Motivation

What to do.  Why to do it.  I could easily get away without doing this—should I do it?  I’ve struggled with motivation a lot, coming up with dozens of systems that would always work for a week or two and fizzle out, leaving me behind again with nothing to guide my life.  It’s never hurt me bad, never given me bad grades or filled me with stress or driven me mad with sleep dep.  Without a whip to push me on, I was left to find my own positive reason to do the things I had to get done while balancing the fun things I wanted to do.  I struggled with this for years. One night this summer I was finally done.  For the 5th time this year, but done all the same.  I had to get out of my own head.  I started to text myself from 2 am until I passed out at 3, waking up to about 800 backslashes and continuing the conversation.  I gradually put together a way of motivating myself that aligned with the beginnings of oughtlessness, which I had been carrying in my head for the last few months.  I explained to myself:

I’d think about it this way: you GET to be alive.  That is your privilege.  Beyond that, you don’t get or owe anything else.  So you want to do everything else, truly.  You want to watch youtube, you want to go climbing, you want to write your post.
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This means, if you only want to do what your doing, that you have to be able to answer “why” at all times.

I’m not sure I fully comprehended their significance half-awake in bed that morning, but those texts changed my life.  Even with the wrong your.  Those texts are why I’m writing today, and what I intend to explain through my writing today.  This is what I’ve been so excited to share as I’ve patiently explained oughtlessness and identity, so that this could have the same philosophical grounding for you as it did for me.  This is what has been driving me for the last 4 months, and what I expect will continue to drive me for the rest of my life.
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How is this so significant?  Why did this work for me when nothing else had?  Because this system was backwards.  Instead of needing my system to motivate me, I was suddenly motivated to create a system that worked.  I needed a why, not a how.  It wasn’t productivity for the sake of productivity, it was productivity for the sake of my values, for the sake of my self.  The system was no longer the focus—it was just whatever worked the best to make me do what I wanted to do; I could experiment with how I motivated myself without changing why I motivated myself.  To explain this difference, I want to lay out more sensibly what half-conscious me was trying to communicate.

I tried to show through oughtlessness that you owe nothing to the world, intrinsically.  What I was trying to get at was that there’s nothing you “have to get done”.  There’s nothing but you to force that “have to”, given that we have free will.  Yes, there are situations where if you don’t do a certain thing, you’ll die (though in real life it’s typically less black and white).  But your choosing to want to live is a choice like everything else.  My morality post was based on the value of survival as part of success.  If you don’t consider continuing to exist success, then your morality will be quite notably different than my own.  Oughtlessness implies that you create your own moral framework, because existence doesn’t come bundled with its own.  This understanding is necessary for seeing that there should be no division between those things you are obligated to do, by some greater force, moral or otherwise, and the things you want to do for yourself.  Everything you do is for yourself.  Moral and legal arguments can obfuscate this chain of reasoning, but eventually, as you keep asking why you’re doing something, you will find your values at the root.  Already, you do everything you do every day because it’s what you want to do, whether you’re happy about it or not.  Otherwise you wouldn’t do it—again, because you functionally have free will.  Yes, some things we say we don’t want to do, but when asked why we’re doing it then, our reply will necessarily involve some value in the world that we hold dear enough that we’re willing to do something we do not enjoy for the sake of some other, (implicitly) higher value.  We may not be conscious of these reasons throughout the day, for all of our tasks, but they are necessarily there, unless you simply are not in control of your own body.

But this realization carries powerful implications.  As I began to see in my second text, this dares us to ask ourselves why we do everything we do, since the answers must be there somewhere.  That answer might be lazy and unsatisfying—“I’m too tired to go get the remote and turn the TV off”—or blatantly obvious—“I’m hungry”—but it’s there all the same.  Often, this question alone can be powerful for me: if I realize I’m not doing something for a good reason, I will stop doing that thing.  It may take me weeks to figure out a way to stop, but I’ll find it.  Again, realize that the power in this is that you have no other reason than your own to ever do anything—that is the core principle of oughtlessness.  Thus, if your own reason is unsatisfactory, you should not be satisfied with the action it’s causing.  This alone has greatly helped me shape what I do throughout the day.  But this alone is what oughtlessness brings to the table.  Identity, too, has a great role to play in motivation.

