Why You Struggle to Follow Through (Thinkers vs Doers)

some of us are prompted to action by our circumstances but then there are other people who seem to be able to intrinsically motivate themselves and so this is a question that I always kind of wondered about are these people fundamentally different or am I missing something and it turns out that there is a methodology to this this is something that you can level up there are two types of people in this world people who think about doing stuff and people who actually do stuff and we're kind of aware of this right we sort of have

this idea of extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation some of us are prompted to action by our circumstances if we have a deadline if we have a test to study for if we have a particular project that needs to be completed then we can act but then there are other people who seem to be able to intrinsically motivate themselves who are more disciplined and focused and what's the difference so I've always wondered you know are there two types of people is this like a fundamental difference is this down to your genes down to your personality what

separates people who think about doing things from people who do things and you may have wondered this too are thinkers fundamentally different from doers so you may get excited about something just like everyone else but you and your friend both get excited about something and a year later you've sort of forgotten about it you didn't really follow through and your friend is actually stuck with it what's the difference that's what we're going to dive into today hey y'all I want to take a moment to talk about something that's really important online privacy whether you're browsing

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taking your privacy seriously super cool thing is that they're offering a 64% discount for members of the HG community so check out the links in the description and this is something that I've thought about a lot because I myself was a thinker right I got super curious about things I would get very excited about stuff sometimes I'd order a bunch of books I'd be like okay yeah like this is going to be my thing I'm going to learn to break dance I'm going to learn to play a new instrument and then a couple weeks would

go by in my sort of curious passion would end up dissipating completely and I looked around at other people and I sort of noticed that some people when they get curious about stuff are able to follow through with it turn it into discipline and stay consistent and so this is a question that I always kind of wondered about are these people fundamentally different or am I missing something which is why I was absolutely thrilled when I had the opportunity to work with not one but two Olympic athletes so these are people who were literally the

best in the world at the particular thing that they do and as I was working with them on unrelated things in the back of my mind I was always wondering okay like I'm going to try to figure out how did this person accomplish this how did this person develop such a passion have such strong intrinsic motivation and I came to a couple of conclusions which we'll share with you but still I wasn't quite sure right right because in this situation I have a sample size of two I have two human beings who are incredibly High

performing so I can't quite extrapolate that out or form a conclusion about the population at large which is why I was thrilled to discover that we basically figured this out there's a bunch of Novel re research in Neuroscience around extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation and how to turn from a thinker into a doer and this actually has four discrete steps that if you do something like work with an Olympic Athlete you'll discover that they went through these steps and the tricky thing is that some of these steps aren't really visible so we'll sort of see

what someone else is doing we'll look at someone who's like very disciplined and they get a lot of stuff done and we'll think to ourselves like okay I'm going to start doing what they do but when we try to do it it doesn't seem to work out and that's because the research has sort of shown us that there are internal cognitive steps that you need to take as well and as you go through these cognitive steps you will literally take something that you are curious about and turn it into sustained action so the first step

is something called a triggered situational interest so as we've learned more about the brain we've sort of discovered that everyone starts with curiosity but then there are certain things that you can do once you are curious to Foster that Curiosity and then eventually turn that Curiosity into a sustained motivation so the first thing to understand about phase one is that it's something that you don't control it is triggered by the situation so it is environmental in nature and you kind of get curious about something so if you see someone playing a particular video game you'll

be like oh that's a pretty cool game like maybe I should learn how to play that game too but there are a lot of things that we don't quite understand about curiosity and there's one major Pitfall that we tend to fall into and that is often times curiosity actually comes with negative emotions and we tend to think about curiosity as a positive thing right we think that Curiosity sometimes attracts us to stuff which is why we get confused when even when we get curious about things we seem to not do anything about it why is

that it's because in the triggered situational interest often times we have some negative emotion that actually keeps us from pursuing it so I'll give you all a simple example when I was in college I decided that I wanted to be cool man I'm going to be cool so I went to a break dancing class and I was like oh man like I'm going to learn how to break dance I'm going to be a be boy I'mma get the ladies it's going to be cool and I went to this break dancing class where a lot of

people were break dancing and I was like damn that's super cool and I felt pathetic I'm not that graceful I don't have that rhythm in my body I don't know if I can ever do this it completely destroyed my confidence which is something that is very common when we get curious about something it actually comes with some degree of negative emotion and so what a lot of people will then do is they'll say like oh you have to overcome that negative emotion right like that's what someone like Dr K on the internet would tell you

