Home > Reflections | ⏮️ ⏭️

2024-12-10

😮😊 A Surprisingly Good Day

🤔 Why did I have a good day after a poor night’s sleep?

🎮☕📈 Control, Motivation, and Performance

• What if self awareness, evaluation, and control are good for performance, but bad for motivation?
• Maybe the positive feedback loop between motivation and performance can dominate the effect of control on motivation.

graph TD  
    A[👀 Self Awareness]  
    E[📏 Self Evaluation]  
    C[🎮 Self Control]  
    M[☕ Motivation]  
    P[📈 Performance]  
    A -->|🟩➕| C  
    A -->|🟩➕| E  
    A -->|🟥➖| M  
    E -->|🟩➕| C  
    E -->|🟥➖| M  
    M -->|🟩➕| P  
    P -->|🟩➕| M  
    C -->|🟩➕| P  
    C -->|🟥➖| M  

😴 Sleep, Motivation, and Control

Then sleep deprevation may

• indirectly decrease performance through decreased control
• but the decreased observation, awareness, and control may increase motivation, which increases performance, which increases motivation

graph TD  
    S[😴 Sleep]  
    A[👀 Self Awareness]  
    E[📏 Self Evaluation]  
    C[🎮 Self Control]  
    M[☕ Motivation]  
    P[📈 Performance]  
    S -->|🟩➕| A  
    S -->|🟩➕| E  
    S -->|🟩➕| C  
    S -->|🟩➕| M  
    A -->|🟩➕| C  
    A -->|🟩➕| E  
    A -->|🟥➖| M  
    E -->|🟩➕| C  
    E -->|🟥➖| M  
    M -->|🟩➕| P  
    P -->|🟩➕| M  
    C -->|🟩➕| P  
    C -->|🟥➖| M  

🎵 Music, Motivation, and Control

Good music may decrease awareness, evaluation, and control, indirectly increasing motivation and increase motivation directly, yielding a powerful motivation boost.

graph TD  
    S[🎵 Music]  
    A[👀 Self Awareness]  
    E[📏 Self Evaluation]  
    C[🎮 Self Control]  
    M[☕ Motivation]  
    P[📈 Performance]  
    S -->|🟥➖| A  
    S -->|🟥➖| E  
    S -->|🟥➖| C  
    S -->|🟩➕| M  
    A -->|🟩➕| C  
    A -->|🟩➕| E  
    A -->|🟥➖| M  
    E -->|🟩➕| C  
    E -->|🟥➖| M  
    M -->|🟩➕| P  
    P -->|🟩➕| M  
    C -->|🟩➕| P  
    C -->|🟥➖| M  

🪞 Reflections

• Maybe focusing too much on self awareness, evaluation, and control can result in a negative impact on motivation, which feeds a vicious cycle with performance.
• Self awareness and evaluation are necessary for course correction, but too much may be crippling for motivation.
• Systems thinking points to the existence of leverage points in complex systems.
  • Of course, we want to find the leverage points
  • and often we do
  • but it’s easy to find the lever and push in the wrong direction
• Maybe self control is a lever that I’ve been pushing too hard.
• Maybe if I relax a bit, I can be less reactive to the noisy signal of performance and take a more gradual, gentler approach to control.
• Control decreases motivation; use with caution.
• Music is great for motivation.
• Mood → motivation → performance
• Maybe this explains a bit about Micromanagement
  • It’s very tempting as a means of control
  • But it’s very demotivating, resulting in poor outcomes in the long run
• Maybe this also explains that weird observation in psychology where short term sleep deprevation can alleviate symptoms of depression
  • perhaps the sleep deprevation turns off the prefrontal cortex, which results in less self criticism and the harsh resultung impact on motivation and mood