Simply asking yourself why you’re doing something normally isn’t enough to feel sure whether it’s the right thing to do.  What decides whether your reason is legitimate and valuable, or just an excuse?  What factor sorts between two actions that both seem to have good purpose, but can’t both be done?  You do.  And this is why what you are matters.  IIT restricts us from both extremes of identity: we are not a static person, slingshotted through the story of life, but neither are we an independent identity in each new moment, as CDT would have it.  These may seem like obvious points, but they carry power in a world where you’re the only one controlling your self. Your values, those of your current self, are all you care about.  By definition.  If these values are liable to change, because they’re poorly thought out, conflicting, situational, highly specific, or not particularly meaningful, then you’re going to work against yourself.  This is bad for you no matter what your values are: you’re going to have to work harder to make the same difference on the world.  And when your values change, not only does this mean that your future self will be working against your own values (something you should want to prevent, as I just argued), it means that you will exist less, too.  You are defined largely by your (functional) values—indeed functionalism might define you wholly by your functional values, as they will dictate every action you consciously take.  Thus, as these values fade and change over time for your future selves, you will share less and less with their identity.  You will be driven from the world at the whim of a future self.  No, it doesn’t matter if your future self trades your values for something entirely different that makes them incredibly successful and popular and influential and attractive and whatever else.  If they achieved these things by abandoning their past values, they have abandoned you.  You share nothing more with them than a name, and have no greater interest in their success than that of a random passerby (although I suppose one that shares your name and birthday and is likely able to get into your phone).  But aside from these token similarities, unless they are driven by the same motivations as you—the same memories, friendships, loyalties, desires, goals, dreams, or whatever else brings you to act—it is not you achieving whatever they do.  Even worse, it means that these values, the loyalties and dreams that drove you, have been abandoned.  In summary, if your values change, you are working against your future self, and they are driving you from existence.

But these are not independent problems.  This is the beauty of IIT.  You are working against your future self because you don’t share your values with them.  You are being pushed from existence by your future self because you don’t share your values with them.  These problems are one, and it is a significant one.  If your values aren’t passed down, moment to moment, day to day, year to year, they are abandoned.  Whatever it is you cared about, it has been forsaken, at least by the self you used to be.  You don’t want this to happen.  You want to exist, so that you can do whatever it is you want to do.  And to keep existing, you need to find a way to keep your self as consistent as possible.  Then, part of you, current you, lives on in your self.  You share this part with your other, future selves, so by IIT, this part of you remains.  Since you comprise everything you care about, this is good for you.  So now, through IIT, we have found something all people should want to do, for themselves.  We want to have a consistent motivation for our actions, one that is likely to last well into the future.
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Oughtlessness has left us with no motivation but our own values, and now this single metric finally allows us to judge these values’ quality for ourselves.  IIT has left us with an obligation to ourselves to create a system of values that is thoughtfully constructed, general enough to adapt in many different circumstances, and meaningful enough that it will persist even as the rest of you changes.  In doing so, you will understand why you’re doing everything you do—it won’t be disguised behind the requirements the world seems to force upon you—and you will be confident that this purpose will not change in the future, so your work today will be valuable to your self years hence.  This method of motivation works like no other.  It is not arbitrary.  It is not accompanied by unwanted consequences.  It is completely voluntary.  And it requires, essentially, that you just keep doing what you’ve always done—whatever you want.  The only difference is that now you’re responsible for knowing why you want to do what you do.  It may seem silly.  But the effects of this seemingly simple change on my life have been unexpectedly drastic.  I sleep when I want, I watch what I want, I work on the projects I want to, I spend time with those I want in my life.  I’m healthier, more productive, and happier than I’ve ever been.  I rarely waste my time doing things I’m not deeply motivated to do, and I work hard to stop it when I do.  It’s meant the difference between most of my time feeling wasted, and most of my time feeling like it is being used exactly as I want.  It’s meant the difference between working because I have to and working because I want to.  It’s finally spelled the end of an era of guilt in my life that lasted many years.  It’s these differences that have made me so eager to share this realization with you all, to explain the one root cause for this unanticipatedly tremendous change in my life, one which shows no sign of stopping.  I am who I want to be.  And I want to share this with everyone I can.

I cannot construct your own system of values for you, nor make you follow them.  But I can share with you what I’ve learned in creating my own.  Simply asking yourself “is this what I want to do” a bunch doesn’t really cut it.  I think it’s much better to begin by asking yourself “why” a few times throughout the day.  Do this when you feel like you may not actually know why you did whatever just you did, whether it’s watching an hour of TV or being mean to a friend.  As I’ve argued before, there is, necessarily, a reason for it.  Sometimes, for me, it can honestly be lack of control; I wanted to be doing something else, but I just didn’t have the mental strength to stop whatever had sniped me in.  Sometimes it can be a much deeper part of myself that I wasn’t aware of before.  Be willing to take the time and energy to dig into this part of yourself—I assure you it’s worth it.  When you get an answer, keep asking why until the answer isn’t a reason but an explanation.  It’s this tipping point, the last true why, that should inform your sense of purpose.  This is the difference between “because I like to make people happy” and “because Steve is a person”.  Eventually, your highest set of values should entirely be these sorts of statements, ones that have no further why to give; they are the starting principles of your motivation.