to do oh you have some negative emotion process that emotion regulate that emotion go to therapy do journaling so that the negative emotion goes away and then you can pursue your curiosity turns out that's wrong so what we want to do for and there's research that shows this if we want to move past a triggered situational interest I see something in the environment and I'm interested in it we don't actually need to engage with it further we don't have to overcome any anything within ourselves what we actually need to do is just focus on continued

exposure continued exposure is what leads us to something called maintained situational interest so this once again is an interest that is triggered by our environment so we're still externally motivated but the trigger is consistent right so it's maintained situational interest and this is where it's like super cool because if you're like me you love learning about doing things instead of actually doing things which is literally exactly what we want to do to eventually reach intrinsic motivation it may seem like it's a step in the opposite direction but when we study people who start off with

curiosity and end up with a lifelong passion this is a critical step what we really want to focus on if you're curious about something is not overcoming the negativity but just continue to expose yourself to that thing you don't have to conquer any internal thing and the reason for that is very simple because at this point it is not worth it the part of your brain that calculates the value of overcoming a negative thing doesn't think that this is worth it so if I overcome that embarrassment and I go to class the next day and

I'm really fighting and struggling with that embarrassment it's not like I learn how to break dance immediately after overcoming that emotional hump overcoming the emotional hump doesn't really get me anything at that point which is why we actually don't want to invest in doing it all we want to focus on is continued exposure so you should by all means go to the class again you should learn about it so this is what's really interesting learning about the content that you're interested in qualifies as maintaining that situational interest so you can actually watch YouTube videos about

it you can read a book about it and notice what happens when I start watching YouTube videos or reading books or talking to people or hanging out with people who are break dancers I'm not actually learning how to break dance yet I'm not forcing myself to overcome that negativity I'm just continuously feeding my mind and when I work with these Olympic athletes I find that they had this too so in the early stages of their training they frequently had a parent who maintained their situation on their behalf when we look at people who are exceptional

we tend to find that they start early and before they even develop a passion of often times their parents force them to do it and if you've had parents that have forced you to do something and you may have wondered why did this not become a passion for me that's because you probably didn't do steps three or four so we really want to focus on is continued external exposure learning about the thing sort of engaging with the thing we can deal with some of the negative emotions but you basically want to continue feeding your mind

with more stuff about your curiosity so what we basically want to do in step two is continue that exposure because if we get super passionate about something and let's say I go to like a guitar class or something and then I order a bunch of like a guitar and a bunch of music but then I know never go back to the class what's going to happen the guitar is going to sit in my closet so instead what I need to do is just focus on continued exposure into to a certain degree engaging with that community

and this is when we transition from an externally oriented interest to an internally oriented interest so phase three is called the merging individual interest and if yall are Gamers you are going to understand this incredibly well so at some point we're kind of focused on you know the external environment we're watching people do it we're sort of thinking about it hopefully you engage in some way right so I'm not saying that you can be a complete bystander at some point you should you know pick up a guitar and try playing something engage with the community

give it a shot but you don't need a lifelong passion yet and there is a critical step that triggers moving from extrinsic motivation to internal motivation and that is Theory crafting so let's think about this from the analogy of video games so I see someone else playing a video game oh like that's pretty cool like there are people playing Street Fighter 6 like Street Fighter 6 seems like a fun game so you don't have to actually play it right away right then the key thing to do is let's continue hanging out with people who play

sf6 and then eventually I'll pick up the controller I'll experiment around a little bit I'll start to have a little bit fun but I'm getting crushed because these people are way better than I am and normally I would sort of give up on it at that point that's when the theory crafting steps in so if you've Theory crafted think about this for a second who are you engaging with when you Theory craft you're not engaging with the external environment you're not watching YouTube videos about it you're sitting there when you go to bed at night

instead of falling asleep you're running through ideas in your head you're like okay maybe I could do this and maybe I could do this or I should play this character if I did this I could do it this way if I build this character I'm going to level up I'm going to have a maximum strength I'm going to use int as a dump stat I'm going to use Charisma as a dump stat cuz charisma's for noobs or whatever you're playing if you're playing Elden ring or like shadow of the earth tree because that's coming out

nowadays you know you're thinking about all this stuff so this is really important to understand because in the first two phases we are sort of getting external input our input is is from the outside and we sort of have this internal reaction we're also reacting to the outside but when we start to develop an emerging individual interest we are now dealing with ourselves we are playing around with the information we are reflecting on the information we are now focused within us and if you've Theory crafted you know exactly what I'm talking about so now what

