The Motivation Equation — Drive Is Expectancy × Value (Part 3 of 5)

Well, hello there, my friend.

Jonathan Doyle, welcome to the Daily Podcast.

I'm pleased you're here.

This is day three of a five-day series.

So if you are just joining us on day three, you may wanna jump back a couple

of days to day one, because we are solving the question over five quick

episodes, and we are at day three.

Now, the question we are trying to solve, uh, those of you that have been with us

for the last two days know what it is.

I am trying to solve the question of why… What explains why some people

Are able to motivate themselves to do difficult life-changing things,

and many people struggle to do that.

Many people just settle, uh, in the land of…

Well, complacency is a hard word, but it's very easy to fall into the

trap of just settling day to day.

This is the life you think you have.

It's not terrible, it's not great.

There's plenty of things you'd like to change, but it pretty much just ticks

along day after day, kind of the same.

And, uh, we know from a lot of research that the thing that

unites people towards the end of life is the experience of regret.

I was looking at some research yesterday, which is, the research would suggest

that at the end of your life, you will not regret the risks you took.

You'll regret the ones that you never took.

It sounds pretty obvious, but it was just interesting to read it in a more

scientific format that often when you're about to make a big decision, like you,

you worry if it's the right choice, you're not sure if it's gonna work.

But we know that at the end of your life, you won't actually regret those big

decisions, those big risks that you took.

The regrets that we do have tend to be the ones where we're like, "I wonder what

would have happened if I had done X." So this is the question we're solving.

What is it that differentiates people who really go after things in life, and those

of us who just quickly settle for comfort?

It's the question I've been trying to solve for years because

it, it's just fascinating.

If we knew what that mechanism was, and could we teach it to people?

Could we learn it ourselves?

And I think we can, and that's part of what this five-day journey is about.

So here we are on day three, and what we're gonna do is, if you

haven't, uh, caught the first two episodes, we're looking really at

the science behind this question.

The science behind the question of why do some people go

after difficult, challenging, awesome things and some don't?

Today we are looking at expectancy value theory.

This is interesting.

Expectancy value theory.

One of the best things about it is that the research was

done by somebody named Vroom.

Like literally the sound a car makes when it takes off, vroom.

Uh, Vroom, Eccles, and Wigfield.

Okay?

If you woke up today thinking to yourself, "If only, if only someone

would read me some research from Vroom, Eccles, and Wigfield," well,

you've come to the right place.

So let me just give you this quote first, and then we're

just gonna unpack it quickly.

Just short episode, but it's a really interesting, useful theory,

expectancy value theory, okay?

Here's the quote.

"Individuals' choice, persistence, and performance," choice, persistence,

and performance, "can be explained by their beliefs about how well they

will do on the activity and the extent to which they value the activity."

Just listen to that one more time.

Individuals' choice, persistence, and performance can be explained by their

beliefs about how well they will do on the activity and the extent to

which they value the activity Hmm.

So this is, to make this even more straightforward, if you looked

at it as like a mathematical formula, let's talk about drive.

So maybe there's something that you want to accomplish in your life.

Maybe at your, at this stage in your life, it's a relationship thing you'd like

to achieve, a financial goal, a health goal, something that's important to you.

So let's talk about what, what is your drive to attain that?

I've learned over the years that if you ask people a basic question like,

"Would you like X?" Most people are like, "Oh, yeah, yeah." You know, they,

they will tell you that they have the drive for something, but let's delineate

really what that drive actually means.

Drive is expectancy multiplied by value.

Expectancy multiplied by value.

So the expectancy piece is your belief about whether or not you

can do the thing, and the value is simply how important is it to you.

So if those two things are really high for you, if it was something that you

believed you had the skills to do and the payoff was really significant,

then the science would tell you that you can get pretty high drive.

You, you, you will, you will have a confidence, a drive towards it.

But if we just re- we sort of zero it out and go to the opposite extreme, if you

have a low belief in your ability to do something and the thing that you want to

do isn't really that important to you, then you're gonna have pretty low drive.

Let's see if I can think up an example.

So at the moment, it's, uh, the really soccer, football World Cup is on.