I also recommend taking time to ask why you’re doing what you’re doing when you’re happiest with how you’ve spent your time.  This might be time spent relaxing with friends or time spent working on a huge project.  This line of questioning can be valuable not to inspire you to change, but to force you to realize what it is that you truly value.  It doesn’t need to be some higher purpose, like peace or happiness.  These should be honest, personal values.  It can be tempting to try to work down from something that sounds like a good central purpose, or even something you believed was your purpose.  Don’t.  That’s not you.  You want to create a system of values that truly encapsulates why you do what you want to do, one that will actually motivate you instead of creating a bunch of non-inspirational aphorisms that you’ll forget by next week.  This is a process.  You won’t figure it out the first time through.  But it’s one you shouldn’t stop until you’re honestly satisfied living your life in the name of the values you have found driving your actions.  As I’ve argued above, the better you do this process, the more work will be put towards these values, and the longer this central part of you will exist.  So doing this well is important, possibly the most important thing you can do for your self.
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As these values begin to come into alignment, note what you’re doing throughout the day and try to align it with these values.  Try to keep some track of how much each thing you do helps you achieve whatever purpose you are interested in.  When you become more comfortable with understanding your actions in this light, try to challenge your explanations.  Question whether you’re really doing something for the reason you gave, or if you just gave that reason so that you could keep doing it.  Begin to work to actively tailor your day to give the most time and energy to those things you find most rewarding.  This may sound like work, but given that the incentive is literally your existence, I have found it surprisingly easy.  Always remember that it is you driving this process.  And seeing your life in this manner finally lets you do what I mentioned about towards the beginning of this post; I claimed that you are the factor that sorts out legitimate and insignificant reasons, and chooses between two actions that both seem, at first glance, well motivated.  Now you can do just these things.  By seeing your actions in terms of the value they bring to you and your existence, you can identify and sort them by this value.  Inevitably, there is not enough time in the day for all of the things you might want to do.  You are left with the primary task of existence: choosing from a near infinite set of things what it is you want to do.  But now you have the tools to do so—you know that there is nothing and no one else to choose for you, and that you want the motivation for your choices to be as general and personally meaningful as possible.  This is how you find motivation for existence.  It is no mean feat, but it is a rewarding one.  Manage your life in this way, and you can truly be who you want to be.  This is an addictive satisfaction unlike any other I’ve found in life.  It is inherently rewarding—it means I am always doing that which is most rewarding to do.  I hope to never live another way.​

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While changing your personal motivation is incredibly meaningful for you, I have a deeper motivation for writing this post.  You may have noticed that both oughtlessness and IIT are not at all restricted to persons.  As this system of motivation was built almost wholly out of these theories, it, too, is easily expanded to larger systems.  Societies, drawn out large enough to be independently functioning systems, have no oughts placed upon them.  They are free to define their own values and purpose.  Societies, too, can and will change over time, but largely maintain their identity moment to moment.  In many ways, they fit these descriptions better than most people.  Since these specifications formed the basis of my system of motivation, all of my earlier arguments can easily be fitted to them.  Thus, societies have an obligation to themselves to identify a common, uniting purpose and ensure that this is truly the force that drives its actions.  This is why new countries (and even companies) write constitutions and statements of purpose: without a common motivation, such organizations are likely to fall into disarray, working towards mutually exclusive goals without a point of focus.  But while some countries are better than others at staying consistent with their own constitution, how many actively ensure that their laws and structures are consistent with the motivations established at their founding?  Can you think of any country that acts with this sort of care for its own purpose for existence?  I cannot.  Yet, as I argued above, any failure to do so constitutes self-harm.  It ensures that work will not be productive and people will function without understanding why they exist, what they work for, or why anything matters at all.
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I claimed that this logic holds for independently functioning societies.  I think this label cannot fairly be used for countries in today’s world; only Quinn’s much larger category of the Takers would succeed at fitting this description for anyone it encompasses.  Currently, this would include all of humanity except for the few villages in the world that we still keep near-zero contact with as a society.  For a better definition, I implore you to read Quinn’s work.  But looking at the Takers through this lens is unsettling.  Why do we do what we do?  What could possibly be the common purpose behind such a confused and angry world of people?  Thinking about our culture in this way has led me to a single possible answer: we work for the advancement of our society.  If you disagree with me, please give me a plausible alternative.  But as I see it, it is this circular motivation that led the Takers to farm until surplus, establish empires across the globe, turn thousands of cultures into a global monolith, develop mathematics and science and computers, and every other unprecedented act we have achieved.  Yes, we have been wildly inefficient in this process—that’s what happens when an identity does not define its own purpose to itself—but no other motivation that I’ve found is able to explain so much of what we’ve done, and begin to explain the gusto with which we’ve done it.  So, as it stands, this is our purpose: our society works to make our society better.  Were you ever presented with this purpose?  Asked if you approved?  Asked to improve upon it?  If not, today’s the day.   Ask yourself if you are satisfied with this purpose for our society.  Ask yourself what purpose you might imagine for us—it might even be the same as the purpose you find for yourself.  Finally, ask yourself what our world might look like if it knew why it did what it did.  What if it was motivated for the same reasons you were?  How would such a world function—would it at all?  Now, is this the world you live in today?  Because if not, we have a long path ahead of us; the next step is to change not just the actions of the Takers, but their motivation.  I hope you’ll want to join.