A Sense of Doubt blog post #4036 - Use Skinner's Law to Overcome Feeling Unmotivated

Credit: Jorm Sangsorn / Adobe Stock

A Sense of Doubt blog post #4036 - Use Skinner's Law to Overcome Feeling Unmotivated

Before I start, I should mention that today is day 3900 since Mom died. I mark these occasions with at least a short reflection, and just 100 days from day 4000, which seems more significant. If for no other reason, I keep this count just to see the number get bigger and marvel at its size. It just feels wrong.


I have been feeling unmotivated lately.

I wrote about this issue yesterday.

Thursday, March 5, 2026

A Sense of Doubt blog post #4035 - Letter to Dad #25 - ANGST

I am really battling to start things, to be productive, especially with things that I am resisting for one reason or another.

This battle does not mean that I am not productive. I am not idle. I am meeting deadlines and working through the things I need to work through.

But the motivation is not always there. In fact, with the school assignment that was due back on Wednesday, I had a real mental block to it. I just didn't want to do it. PROFOUNDLY. Like existential crisis, deep-seated unwillingness to do it.

This article stood out to me given my recent struggles.

However, I am not fully in favor of it, even though I am sharing it.

I am all for rewards for getting things done. I do reward myself. I will put off a thing I want to do, eat, experience, and reward myself with it when I finish the thing that I am resisting finishing.

Punishment? I am less interested in punishing myself for not doing something, like in the example below wagering that someone can have your Playstation if you fail to lose weight. For one thing, I don't have a Playstation. For another, I would never make such a wager.

Missing deadlines often come with their own form of punishment. For instance, in my class, I would lose 10% for being one day late. That's a punishment. And I even considered not submitting the assignment on time and taking that grade hit just because of how very much I did not want to do it. After all, the assignment was worth only 10 points in a class of 300 points total with the A set at 89.5% and above. In other words, I need at least 255 of those 300 points to earn an A. Obviously, there's lots of points left to earn. Sure, 10% of 10 points is only a single point, so that would not have been a significant grade hit. 

Still, I did the assignment and submitted on time. I often find the motivation as the deadline approaches. This is why I posted three blog entries yesterday: Tuesday 3/3 - Thursday 3/5. I had put off working on my blog while I suffered the angst of not wanting to do what was actually not a difficult assignment. I also did not write any fiction for two days. Then, once finished, I did both things yesterday, completing three blog posts and writing fiction on my novel project.

Today, I have other work that needs doing, though nothing due today. I am stalling but I do not feel as unmotivated as I did earlier in the week. Probably the sense of achievement in finishing the assignment that I REALLY DID NOT WANT TO DO has fueled my fires at least somewhat. I feel more motivated. Not REALLY motivated, but better. Not as bad.

I am working around to a point. I promise.

Here it is.

This Skinner's Law stuff may work for you, and it may not.

As I think about how I am going to practice in the mental health space, how I am going to listen and respond to clients, I am very hesitant to apply a "one tool fits all" approach. 

My own case demonstrates that finding motivation and overcoming resistance is a very individual thing. What worked for me may not work for others. For me, there was no magic trick. The thing was due Wednesday, so I did nothing else Wednesday but sit down and hammer away at the thing with increasing frustration (as I shared in yesterday's blog).

For others, the threat of having to give up one's expensive video game machine may have been the thing to spark the motivation.

Reverse today as I will dive into the assignments due Sunday later on after blogging, emailing, and writing.

It's all about selfcare. Doing what's needed to protect your mental health while also doing what needs to be done in life.

I am now living by the line that ENO said in the ENO movie (Tuesday's post):

We all OVER ESTIMATE what we can do in a day and UNDER ESTIMATE what we can do in ten years.

I have lived my whole life battling the tendency to OVER ESTIMATE what I can do in a day.

These days, at the end of the day, I often review just what I did, especially when beating myself up over the six things I didn't get done.

Some days are more productive than others, and one must make peace with that.

But even days with lower productivity than others days had productivity, and often, one accomplished more things than one realized because of the pain of not doing a bunch of other things.

Review the day. Feel pride in what you got done. Give yourself grace to do better if you really needed to get some things done and didn't. What changes can you make to be more productive the next day?

Wednesday, August 6, 2025

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3823 - Reflections on Getting Things Done (GTD) Part One

That's why GETTING THINGS DONE (GTD) is a great model for being productive by sorting tasks into those that need to be done with others in short and long term goal lists.

And some things can be done right away of they will only take a minute or two. This is how task switching comes into play. For instance, I just took a few minutes to answer an email while writing this blog entry. And then I felt a sense of accomplishment.

Whatever keeps us going, right?

Thanks for tuning in.


https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/feeling-unmotivated-use-skinners-law-to-get-yourself-back-on-track/

Feeling unmotivated? Use “Skinner’s Law” to get yourself back on track

Big Think recently spoke with behavioral scientist and author Katy Milkman about what really motivates us and steers our behavior.

by 

Jonny Thomson

May 23, 2024

• In the 18th century, Jeremy Bentham built his philosophy on the idea that humans are motivated by pain and pleasure, and this idea is supported by many social sciences today.
• A concept called “Skinner’s Law,” named after the American behaviorist B. F. Skinner, suggests that we can manipulate our motivation by making the pain of not doing a task greater than the pain of doing it — or making the pleasure of doing it greater than the pleasure of not doing it.