So I woke up this morning, and my son is out there at like 4:00 a.m. watching the,

one of the semifinals, and I'm looking at these players, and I, I didn't-- I'm

not a big football guy, but I, I really just love watching the sort of end

stages of the World Cup simply because you're seeing a lot of the stuff I love.

You're seeing talent and mastery and effort and passion and energy

because it's, you know, it's such a big deal to be in the sort of

closing stages of a World Cup.

And you're looking at some of these great players, and as I think about

it in the studio, uh, you've got players like Lionel Messi, right?

So you-- most of you will know who that is, Argentinian player who's, you know,

one of the GOATs, greatest of all time.

And if you think about this drive theory, when he goes out onto the field,

onto the pitch, there's all sorts of things happening in his mind, right?

Like at the end of the day, he has two legs like all his competitors.

He has two arms.

He has a body like all his competitors.

So what makes him unique?

Well, it's an interesting question, right?

There'd be a whole lot of training and, but all sorts of things and conditioning

and nutrition, all those things and, you know, training drills that he's done since

he was probably two or three years of age.

So all of that's important, but you know, a lot of the players at that

level would have a pretty similar technical proficiency, right?

But what you're finding with these absolutely great

players is their drive to win.

And in this expectancy value theory, you'd argue that someone like Messi

goes out there with an incredibly strong belief that they can do what's

necessary, that they have the ability to do what's necessary, and then also that

the value, the goal, is so important to them, so their drive is very high.

You see a high expectancy of success and an outcome that's very, very

meaningful And so if you think about how did they get the expectancy piece?

Well, the expectancy piece comes from years and years of minor successes.

So he would've probably started playing competitively, y-you'd guess probably

at, you know, five or six years of age.

And then he probably, you know-- I, I guess if you'd seen him at five

or six, it's probably likely if he's playing in somewhere in South America

with lots of really talented kids, you'd probably think-- you probably

wouldn't have noticed too much, maybe.

But then pretty soon he would've had a little bit of success, and a little bit

of success, and a little bit of success, and as he goes along, he develops this

expectancy that he can do well at this.

So do you understand what I'm getting at?

That often what we need is a history of small wins.

Because that history of small wins in an important area for you

gives you that expectancy, the belief that you can do something.

And then if the outcome that you're chasing is important enough,

then you're gonna get high drive.

So let's try and do an opposite example of that.

Let's just say, uh, if I was to enter a, a Latin dance competition . Now, I'm married

to somebody who's a very good dancer.

Uh, I, I don't drink anymore, but when I did drink, my dancing skills had a direct

scientific relationship to the amount of bourbon that I'd drunk at the time.

So thankfully, the world, uh, I don't drink anymore, and thankfully the world

is now spared of my dancing skills.

But if I was to enter a Latin dance competition, let's just say it's the

local suburban Latin dance tournament.

So I go out there and I'm like I have a really low expectancy of success, right?

Like, I'm walking out there thinking, "I don't know the first

thing about Latin dance," and the prize is, like, two movie tickets.

And I'm like, "You know what? I don't, I don't have any skills here, and I, I

ain't, I ain't getting out of bed for two movie tickets." Like, the value,

the outcome is not significant to me.

So my drive to win that tournament is going to be pretty low.

I've been asked recently to do a keynote and, you know, we'll have about eight

to ten thousand people in the room.

It's a national event in the US and it's, uh, something I love doing.

So when I go there, I'll spend months in preparation, and when I walk out on that

stage, I have a high expectancy, right?

I have a, I have a strong belief that I can do well in that environment because

I've been doing it since I was a teenager.

I've been doing it for, like, forty years with, you know,

hundreds of thousands of people.

So I've got a high expectancy of success.

Like, I'm not saying I'm guaranteed of success, but I've-- I know

I can look back at forty years of speaking and go, "I've…

It's not my first rodeo." And the value of it is significant 'cause it's a big

group and it's a topic that I care a great deal about, so there's high value.

So you're understanding this link here, this expectancy value link, that

if you want to be motivated towards something, you have to have a belief

that you can do it, and that belief is gonna be based on small previous wins.

Do you understand?

Small previous wins.

