Mark. Yes.
I got a bone to pick with you. I'm coming in hot today.
It's not my fault. I'm coming in hot today.
No, no, no. OK.
So lately, OK, I've been doing all this work, getting these
episodes ready. I do this, all this background
research, I come up with these ideas, and then you come in here
and you just shit all over them. You shit all over them, Mark, so
I got a bone to pick with you. I'm coming in hot today.
I got copious notes. Oh boy.
I stayed up late last night going over this, got a good
night's sleep, got up, got up early, went over these again.
I'm coming. I'm coming at you.
Should I be intimidated? You seem confident, Drew.
Very. Confident today.
Good saying, Mark. It's the Subtle Art of Not
Giving a Fuck podcast with your host Mark Manson.
These are three things I really want to talk about today.
I've wanted to for a while and I'm ready.
I'm coming in hot. I'm going to I'm going to argue
with you when you push back on me today.
My hair. I'm liking how my hair is
looking. I'm confident today, Drew is.
Fucking locked in. I'm like suddenly unconfident
because I think I got complacent on these.
And I'm like Drew. 'S got it.
I like, glanced through the outline a couple times.
I'm like, I'm good, I've been talking about this shit for 20
years. All right, let's see what
happens. Let's see what happens, all
right? And that brings us to the fuck
of the weak mark, which is confidence.
Now, several years ago, you wrote this this piece called The
Confidence Conundrum. Several.
It was like 11 years ago. Was it that long ago?
Yeah, we're old. OK, it was a while ago.
All right, all right, all right. It's a fairly short article
though, so I wanted you to expand on some of the ideas.
First we'll go through like what the conundrum is, OK?
And then I went. There's several points you make
in this that are a little bit counterintuitive that I think
that we can wrap our heads around.
And you? Know it's funny 'cause this
article never took off when we published it, but it's I find
myself referencing it in reader questions audience questions,
fan questions all the fucking time it comes up so so many
times and basically basically for people listening the
confidence conundrum is that confidence does not come from a
an expectation of success. It comes from a comfort with
failure and I think this is something that people
misinterpret or or get wrong or or misassume about confidence.
They think that they to feel confident in doing something,
they have to have complete assuredness that they're going
to do it successfully. Whereas my argument is what
gives you confidence is being OK with the fact that you might not
be successful. Right.
OK, So that's the the conundrum there is that like how can you
be confident if you're not confident about anything in the
1st place? Like there's this like chicken
and egg thing. Right.
And, and yeah, so this solves that kind of paradox that people
get locked into of like, well, I'm not confident, so I fail at
everything, but because I fail everything, I'm not confident at
anything. And this resolves that paradox
by saying, OK, yeah, you, you don't become confident that
you're going to succeed. You become confident with the,
the act of failure because ultimately the act of failure
is, and we can get into this in like more granular detail, but
like the act of failure is, is what makes you better at stuff
And so people. And then as you fail more often,
you become more, you become more confident because you are
comfortable with those failures. But people misinterpret that as,
oh, he's getting better at the thing.
Right. OK, OK.
They they think it's the success that's driving the confidence,
whereas actually it's the repeated failures.
That drives it, Right. OK All right.
All right. So, yeah, putting the cart
before the horse just a little bit here.
That's OK. No, no, no, that's OK.
That's where we're going. That's a good road map.
There's a few observations you make about confidence that I
think illustrates these points that you're already alluding to.
One of them is that external achievements don't necessarily
create confidence like you just said.
Why is that, though? Why is it like here's an
example, OK, like Serena Williams, right, one of the
greatest tennis players of all time.
She constantly she would she's been very open about like at the
peak of my career even I was like nervous, anxious, not sure
about myself. That's an example of like this
external confidence. That or external success that
didn't translate into confidence.
Why is that? That's crazy.
I I love hearing stories of this.
You know the basketball player Bill Russell, who is the most
decorated successful basketball player of all time?
13 championships. He vomited before every single
game. That's insane.
Even after he'd won 10 championships and had been MVP
like 6 times, he still vomited before every single NBA game he
played out of nerves and just fear.
I actually think success can make you less confident because
the more successful you are, the more you have the lose, the more
costly failure because which makes it more difficult to be
comfortable with failure, right? People talk about imposter
syndrome all the time. What is imposter syndrome?
Imposter syndrome is experiencing a great level of
success and feeling worse afterwards, right?
Being more fearful after your, your incredible success.
And I think the reason that is, is because once you have that
great success, it actually calls into question whether it was a
fluke. Did you get lucky?
Are you going to be be able to replicate this?
Are you going to be able to do it again?
And if you fail next time, it's going to be so much more costly
and hurtful than it would have been before you had that success
in the 1st place. So success can actually increase
in security because it makes failure more expensive.
Right, right. Yeah.
And you make that point that that confidence is rooted in the
perception of ourselves, not the external reality, like you were
just saying. Yes, basically, which I thought
of this example of. Like there is a real fine line
there though, too, because you can have, let's say, a startup
founder who one of the ways they've become successful is
through these repeated failures, but they don't lose their
confidence along the way. But then you might have somebody
else who's got like this high paying job who is very insecure
because they're afraid of losing that.
And but where is that line? So like, how much of this is
delusion? If you have that start up
founder who's like, well, this failed.
I'm going to go on the next one, try something else.
This failed. Whatever, I'm awesome.
