enjoy doing things we are good at. 'Achievability' obviously varies from person to person and through time, so it's possible my film maker friend didn't feel ready or skilled enough to tackle his screenplay and this impacted his motivation.

In his book Obliquity, the economist John Kay notes that profit is an ineffective motivator for businesses. Hence, when a company places profit at the centre of its strategy, it is often less profitable then an organisation that is motivated by things like innovation or the needs of the public and its workers. So companies that have a clear set of values which are then manifested through external goals are financially more successful then those whose only goal is financial success. Similarly, people who are motivated by something other than money or happiness, often end up with, ironically, money and happiness. The American founding documents talk about 'the pursuit of happiness' as a primary motivation for people, and yet it appears as though happiness is a side effect of something much larger. The question is, what is it?

There is an argument that we are motivated simply to survive and procreate. Yet for most people, these basic motivations rarely lead to a sense of fulfilment. Rather, it seems that a sense of meaning beyond basic survival is the wider theme that motivates us. We want our lives to have value and values are essentially the foundations of our lives. They are the glue that binds our motivations together and anchor our internal states to the external world. Similarly, a core of shared values is elemental when building a social community, whether that community is a business, a group of friends, a political party, or a family. Ultimately, we want our lives to have meaning and to share that meaning with others.

Still, as Pert indicated, if there is no pleasure in the pursuit of meaning, whether that pleasure is immediate or delayed, we can easily become de-motivated. So, to paraphrase a wise old friend of mine, the key to a motivated life is this; "Step One: find stuff you like. Step Two: get good at the stuff you like and ideally get paid for doing it. Step Three: find people you like and share the stuff you like with them" And the delightful side effect of this three point plan is...happiness. Simply put indeed.

The Optimism Bias

I've been reading a book called 'The Optimism Bias' by Tali Sharot. In a nutshell, the premise of the book is that people tend to have a cognitive bias towards optimism, and that this bias has been naturally selected for because it helps us to get things done, to move forward, to procreate. The reality is, most of our futures will be filled with a mix of negative, positive and neutral experiences. And yet, most people imagine their futures to be much rosier than they will turn out to be. Those of us who view the world more realistically are said to be mildly depressed. As I've said elsewhere in this blog, a little positive thinking is surely a good thing, and numerous studies have shown that a positive view of the future can and often does become a self fulfilling prophecy.

And yet, it seems to me, that a little depressive realism can be a useful thing. Perhaps, if a few more finance wizards and government officials saw the glass for what it actually was (sometimes half full, sometimes half empty, sometimes on the swift path to empty because its been spotted by a very thirsty giant...) many of the pickles we, as a society, currently find ourselves in, might have been avoided.

The reality is, things don't always turn out well. People get sick, people die, markets fail, buildings fall, the earth shifts, divorces happen. The oddest thing, is that people are quick to accept that bad things do and will happen to others, and yet, we rarely imagine a future for ourselves with difficult things in it. In our own projected futures, we win Oscars, we get rich, we have perfect marriages and angelic children. This is of course, a mathematical and logical fallacy. Who are the people bad things are happening to if not us? Are we not the people?

Nevertheless, the optimism bias remains firmly in place for most of us, because to see the world as it really is: i.e. a slow (or swift) march to death with pleasures and pitfalls and boring bits, just isn't that much fun. And let's face it, if our past and our futures are ultimately stories we tell ourselves, we might as well accentuate the positive, cut out the dull parts, and write ourselves a good old fashioned Hollywood ending.

Muscles, Memory & Movement

When the body performs a movement, the muscles and the brain send messages to each other, forming a neural feedback loop that will be reactivated the next time this movement occurs. Sometimes, this loop can be interrupted or malformed through injury or bad habits, resulting in injury or muscular atrophy.  Lately, I've also been wondering whether some of these feedback loops are actually sub-optimally formed during early development. 

For instance, it seems that babies learn movement patterns through trial and error and in a relatively specific order (eg: certain muscular patterns must be activated in order to crawl, walk etc.).  The baby throws its arm out to the side and the brain says oh, that's my arm, and it can do that, wow!  Gradually muscular patterns are developed that allow the baby to perform complex movement tasks. However, it seems to me that these patterns can be interrupted as it were, by accidents, injury and genetic predispositions, and as a consequence, a baby can form various 'work arounds'.  The result is a series of sub-optimal movement patterns that are then in place for life.  I wonder whether some injuries later in life are the result of these flawed patterns, and whether the patterns then need to be reset in order to encourage healing.  Anyway, certainly food for thought.