So let's say you've had a goal your whole life that you wanna run a marathon.

So what are the pieces of that?

Well, to have high drive for that, you have to have the belief

that you can theoretically do it.

So how do you build that belief?

Well, you start by running 100 meters, and the first day of your

training, you run 100 meters.

You might find it really difficult, but then you keep going and you've

got a program, maybe you get a coach for a while, and you start doing, you

know, 500 meters and five-- you do your first 5K, then a 10K, and you're

doing your training over the weeks and months and you get this expectancy.

You get this belief, "Wow, I'm fitter.

I've lost all this weight.

I can, I, I actually can run.

I can, I can, I can hang in there.

I've done a 25K run.

I've done a 30K run." Once you've hit sort of 25, 30Ks, you're fine because the rest,

you, the, the event itself will just carry you But then you got the value piece.

Is it worth it to you?

You know, there's plenty of people listening to this right now who,

who don't wanna run a marathon.

You know, I, I, I've done ultramarathons, and I'm in a

season of different kinda training.

So right at the moment, I could run one, but I don't particularly

want to, so the value's not high.

But let's come back to that example.

Let's say you really do want it.

Ever since you were little, you've always wanted to run a marathon.

And, and what's the value to you?

Well, you're proving something really important to yourself.

You're giving a great example to friends, your family, maybe your

kids, and it's just a lifelong dream.

That's something you've always thought would be incredible to do.

So there's a high value, and you've done the training, so the expectancy's there.

So there's your drive, there's your motivation.

It's there because those two pieces are in place.

So let's wrap this up.

I guess if you struggle with drive in some particular area, if there's something

you think you should be doing that you would maybe like to be doing, you're

not doing, that's where you wanna look.

You wanna look at the question of, do you have any proof?

Have you built any proof?

Have you put anything in the bank account that shows you that you could do this?

And how important is it to you really?

I could do a whole separate podcast on that because I actually think the longer

that I coach people, there's a lot of things that we think we should want.

Like we, we should want to be really wealthy.

We should want to, you know, have all these experiences, and sometimes

we're just kind of-- whether they're not that important to us.

We're all very different.

So y- if you wanna have a meaningful, successful life, one of the most important

things is to get clear on what, what really does have value for you because

it's the old saying, you don't wanna climb the ladder of success and find that you

had the ladder up against the wrong wall.

So make sure that you're choosing things that are genuinely meaningful for you.

As I've got older and had some success in life, I find that what motivates

me more and more is doing things for other people, creating results for other

people, things that bless and encourage and inspire and serve other people.

Because I've kinda got everything I need.

Like, I don't have a lot of wants in life You know, I don't have a lot of

things like that I desperately want to go and attain, like any physical objects.

So, you know, I've been really blessed.

I have pretty much everything that I want.

So now my life is about how can I serve more people?

How can I reach goals that, uh, create great outcomes for other people?

Because I just get a lot of joy out of that, so the value is high.

And the expectancy piece is there because I've been able to

do that kind of thing before.

So that's it.

This is day three.

That is, if you wanna know either, A, how to get more drive for something, then

you need to build small wins, so you've got expectancy and proof, and you need

to make sure that the goal is something that is genuinely meaningful for you.

And if you find that you are not chasing after something, it'll be because you

don't have the proof or the belief that you can do it, and then you have to

decide whether you wanna get some proof by doing small incremental steps towards it.

And the other thing is to just make sure that you're not living somebody

else's goals, that you're not chasing outcomes that you think you should have.

Okay, that's it.

Tomorrow, look at my notes, we are going to look at, uh, self-determination

theory and the overjustification effect.

Oh, boy.

Heck, how are you gonna sleep tonight?

No, it's gonna be great.

We're gonna make it really useful on our, on our five-day deep dive into

the great question of what motivates us, what really drives us forward.

Okay, make sure you're subscribed so you're back here tomorrow.

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I'm on Instagram at JDoyleSpeaks.

You can find me on YouTube at Jonathan Doyle Speaks.

Website, jonathandoyle.co for speaking and coaching work.

God bless you, my friend.

This has been the daily podcast.

You and I are gonna talk again tomorrow.