I'm like, I'm going to figure this out.
Like where is that line between delusion and actual like real
confidence? I think there there is some
useful delusion of just kind of irrationally believing that
you're gonna eventually figure it out and get it right.
I think ultimately, like when people talk about confidence,
really what confidence is, is it's a trust that you are going
to progress and get better, right?
So it's like in my own entrepreneurial journey, I
failed dozens and dozens and dozens of times.
But what made it feel OK to me was just the fact that I knew
that I was smart enough and honest enough with myself that
each failure is going to get me closer to my goal.
So each, each product launch that failed, each book I wrote
that nobody downloaded or bought, each article that bombed
like every single time I, I, I trusted my own ability to look
at it and be like, OK, what could I have done better?
What can I learn from this? How can I improve?
And because I was good at those things or I eventually got good
at those things, it gave me a confidence to weather more
failures, right? And then once you're comfortable
weathering the failures, you stop fearing failure, which
actually gives you other people perceive you as being confident.
OK, OK, yeah, so it's it's not necessarily a delusion, it's
more just like a reality check you're.
Saying yeah. And it's, it's a trust of like,
I, I don't know how I'm going to get there, but I trust
eventually I'm going to figure it out.
Like I'm going to keep trying things and I'm going to keep
learning and I'm going to keep getting better.
And one day I will find my way. There OK now, but you you also
point out some ways that that some common ways that we try to
increase our confidence that aren't that that don't work very
well One of those is through delusion.
So what about, you know, the there's kind of like this,
there's a lot of like the affirmations, especially like
affirmations that just are like blatantly, obviously not true,
right? Just they're bullshit.
That's one way we do it. The other way you you pointed
out was focusing solely on external self improvement.
Can you elaborate on that one a little bit?
OK. Well, let me start with the
affirmation thing, right? So it's like a, a common piece
of self help advice. If you want to be more
confident, you know, stand in the mirror and tell yourself
like I am beautiful, I am smart, I am brave, all these things.
The problem with that is that as you try to convince yourself
that you have these external qualities, essentially you're
trying to convince yourself that you're already at the finish
line. And the more you convince
yourself you're already at the finish line, the more costly
failure becomes, right? It's like, well, I just spent
three weeks looking in the mirror telling myself how smart
I am, so this next thing has to work.
Otherwise I've just been lying to myself, which creates a
greater fear of failure, which creates more anxiety, which
creates less confidence, right? Whereas I think the correct
affirmation is, I'm going to figure it out.
I'm smart, I work hard, I don't give up.
I'm honest about my failures. I can take feedback.
I can stomach a little bit of embarrassment or rejection
between all those things. I'm going to eventually get
there, right? I think the external thing is
that people just, they put too much weight on the external
markers, right? Like you could be, to use the
Serena Williams example, right? Like you could be the best
tennis player in a tournament and not win the tournament.
So if you are placing all of your satisfaction and all of
your definition of success simply on, you know, winning the
tournament or winning the match or whatever, then you're
potentially setting yourself up for, you're measuring yourself
by something that's not 100% within your control.
Ideally, you want to measure yourself by things that are 100%
within your control, because that is going to give you a more
accurate sense of progress, improvement, progression,
etcetera. OK, I got you.
Yeah. So like, you know, if you get
somebody like you might think getting a A6 pack abs you know,
or a six figure income, whatever.
Even after achieving those goals though, you can still feel very
insecure if you haven't addressed those deeper self
perception issues, which the self perception issue is
something like you just said, I think would would be within your
control totally. And and I don't know, there,
there is a little bit of going back to the affirmations thing
there, there's a little bit of research around this where,
yeah, if if you're doing especially like the external
wants, I am beautiful, I am smart, I am loved by everybody
outside. You know, those don't work very
well. I think you're right there.
The nuance there is the if you look at things that are within
your control and things that can actually be, can actually be
verified, you know, around you, then that's those can maybe,
yeah, those can work short term, probably, but yeah.
Yeah, I mean, as you know, I'm not big on affirmations.
I, I think it's, there's probably a way to make them
work, but I don't know that I think there's just as many ways
to fuck them up so. OK.
The next big point you make is that true confidence comes from
being comfortable with what you lack.
You've kind of already alluded to this a little bit.
You give a few examples like confident business people are
comfortable with failure. You've already kind of touched
on that socially confident people are comfortable with
rejection and people confident in relationships are comfortable
with vulnerability and getting hurt too.
Those are three kind of areas that you touch on I.
Think those last two are super important because people
struggle with that a lot. Like it is part of human nature.
It is part it is just a natural fact that all of us are
deficient in some shape or form in our personalities.
Like there is something we are bad at.
You know, whether it's some of us are very bad at managing
emotions, some are bad at planning, some are bad at
empathizing, some, you know, like we all have a thing that we
kind of suck at. And that's just a fact of life.
Like you can't there's nobody on earth who's good at everything.
And yet in our social relationships or a relationship
with the world, there's kind of this tacit assumption of like, I
can't show my flaws or weaknesses.
Like I have to pretend like I've got it all together and I'm
supposed to be this great person who's always like there for
everybody and that everybody's going to like.
And that is just a purely unrealistic goal or expectation.
The fact of the matter is because you are a unique
individual who has strengths and weaknesses, natural flaws and
natural gifts, you're going to naturally turn some people off
and you're naturally going to turn some people on.