we want to do for whatever your interest is we want to start Theory crafting it so now the reward and the focus is not external anymore it's like oh I'm thinking about this I get excited about it my mind really enjoys it and this is a critical step from becoming a thinker to a doer doers are people who think about things and reflect on things internally whereas I know it sounds kind of weird thinkers continue to expose themselves to the external environment now you may think to yourself but isn't a thinker internal no no no

no no this is what is so paradoxical and so revolutionary about it someone who continuously watches videos about self-improvement on the internet but doesn't do the internal work don't pay attention to themselves don't Theory craft their own Solutions they're continuously watching One video after another video after another video after another video they're engaged with the external environment there is not that transition so you can watch every single video on this channel and never change unless you start to do the internal work makes sense right so for anything that you want to develop an intrinsic motivation

for what you really need to focus on is reflecting on what you've learned and of course you have to try stuff out that's usually in phase two but we really want to reflect on what we've learned to sort of Foster and really support that internal interest and if you do that you'll eventually move to the last phase which is a welldeveloped individual interest so this is kind of phase four where at this point you're you're going to look at someone else and you're going to see like when this person is passionate or disciplined or Call

It Whatever you want to they have a sustained interest which is intrinsically motivated at this point they appear to be doers because they're engaging with this stuff over time so for anything that you want to develop intrinsic motivation for you need to reflect on what you've learned and ask yourself questions about it so at this point once again it's individual it's intrinsically motivated but at this point it is well developed it has a certain degree of resilience and stability to it this is where all the the Olympic athletes that both of the Olympic athletes that

I've worked with are this is where Esports professionals I've worked with are this is where a lot of doctors that I work with are entrepreneurs CEOs they're all sort of in this phase where they have a highly developed sense of this thing and it's sustainable over time now the really interesting thing is that this phase is characterized by two steps which often times we try to do way too early which can have paradoxically negative effects so the first thing about this phase is this is when we start to appreciate the contributions of others so I'll

give you all a simple example okay so let's say you Theory craft a particular build and you have all your ideas about this build and why it'll work and why it won't work and then the interesting thing is once you've done some Theory crafting you are far more likely to understand the theory crafting of someone else you're far more likely to appreciate the theory crafting of someone else know what it's like to construct your own build so when someone else comes up with a build you're like oh that's really interesting how did they come to

that conclusion why are they why do they have the stat distribution that they have why do they have the item timings that they have why are they choosing to play this combination of characters whatever the game is it doesn't really matter but I don't know if this kind of makes sense but this is when you start to really appreciate the contributions of others since you've developed your own thought process your own internal meta or strategy you can appreciate the meta or strategy of other people so for me for example you know I read a ton

and what drives my reading is not necessarily that I just want to learn it's not that I'm an empty vessel I actually have a lot of my own ideas about clinical work Psychiatry Neuroscience spirituality so now when I read someone else when I read a textbook whether it's Aaron Beck's like book on cognitive behavioral therapy or it's you know the bhagwad Gita by Krishna so whoever I read Krishna morti it doesn't really matter like now I have my own perspective and now I absorb that information so much more and it'll keep that momentum going and

as I'm sure youall can imagine the more of this stuff that I read the more of an expert I become the problem is that if we engage in this stuff too early it's important to get some degree of exposure and I recognized that earlier I said it's okay to watch a YouTube video we need some kind of external input but there's a big difference between an external input that Fosters my curiosity and really having the bandwidth and background to digest another way of thinking right we're not experts at the beginning we don't understand someone else's

meta we don't understand like this person is break dancing this way this person is break dancing this way when I don't know how to break dance we just want to watch 5 minute YouTube videos that are like wow that's pretty cool like I want to learn how to do that later on we want to go more in depth and what I find is that when people who are in Phase One or phase two and they try to read a lot of books about something what they actually do is like this is kind of boring it's

not really that engaging and the second thing that we want to do to maintain phase four and to really be sort of committed to something is ask for feedback now this often times confuses a lot of people because we have this idea in life that we should all be asking for feedback can I get feedback can you give me feedback feedback feedback feedback feedback about the relationship why didn't you like the date why did you like the date why aren't you texting me I go why why did I ghost you what am I doing right