• In the 18th century, Jeremy Bentham built his philosophy on the idea that humans are motivated by pain and pleasure, and this idea is supported by many social sciences today.
• A concept called “Skinner’s Law,” named after the American behaviorist B. F. Skinner, suggests that we can manipulate our motivation by making the pain of not doing a task greater than the pain of doing it — or making the pleasure of doing it greater than the pleasure of not doing it.
• “Commitment devices,” such as setting up rewards or punishments for completing or not completing a task, can help us self-motivate and increase our chances of success.

In 1780, hunched over a table at his home in London, Jeremy Bentham wrote the first lines of the first chapter of one of his most famous works. It read, “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters: pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.”

The British philosopher built an entire philosophy around this idea — that we are all motivated by pleasure and pain. Lucky for him, then, that almost all of the social sciences today agree with him. We are a hedonistic, happiness-seeking species who fear the pain-inflicting monsters of the world. Under all the pretense and bravado, we can be reduced to the simple push-and-pull mechanisms of the carrot and stick. After we get over the humbling and demoralizing simplicity of this, we can learn a few valuable lessons. We can game our own mechanisms and manipulate our Benthamite sovereigns. We can do anything. It’s all to do with something the writer George Mack called “Skinner’s Law.”

To help us make sense of this cheat code for human motivation, Big Think spoke with behavioral scientist Katy Milkman, the James G. Dinan Professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and author of How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be.

Commitment devices

According to Mack, Skinner’s Law is that when you are procrastinating or finding a task hard to get on with, you have two choices: either “make the pain of not doing it greater than the pain of doing it” or “make the pleasure of doing it greater than the pleasure of not doing it.” Since we know that we are only motivated by two things, we can use our higher, rational faculties to work that fact to our advantage. Skinner’s Law is named after B. F. Skinner, the American behaviorist who developed the idea of operant conditioning with his experiments on rats and pigeons. Skinner’s main argument was that human beings can, just as rats can, be conditioned to behave a certain way when given the correct pain-pleasure incentives.

The trick, then, is to set yourself pleasure rewards or pain punishments for doing (or not doing) a certain task. Essentially, there are two ways to motivate yourself: intrinsically or extrinsically. Intrinsic motivation is when you want to do something out of some inherent drive or desire. You might just want to eat pizza. Extrinsic motivation, though, is when you do something for some further benefit or reward (or to avoid a punishment). So, I don’t eat my pizza because I want to be trim for my beach holiday. The genius behind Skinner’s Law is that it turns our most powerful intrinsic motivator (pleasure) into an extrinsic reward.

Milkman told Big Think that these kinds of techniques are called commitment devices in the behavioral psychology literature. “It’s a tool for a person to self-motivate,” Milkman said. “It’s something where you opt in to creating an extrinsic reward system.” She described a study involving smokers trying to quit. There are two groups, each given the same “standard smoking cessation products,” but one group is also told “they will lose the money if they fail a nicotine urine test in six months. What they found was that it increases quit rates by about 30%.”

The strongest master

We know, then, that if we want to succeed in any task, we need to set compelling commitment devices to keep us on track or to raise the stakes. The next question is: How can we make the best kind of commitment device? Is it better to promise yourself pleasure or to threaten yourself with pain?

It turns out that pain is by far the stronger motivator. As Milkman told Big Think, “So [Daniel] Kahneman won the 2002 Nobel Prize for a theory called ‘Prospect Theory’. He and Amos [Tversky] showed that we find pain more motivating than equivalent pleasure. For example, if you lose $20, you’re more upset, and then if you find $20, you are happy. The pain outweighs the pleasure.”

Using all of this and Milkman’s advice, here are three practical bits of advice:

Make a wager: Find a friend or a family member, and bet them some sum of money or some item you value that you will do a certain thing. “Okay, Dad,” you might say, “if I’m not 5 pounds lighter by my birthday, you can have my PlayStation 5.” Ideally, place the “wager” in some kind of intermediary location so you can’t back out of the deal if you lose. Commitment devices only work if you can’t slip out of them.

Social accountability: Tell everyone you’re trying to do something. Tell them your target and your deadline. Keep people updated about your progress. This serves two purposes: to present the carrot and the stick. The carrot is that you get praise, support, and advice from your closest relatives. The stick is that you might be embarrassed or ashamed if you fail.

Avoid boredom: It’s easy to assume that boredom is some middle, neutral state somewhere between pleasure and pain—it’s just absence. But not according to Milkman. As she put it, “There is research to show a fundamental dislike of boredom. It causes us pain to be bored. In 2016, one study showed that when presented with a long, monotonous, and tedious film fragment, people would rather shock themselves than be bored. So, as a general rule, try to keep yourself busy. The devil makes work for idle hands; bored people do silly things.

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2603.06 - 10:10

- Days ago: MOM = 3900 days ago & DAD = 554 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.