And so the, the goal, like a successful quote UN quote,
successful social life isn't having everybody like you
because that means you're just trying.
You're, you're basically getting very good at performing and
faking for a wide variety of people.
A successful social life is, is being comfortable with that,
that natural assortment of people in the world, right?
It's like the ones that you kind of naturally turn off or who
that you don't vibe with or that just don't understand you or
you're not going to get along very well.
Just moving on as quickly as possible and getting over the
rejection or the hurt or maybe they said something bad about
you or whatever. It's like that's life.
It's just that there's always going to be people in the world
like that and it's, there's not necessarily anything wrong with
you. There's not necessarily anything
wrong with them. It's just a bad match.
You, you're not socially compatible.
And so you, you should move on as quickly as possible to the
people who are. And even within a relationship,
that is also true in certain areas of, of whether it's a
romantic partnership or a family relationship or whatever.
Like, it doesn't matter how much you love a person, how close you
are with a person, whether it's your best friend or your mom or
your your partner, there's going to be some things about them
that drive you fucking crazy. And there are going to be some
things about you that drive them fucking crazy.
And you don't hide those things. You don't pretend like they're
not there. You don't try to like fix them
or change yourself or whatever. It's just that's part of the
relationship is, you understand, like, hey, this is the 10% of my
personality or your personality that just drives me up the wall.
You know, we're both aware of that fact.
We still accept each other Despite that fact, you know,
let's just try to navigate it effectively.
Like that's what actually creates a, a comfortable
relationship. I, I would say it, that's what
generates a confidence within the relationship.
If there's not a tolerance for those things in each person,
then that drives insecurity, which is a lack of confidence
within the relationship. Because then you're always
terrified that you're going to say the wrong thing or that the
conversation's going to slip into territory that's not really
allowed, or that you're going to start being judged for
something. It it's, you have to kind of get
all the cards on the table, the good, the bad and the ugly in
order to have that intimacy and that that vulnerability, because
that is ultimately what makes you feel confident being around
another person. Right.
Yeah, yeah. And like the, the rejection
thing specifically within relationships too, I think is a
real important point you make. Like in Models, your, your
dating book, you talk about how it's, it's used to sort people.
But the ironic part about it too, is the more comfortable you
are with rejection, the less you get rejected, the less you get
sorted out. Right.
Like I was thinking about this and you've told this story
before, so I'm comfortable bringing it up.
But when you met your wife, yeah, that's what happened.
She shot me down. Can you, can you tell that story
real? Sure, 'cause I think it's a
great one that illustrates this point.
So when I first met my wife, she shot me down.
Yeah, not like rudely or aggressively or anything, but
like, I tried to chat her up and she was just, you know, she's
kind of given those like, one word answers and looking around
and, like, clearly not interested, right?
And by that point in my life, I had developed the maturity and
the self-awareness to realize this girl's not into me.
Instead of wasting half my night trying to fight it or convince
her to like me, I should just thank her, tell her to have a
nice night and move on to to the next person, right.
And so that's what I did. By that point, I developed a
habit of doing that. So I, you know, I get 234
minutes in the conversation. She's clearly not into it.
So I told her, I said, hey, it was great meeting you.
I, I hope you have a really nice night.
And I moved on. And it's ironic because that
really impressed her. Like she was like wow, he
totally picked up on the fact that I wasn't interested, was OK
with that fact, and then was still polite and respectful and
respectful Despite that fact. And that sub communicates a lot
of qualities in a person that's that's rare.
Like most people aren't comfortable or aware enough to
do that. Or confident enough to do that.
Right.
And so she said that she was like, yeah, as the night went on
and she's, you know, other guys started talking to her.
She was like, shit, I should have talked to that first guy.
And that, I mean, and that happens a lot.
I mean it, it's like, and I don't want, I don't want to get
too sucked down the dating rabbit hole as an example, but
like, like in professional settings as well, right?
Like it's like, I think most people's natural tendency is
they don't want to suggest anything, say in a meeting or to
their boss or something that might get shot down because
they're, they're like, Oh, that's going to make me look bad
and it's going to be embarrassing.
But it's actually the people who are willing to make suggestions
and put themselves in a place to occasionally get shot down and
understanding that, like, Hey, you know, out of 10 of my ideas,
probably five of them, at least five of them aren't very good,
but I'll never know unless I voice them, right?
It's, those are the people that, that A, it's eventually they
will have a great idea and they'll be rewarded for it.
And B, it's just human nature that you respect people who are
willing to put their neck out, right?
Like it's, it's essentially your boss or the higher ups are going
to be like, well, I, I really like that this person is willing
to, to kind of fall on their face.
It shows a lot of confidence, right?
It shows a lot of a willingness to grow, a willingness to
improve, a willingness to hear feedback and get better.
Like that's just another example of like the more willing you are
to be rejected in a in a situation over time, the less
you will be rejected. Right.
Yeah, that's kind of ties up your your conclusion of this
whole idea that you have, which is the route to positivity runs
through negative, negative. Right, Which is the backwards
law, right? From Subtle Art, essentially.
So it's the acceptance of a negative experience is itself a
positive experience, whereas simply pursuing the positive
experience is itself a negative experience, right?
Like trying to be liked by everyone all the time is fucking
miserable and completely defeats the purpose, right?