at work what am I doing wrong at work what like you know we're all so feedback obsessed but it turns out that feedback can be bad for you so remember that in Phase One when we're first getting curious about something when I go to the break dancing class and I feel intimidated because all these people there are so strong and so graceful if I ask for feedback what impact do you think that will have if I feel some degree of negativity towards the subject I'm excited about it and I feel intimidated and if I ask

someone hey what do you think about my break dancing and they give me honest feedback yeah it seems like you're pretty early and you have a lot to work on if I have that negative emotion feedback early on will actually destroy my motivation and kill my curiosity it will not develop into a passion in order to receive feedback and utilize feedback pretty well what we really need is confidence in the subject at hand the more stable and confident the more sustained our interest is negative feedback won't be able to squash it in fact since I

have a stable interest in something when I receive feedback then I can incorporate that feedback because I have that foundation and then I can grow now there are absolutely cases where early on you want feedback but what we sort of know from scientific studies is that feedback becomes more and more and more important the further in your journey you are and that early on if I take a six-year-old kid and I say hey you got a bunch of these math questions wrong or I'm telling them you did this wrong in chess and you did this

wrong in chess and you did this wrong in chess they're much less likely to ever want to play chess again and if you've given feedback to some students you know even if you're playing a video game what you'll find you'll observe the same thing is that not all human beings are capable of receiving feedback we have this idea that it's such a wonderful thing and we should be giving it and receiving it all the time but it requires a lot of confidence instability to actually receive and incorporate feedback so if you follow these four steps

it will transition you from a thinker to a doer we have Neuroscience studies that literally show us okay when a human becomes curious this is what activates in their brain and curiosity is not the same as intrinsic motivation curiosity is a desire for more external exposure let me go see more of it let me touch it let me play with it I'm looking for information from the outside the problem is that for so many of us we get so excited because we get excited about this thing and we want to play around with it but

we don't quite know how to make the transition from temporary excitement to sustained intrinsic motivation and what we really need to do is follow these four steps just exposing ourselves more we want more and more input to feed our curiosity but if we're not careful our brain will eventually get bored of that and it'll be like that's enough H let's move on to the next thing because it'll naturally get curious about something else and then it'll be drawn to that thing so how do you avoid switching over to the next thing that's when you need

to switch to an intrinsic motivation you need to start reflecting asking your questions Theory crafting and as you all know I don't know if this makes sense but if you've ever Theory crafted something the more you Theory craft the more you want to play but think about how powerful this is because you're not getting external environmental exposures at that point all of the Dy is transitioning to Intrinsic and once that drive to Intrinsic is there then we can help it grow and Excel like you will start to excel as you start to think about other

thinkers in the space appreciating the other ways that people make builds as well as soliciting and incorporating feedback so if you're someone who's struggled with intrinsic motivation if you're someone who's just a thinker instead of a doer I strongly encourage yall to follow these steps and I can't guarantee that you'll become an Olympic aete but I certainly know that I was a you know 19-year-old kid who was failing out of college who got curious about a thousand things I ran for Student Government I was I joined a fraternity I was playing I was trying to

clim climb the Warcraft 3 ladder I was trying to date and all of it was a mess and now it's like everything is going well for me gratefully right so I have a job that I'm relatively happy about I have a relationship that I'm relatively happy with I have a family that I'm relatively proud of I still play video games I'm climbing rank in mm are and that's the really crazy thing right because when we look at other people in the world it seems like there are two camps of people and this was something that

was so confusing to me because at the beginning I thought like okay during character creation in life everyone gets the same amount of points right so like I can level up strength but then that comes at the cost of int or Charisma the problem is that in the real world it seems that the opposite is true having a successful career that you love makes it more likely for you to develop a healthy relationship and if you have a healthy and successful relationship and you have a healthy and successful career then you are more likely to

be happy in life so the real crazy thing is that if we look in the real world it seems lopsided it is completely imba some people have it all and some people don't have any of it and we look at this and we think to ourselves how is this are some people just fundamentally luckier do some people get the the Short Straw and some people get the long straw but it turns out that no that's not actually the case that there is specifically a neuroscience-based skill progression that allows you to take a simple curiosity and

turn it into a sustained motivation and people who learn this process because these Olympic athletes that I worked with by the way one of them was a student at Harvard Medical School and it's like holy that's so op how is it the these people are so good at all of the stuff and I am so bad at all of the stuff I literally mentored someone whose resume was like three times as good as mine it's wild and it turns out that there is a methodology to this there is skill behind it it just like cooking

or playing a video game or learning how to talk to other human beings this is something that you can level up and follow these steps and we hope that it'll work for you one [Music]