All your mind space, yeah. And trying to be right about
everything just is so intensely stressful and agonizing that it
completely defeats the purpose. So it it is you have to get
comfortable with the failure. It's it's not even that Like,
hey, getting comfortable with failure is good because it'll
make you more confident. It's it's like you have to or or
otherwise you're just going to be a neurotic mess your entire
life. Yeah, there's no other way.
Yeah, right. Well, cool.
OK. You haven't disagreed with me
yet. Well, that's the warm up.
I'm waiting, I'm waiting. Man, yeah, like this is the warm
up. Coming out with your your fists
up, I would. Like, no, this one I actually
agreed with you on, so I'm I handed that one to you.
Welcome. OK.
So I guess the next segment is where you're going to come in
hot. But for now, go forth
confidently. You're looking at me like I got.
Crazy eyes today you have 3 cups of coffee.
I've been up since I was out. Up early.
This is what happens when you sleep.
Well, I know. You should go back to not
sleeping well. All right, we'll be right back.
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All right, we're back with brilliant or bullshit.
And I feel like whatever I say, Drew's going to come at me.
So I'm. Coming at you.
Here we go. Brilliant or bullshit, Mark?
All right, this is something I've been actually, I found this
a couple of years ago and I've been thinking about it a lot,
OK. And I think I'm finally ready to
talk to you about it and come at you about it.
OK, OK, Knowing my luck, you're going to agree with this one.
And this is the only one you're ever going to agree with anyway.
OK. Brilliant or bullshit Mark.
External rewards don't actually demotivate us to do the things
we just naturally enjoy doing. Yeah, we need to set context
for. This you need to set some
context for this. Well, I mean, we should sum up
the, I guess I don't want to say traditional psychological
research, but like the, the, the research on motivation until I
guess now like kind of the the consensus, I guess you would
say, is that for boring, annoying tasks, like, I don't
know, say making widgets or filling out a spreadsheet or
whatever, external rewards increase motivation.
OK, So it's the more you get paid for each widget, the more
widgets you're going to make. But for internally quote UN
quote internally motivated or what psychologist called
intrinsic motivation like creative tasks, things that you
care deeply about, things that you love that.
You would just do for. You would just do for the fun of
it or because you think it's important or because it's a
'cause you believe in external rewards will actually demotivate
you. So it's like if you're really
passionate about saving the animals, saving the seals, and I
show up and I'm like, hey, I'll give you $10,000 for every seal
you save. It will actually demotivate you
and it will complicate your emotional relationship with,
with saving the seals And you'll, it'll, it'll make things
more difficult for you. That's where the research is,
right? It's called the, it's called the
undermining effect. OK.
So that your your intrinsic
natural motivation to go do something is undermined by
external rewards? And just be clear because have I
written about this or? I'm not sure if you specifically
have. Because I have a story about.
But you, you go ahead. Because I, I feel like I'm, I'm
gonna steal your Thunder. Let's let's OK, well, let's
first start. Just make sure we got the
definition. Sure.
OK, so we've already mentioned the words extrinsic and
intrinsic. Yes.
OK, so intrinsic motivation is when you again, you're just
doing something for its own sake.
Because you love it. It's exciting.
Playing an instrument painting, you're not doing it for any
other. Reason.
Believe in it. Exactly.
Whereas extrinsic motivation is you're doing it for some
external incentive that you have.
You're getting a degree or a pay raise or approval from.
Praise, right, anything like that, right OK, so this comes
from what's called self determination theory.
Not real important, but that's where it comes from and we're
often told that Oh yeah, you need to find those things that
are intrinsically motivating find your passion.
If you work a job you love, you'll never work a day in your
life, you know, like that kind of thing.
Or teach your kids, you know, find out what your kids
naturally like and then encourage them to keep doing
that without any external, you know, reward of any kind.
This is what we're told. The assumption underlying all of
that is if you're not intrinsically motivated by
something, there's something quote, UN quote wrong with you
or the choices you've made-up to that point or whatever it is,
Right? OK, well in fact it goes even
further like we just said is that these external rewards can
undermine your internal drives to to just do these things that
you love, that you enjoy. Which anyone in a creative
industry can relate to this because it's, it's, you know,
you, you love music when you're playing in your bedroom, but all
of a sudden you get a record deal and, and there's like all
sorts of money attached to performances and albums and
right, how many songs you write and all this stuff.
And it like kills the joy. And that, that's what I want to
talk about. Yeah.
Is that actually true or not? Is that bullshit or is it
brilliant? You want to get your should we
get your take first and then I'm going to come in and shit all
over it. Maybe I'll shit all over it
today. I'm skeptical.
OK. I actually don't know.
OK, so a funny story about this and this this might be stealing
your Thunder. No, no, no, but, but, but it's
not me stealing. It's actually Philip.
OK. Philip makes his podcast debut.
Philip makes his. So for listeners, Philip, Philip
has been working with me the longer than you, The only person
who's worked for me the longer than you have.
Philip's worked for me for 12 1/2 years and he handles all the
tech side of everything, but he also has a master's degree in
psychology and he's an insanely smart person.
He's also absurdly logical and rational, yes.
So he's Doctor Spock. Yeah, he is Doctor Spock.
So I remember this is ages ago. I, you might not have even you
probably you had to have been working for me at this point.
But anyway, this was ages ago and I don't remember if it was
an article or a chapter in one of my books, but I wrote, I
wrote a whole thing about this, OK.
I wrote a whole piece about intrinsic and extrinsic
motivation. And I base like the piece
basically just said what we'd talked about.
He's like all the self, the termination theory and all this
stuff. And I, I, I vividly remember
Philip sitting there and poking holes in it as he does
endlessly. Like he's done this a number of
times over the years. But I remember specifically with
this one, he poked so many fucking holes.
Like he was like, well, what is extrinsic?
Like? Like what if you aren't aware
that you love it because of the approval you're getting?
Oh damn man, we're not going to be able to argue about this.
I knew I was so. Excited.
I knew he was at all over. This.
OK, OK, keep going. I knew he was going to steal
your Thunder. You know, he, he kept coming up
with all these counter examples. You know, he's like, he's like,
well, how do you know if it's act, if you're actually
intrinsically motivated, you know, or like how do you define
an external reward? How do you separate that from
your internal feelings? Because those two things
happened. Like anyway, he just like went
to town on this and it actually reached the point where I didn't
publish the thing. Like he tore, he like poked
enough holes in it that I'm like, I don't know if I should
publish this anymore. And I remember at the time it
like pissed me off. I'm like, God damn it, Philip,
like this is, this is a really good article on motivation.
Like, why are you messing up my shit?
But I, I think he had a point and, and I don't, it's funny
because I think over the years I've returned to this theory a
couple times, a handful of times.
It's, it's one of those psych theories.
It's very elegant. It, it explains things very, you
know, like the musician example I just gave.
Like, it, it, it, it's like a just a just so story that like
describes something that we see often.
But yeah, my brain always goes back to Philip and I'm like,
yeah. It's almost a little too
perfect, is what it is. It is a little a little too
clean. So I'm actually, I'm agnostic on
this one. I, I feel like it's the sort of
thing like there's probably something there, but it's
probably incomplete. It's probably just too cutely
packaged and perfect and explains everything, you know,
with no psychology's messy, right?
All these things are really messy.
So anyway, I'm curious to hear you're OK.
I feel like you were you were, you were expecting me to like
support this and you were going to I.
I didn't know for sure, but I was like, I think you're going
to find something in here and maybe you still.
Will I don't know, I I mean, I I generally like the I like the
theory, but I also I don't wholeheartedly buy into.
It right OK, yeah, OK well, and I think that's I think that's
kind of where I land too. The thing that was really
interesting to me though was, you know the self determination
theory kind of came out like 7 in the 70s.
It it was yeah starting to become I'm bigger ever since
then back in the 70s there were people like critiquing it
specifically around this undermining effect.
There were there was a small group of people who like pointed
out all a lot of what like Phillip pointed out here, but
also they didn't stop and they still are to this day.
They're like OK, this is like a pretty well established pretty
well accepted theory that has these major problems with it.
And there was this guy Steven Reese.
He's since passed away, but he was one of the the lead kind of
researchers kind of leading the charge against this whole
undermining effect. And he pointed out some things
that I thought were just there were I don't he had some astute
observations around this. One of them was that just the
behavioral measures we used to like the gold standard for this
is what's called the free choice persistence paradigm.
That's you know psychologists love to make up stupid names
like this right Essentially what they do is they'll bring people
into a laboratory. Setting So first of all, you're
bringing them into a laboratory setting.
All right, they sit them down and they give them some novel
task, like a puzzle or a game or something that's supposed to be
fun. They just inherently think it's
fun and they're they just kind of like let them go, like do
whatever. And they're measuring how much
time they spend on these. That is a supposedly their
baseline intrinsic motivation around it.
Then they introduce a manipulation where they either
say, OK, now I want you to play this puzzle or game and I'm
going to give you a reward for it, or they don't give you a
reward for the two groups, right?
No reward versus reward. Then they say, OK, experiment's
over, but they leave the game or the puzzle with the person.
The researcher leaves the room, but there's like a two way
mirror or something. Measure how much time do they
still play with it and then whatever change they've had from
the the first experience they had, then the reward, then the
the the next experience with this gamer puzzle.
That's supposed to be some measure of intrinsic motivation.
OK, that was like the gold standard and and is still used
in a lot of the research today. OK, first of all, is that really
intrinsic motivation? Is that really, are they
internally motivated to like, you bring them into a, a, a lab,
you sit them down and say, here's a game.
What the hell are they supposed to do?
Yeah. Right.
Maybe there's the room by yourself.
They're just. Bored or they want to please the
researcher, they want to be a good participant.
And so they play it a lot or or they don't play it a lot.
And then the reward comes in all this stuff.
Like I don't think we're actually measuring what we think
we're measuring here in that paradigm at least, right?
So that's one of the problems that he points out.
Totally, totally. I mean, another one too is like
a lot of times the, the results from these studies, they
interpret them in a very circular way.
Like if they have a child, they bring a child in and they have
the child draw and then they reward the child.
Or just if they, if they don't reward the child and they keep
continues to draw, they say, oh, that's intrinsic motivation.
If they reward the child and they draw even more, they're
like, oh, extrinsic motivation has now taken over.
So it's like heads, eye win tails, you lose, right?
So there's a lot of that going on with this too, Those two.
OK, fine. So those are like experimental
designs, which Reese argues this is like, you know, the
undermining effect is actually just an artefact of these
studies, the way we're doing these studies.
But the two bigger ones that I really think kind of drive it
home are are 1. He thinks that these rewards are
just distractions, especially as one time rewards.
They don't translate very well to the real world, right?
You're just giving somebody a reward in AA1 time setting where
in the real world was like we have salaries or grades if
you're in school or there's these long term incentives.
And that has a completely different dynamic, he argues.
And it's not very well studied how those work.
But the few that do suggest there is no undermining effect
in these long term situations. Yeah.
I would agree with that as well. Yeah.
You know, I, I'm, I'm trying to think like I'm trying to think
about my own personal experience, like as somebody who
is paid externally, like I have large external incentives on my
quote UN quote intrinsic, my creative work essentially like
things that I would do, like I would write and make videos and
stuff for fun even if nobody paid me, right.
So I'm just trying to think about my experience with it.
I don't necessarily believe that extrinsic rewards interfere with
intrinsic motivation. Like that's not, that has not
always been the case in my experience.
Like there have been, there have been a number of cases in my
career where I was extremely excited to do something and I
got paid a lot for it or rewarded a lot for it.
And it, it was just a bonus. It was like, this is the this
took an amazing thing and it made it even better, right?
That's one of the points Reese makes, too, is that when you
interview people and just ask them, yeah, like, that kind of
flies in the face of the whole thing.
Yeah, it surprises me. Nobody like just rounded up like
100 or 200 creative people or like find, find like a bunch of
artists, Find a bunch of people who work for like NGOs,
volunteer for nonprofits and stuff, you know, find people I
don't know, people who spend time at church.
Like just interview him and just give him a classic kind of old
school questionnaire of like, you know, does this.
Did these situations interfere with your motivation at all?
What I've experienced is that where things get dicey, it
because a huge part of I guess being motivated in your creative
work is there there is you are in many ways following your own
emotions. Like it is the thing that makes
writing satisfying is writing the thing that feels very
important that like it, it like scratches my emotional itch,
right? So like that is what is
satisfying about writing. But if somebody shows up and
offers me a, a shit load of money, that is very exciting,
but I have nothing that I, I really want to write about that
I'm not like emotionally, like I don't that intrinsic motivation
is missing. Then the extrinsic motivation
can create a lot of dissonance, right?
Like then it becomes very difficult because it's like,
well, I feel like I should find something in the right, but I
don't have anything that I want to write, but I really should
write it because I want this reward.
But then that rewards kind of making me feel bad because it's
making me feel bad about not being excited about the thing
I'm writing for. So like, that's when you start
getting this like tumble dry of emotions going inside yourself.
And I, I think what I have found in my own experience is just
getting really good at saying no to those external rewards when
they don't align with the internal rewards.
Like that's the important skill that you have to develop.
Yeah, Reese actually that that kind of drives with one of the
one of the theories he has about these external rewards is that
they're not undermining intrinsic motivation.
They're just distractions from what you're actually going
after. That's like hit one of his big
points is that we can't separate from like especially like in
that lab setting or really any setting, but especially in the
lab setting. If you come in and somebody is,
let's say they are just playing this game because they like it.
And then you introduce this reward, say, hey, if you play
this game and you do really well, you get a reward for it.
Now you're like, you've taken the focus off the game and it's
now on the reward. It's not, it's not that it's
undermining your motivation, it's that you're just distracted
from it. It's causing a maybe performance
anxiety, that sort of thing, where it's not actually
decreasing your your motivation for something that you like.
And this is where we can bring confidence back into it, right?
Where it's like if I'm just playing a puzzle game because I
enjoy puzzle games. You don't care if you fail.
And so you, you, there's no
question. There's no like you feel good
about it. You feel very confident in your,
the plane of the puzzle game. But if somebody shows up and
says like, hey, if you solve this faster than the other 10
participants in the experiment, I'll give you 100 bucks.
Now suddenly it's like, now I'm being measured against other
people. Now I'm, I'm competing with
other people. Now I, I have to think about
failure. Failure has a cost to it.
I'd start becoming insecure. I start getting nervous and
anxious and suddenly the game's not exciting anymore, right.
So you can see the mechanism that causes it.
But yeah, I, I mean, I, I agree with you, it's far more
complicated. This OK Reese points this out
too. He's like, he goes deeper than
just the undermining. In fact, he thinks the whole
intrinsic extrinsic thing is just total bullshit.
OK. And one of the things is, is
that there's a lot of motivations that don't fit
neatly into these two little categories, motivations way more
complicated than just these two intrinsic extrinsic thing and.
What should what should the listeners take away from this?
Well, OK. Don't listen to the bullshit
motivation research. Well, let me, let me.
OK. We talked in an early episode
one time. I don't know if you remember
this, but we talked about, you know, I love woodworking and I
just do it. That's an intrinsically
according to self determination theory, it would be an
intrinsically motivated thing that I do.
And we talked about like, oh, you know, I could make a
YouTube, you know, channel for all this and do all this.
What you pointed out in that episode was you said that's a
completely different activity. It's not that, that like the
money in the YouTube and the, the attention or anything like
that would undermine my motivation to do woodworking.
It's that it's a completely different activity.
It's not woodworking anymore. It's content creation.
Again, that goes back to the distraction thing.
The tragedy of all of this is, is that for years I bought into
the self determination thing. And I'm like, anytime I, I
noticed that I was like, oh, I'm going to go do something and I
realized I was doing it for, you know what external like money or
praise from outside or whatever. I'm like, I don't want to do
that because that's not then I'm not going to like it anymore.
Like that's some over intellectualizing bullshit.
First of all, totally that I did.
But I, I, I think there's a way that you can kind of have both
maybe. I, I do think, I mean, obviously
I'm biased because I said that, but like, I do think the best
way to think about it is that it is two different activities like
doing a puzzle for the fun of it versus doing a puzzle
competitively for a, a cash prize.
It's just. Not even the same thing.
Those are two different activities, right?
Playing music in your basement, writing a song for fun on a
Friday night and writing a song for thousands of people to
listen to and get paid for. Those are two completely
different activities. And and again in my career, it's
like. Writing a, a, a random blog post
and posting it on Facebook for your friends and family to see
and writing a well researched article that hundreds of
thousands of people are going to read and judge and criticize and
send you hate mail and all this stuff.
Those are two completely different experiences.
And I, I've noticed, you know, in this industry, I can't tell
you how many Youtubers and podcasters and writers and
bloggers and everything that I meet.
And it's, I think it's same across all creative fields where
it's, they love the, the creative activity itself.
They hate everything that comes. Around everything.
Around it. And so it's like they love
filming videos on their iPhone with their friends in high
school. They fucking hate running a
YouTube channel and they're two different things.
I, I'm fortunate in that I happen to love both.
Like both versions of the activity are very fun for me,
but not it's not fun for everybody.
And so I guess that is something that should people should
consider at home is that when you introduce the external
rewards, it's not that it demotivates you, it's that it
changes the nature of the activity and you might not like
the new version of the activity and that's OK.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool.
I'm glad we figured that out and we didn't.
Fight we. Didn't fight one day.
We will fight Drew one day and it will be a glorious.
Drama is good for engagement, you know, we need we need a
little of. That we should, we should make
up some controversies. It's just invent, you know, it's
just invent some, some scandals. We'll, we'll be right back.
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All right, we're back. I'm the question of the week.
Yes, we do. We have a question from Tim, who
submitted this one on YouTube, and this is something I've
really wanted to talk about too for a long time, so I'm glad he
brought it up. Thank you.
Tim. What are your thoughts about the
idea that the human psyche is made-up of parts?
Are there any parts of yourself that still feel dangerous,
unexplored, difficult to accept, etcetera?
So, yeah, this comes from internal family systems, which,
you know, Richard Schwartz came up with this back in the 80's.
The idea is that they're, they, the human psyche is made-up of
all these different parts, like Tim was just referring to in his
question, and that were made-up of multiple personalities.
We have different quote, UN quote parts that have different
motives, different desires, and and all of them serve some
function to help us navigate the world in some way.
The problem that happens when these parts don't work well
together. OK, so they they they quote, UN
quote fight with each other or they're so they don't even
communicate with each other. I'll, I'll give like a really
crude example. So I think everybody intuitively
has had the experience of like, you're kind of a different
person at work than you are, say, at home.
And you're you're probably different with your partner than
you are with your parents. And you're different with your
parents than you are with your siblings.
And you're different with your siblings than you are with your
best friends. And like we've all got these
kind of slightly different variations of our personality.
So parts work is kind of treating each of those aspects
of yourself as like a separate part in your head.
And if there's a huge discrepancy between them, like
let's say for instance, your family is super conservative
evangelical Christian and you are a sex worker, then your
professional self and your family self are going to clash
dramatically. Like they are operating on
completely different value systems.
They have different perspectives of the world.
They don't play well together. Like there's a contradiction
between them. And so you'll experience a lot
of dissonance and struggles and tension and probably have a lot
of anxiety and all sorts of issues going on in your life.
So that's an extreme example. I think the theory of IFS is
that this plays out and much more subtle ways of like, you
know, if there's a a childhood version of you that like feels
very neglected or shameful about something and in your adult
version of you, like needs to be confident in that in a similar
area than like those, it's going to hold you back and it's going
to create a lot of like internal conflict within yourself.
Right. Yes, yeah, that's that's the
gist of it. That's kind of a simplified
version of it, but really I think it captures it too.
And there's different, there's like the types of parts that we
have. Well, for one, there's like the
centering self that you have that's supposed to be able to
lead all the parts. But then there's what they call
managers, firefighters and exiles.
We don't have to get too far into this, but these, these
parts can either work well together or not work well
together. And part of the therapeutic
process is getting those parts to work together.
Just kind of like what what you said too.
I think for me anyway, the, the one of the big insights was this
idea of that integration and getting these parts to work
together rather than just like if I did feel like I was getting
pulled in different directions or whatever, why is that?
And you look down and there's usually two parts that are like,
Hey, I want this and hey, I want this, You know, that that that
kind of thing happens a lot. One of the like an example I'll
use from my own personal experience was that this was,
and I've mentioned this on the podcast before.
I for the longest time just assumed I was an avoidant
attachment style, you know, that I would just wanted to keep
people at arms distance all the time.
When I sat down and actually thought about it though, I'm
actually quite anxious too in a lot of ways as well.
Those are two different parts of me.
And it wasn't just that they were anxious and avoidant in
like close relationships necessarily.
There's they actually there was other parts of my life too that
these different parts would take over in certain situations,
right. It's like the avoidant with like
if I needed to just like get shit done and ignore everything
else outside of that, that kind of avoidant part was more like
just like grind it out, super logical, get it done.
Whereas the anxious part was more like it.
It kind of has more of a creative need for it to be
happy, I guess, or, and it's sensitive and it's more it's
it's a little more needy too. These two parts fucking hated
each other. And with me, like the like the
avoidant part was like, dude, like sack up.
Like, come on, quit being such a baby.
You don't need all these things. And then the other kind of like
more anxious side was like, actually, no, hey, you're kind
of being a Dick here and being insensitive.
It was a lot of the, the work I did around that was like getting
those two parts to work together a little bit better.
And like this part needs to take over for a little while.
Let it like that. That kind of thing was very,
very valuable to me. And then the whole integration
thing that I was mentioning that started to make more sense to
me. Integrating means getting those
parts to work together more. So back to the whole does it fit
your personality thing For me, I needed that because I I didn't
feel very integrated. I felt all over the place.
Like if you're somebody who feels like that, I think parts
work is a great thing to to get into.
You can't get it does get weird. Like you said, there's some
weird shit that they it's a. Rabbit hole for sure.
I found like I, I'm remembering now, I was like coaching a woman
years ago and it was funny because she was professionally
extremely successful, but her relationships, her, yeah,
romantic relationships were a fucking disaster.
And I remember talking to her once, she had a really hard time
with boundaries, like just could not stand up for herself, could
not give feedback or criticize or, or anything.
And and it kept like just screwing her over again and
again and again. And finally I remember being on
a call with her and I was like, I was like, look, you're really
professionally successful. Like you clearly have to give
feedback and critical feedback and, and say no to people and
establish boundaries in the workplace and with your time and
everything. And she's like, Oh yeah, I'm
amazing at that. And I was like, OK, so imagine
work mode you. What would she say to this guy?
Like imagine he's a client or a Co worker and he's behaving this
way. What would she say to him?
And she was like, oh that's easy.
And I was like then just do that.
And it was like a real light bulb moment for her.
She was like wow, I do have this in me.
Like I do know how to do this. But those two parts were so
separated. They were, so they were two
completely different worlds that she existed in like and, and
they, they never collided. And, and so I, I, I sometimes
think about, like I've noticed that about myself.
Like there's certain aspects of me that like I'm very good in a
professional context, but in a personal context I'm not, or
vice versa. Like I'm very good.
I'm very good at saying no to people in like a personal
context, but like I sometimes struggle with it in a, in a
professional context. And, and it's so I I've found,
I've found some mileage in thinking about those things and,
and trying to like apply, you know, take a skill set from 1
context and try to apply it into another.
Yeah, yeah, there's there's a lot of value in that.
I think the, the interesting thing too is, is that this, this
whole ifs and parts work thing, it's really only caught on the
last like 10 to 15 years. 2006 when you first encounter.
That was probably like right when, right before it kind of
started to get a little more mainstream.
Richard Schwartz was like laughed off the stage from like
the 80s up until like the 2000s. Nobody, nobody, everybody
thought this was complete bullshit.
And now it's like all the therapists I know are like, oh,
I want to incorporate this into my practice and so.
I, I just, it's funny because I sometimes I feel like this is
definitely getting off onto a tangent, but like, I sometimes
feel like a lot of psychology or a lot of this work is simply
finding ways to package things in a way that people are able to
receive them. It's not that you're like
inventing anything or discovering anything.
You're just finding new packaging so that it lands with
people. And if IFS is a really, they've
like parts work, right? Like it's so intuitive.
People kind of everybody's kind of experienced that they have
like different aspects of themselves.
And so maybe like labeling those aspects of yourself, kind of
formalizing it into a little bit of a system and then approaching
it in terms of like integration, getting those different parts of
yourself to talk to each other and, and, and work together
instead of against each other. You know, if I can see why
that's appealing, it's, there's something elegant about it.
And I I don't underestimate the importance of elegance in terms
of helping people. Like a well stated theory that
people understand intuitively is very very valuable in this
field. Schwartz would agree with you
that it's none of this is new too.
He he said you know he's bought the already brought young he he
brought from young he's Buddhism.
I think you could also argue to you like this whole self LED
philosophy and the parts in general are kind of a little bit
Freudian as well, which Jung and Freud were, you know, on
parallel tracks for a little while at least.
So yeah, it's nothing new, but the packaging is new and and I
think the packaging is very helpful.
It's packaged for a way that like the masses can kind of
access it for sure. And I think that's, yeah, I
think there's a lot of value around that.
So if it's something that sounds interesting to you, yeah, I'd
say go for it. Go for it.
We can do it, yeah. Yeah, sure.
Any wisdom for the week? We do have a wisdom for the
week, Mark. This one comes from Ralph
motherfucking Waldo Emerson. Oh, my man.
Yeah. I love this guy.
And it kind of ties all of this together that we've been talking
about today. It's to be yourself in a world
that is constantly trying to make you something else is the
greatest accomplishment. Here, here.
All right, well, we will be back next week.
Be sure to like and subscribe. And if you want to get on the
newsletter, I send out three free pieces of advice every
Monday morning. Go to markmanson.net/newsletter
and we will see you next week. See you guys.
The Subtle Art I'm Not Giving a Fuck podcast is produced by Drew
Bernie, edited by Andrew Mishimura.
Jessica Choi is our videographer and sound engineer.
Thank you for listening and we will see you next week.