Goldilocks Rule : How to Maintain Motivation in Life and Business?

The human brain loves a challenge; of course, only those challenges that fall within the optimal difficulty range. The brain likes to face challenges that are not too hard and overwhelming, and it should be able to investigate and solve them. If you love tennis and want to play a serious game against a four-year-old, you will surely get tired very quickly. On the other hand, if you want to play with a professional tennis player like Roger Federer, you quickly lose your motivation; because competing with these professional players is very hard.

Now, suppose you are playing with someone whose game level and skill are approximately equal to yours. In this game, you earn some points and lose some. If you really try and strive, you can certainly win. In fact, this game is a kind of challenge whose difficulty can be managed and is a clear example of the Goldilocks Rule.

According to the Goldilocks Rule, humans reach the peak of their motivation when performing tasks that are precisely on the border of their current abilities. In fact, these tasks should be such that for people, they are not too hard and not too easy; but just the right size for their abilities.

Assess and measure your progress If you want to learn the secret of maintaining motivation to achieve your goals, you need to understand that the coin of motivation has another side, the understanding of which is very important. The other side of the motivation coin is a "mixture of hard work and joy". Working on challenges that have an optimal level of difficulty not only helps to increase human motivation, but can also be the primary source of joy in a person's existence.

Gilbert Brim, as an experienced psychologist, believes that one of the most important sources of joy in a person's existence is performing tasks that have a reasonable and appropriate level of difficulty and are not too simple or too hard.

This combination of joy and peak performance is similar to the flow that athletes and performers experience when doing work within their capability range. This flow is a mental state that takes shape in you when you focus on your work and makes you think of nothing but your work; as if the whole world has faded away and you have no duty or mission other than your current work.

However, to reach this mental state and achieve your peak performance, you should not only work on challenges with an appropriate degree of difficulty, but also assess and measure your progress.

As psychologist Jonathan Haidt says, one of the keys to achieving this state is to receive immediate feedback about how you're doing at each stage of the activity you're undertaking.

Seeing that you are progressing can give you a lot of motivation. When Steve Martin told a joke, he paid attention to the crowd's reaction to see whether the joke could make people laugh or not. The positive feedback he received from a joke was enough to overcome his fears and motivated him to make an effort for several consecutive weeks without fatigue.

In tennis, if you play well you get a point, and if you're not careful, you lose a point. So in this game, you're also receiving immediate feedback on your performance. If you're looking to maintain your motivation, you need to know that your brain needs to measure your progress in any way possible.

To maintain motivation, you need to see your victories.

One of the most important sources of joy in a person's existence is performing tasks that have a reasonable and appropriate level of difficulty and are not too simple or too hard.

Two important steps to maintain motivation If we want to dissect the secret of maintaining long-term motivation, we can state the following two steps for maintaining motivation:

Stick to the Goldilocks principle and focus on tasks whose difficulty level is manageable for you. Measure your progress and, if possible, get immediate feedback. Many people want to improve their lives, but when they get into action, they realize that improving life is not that easy. If you want to maintain your motivation under any circumstances, start with challenges whose difficulty is manageable for you. In the next step, measure your success. Finally, it is necessary to repeat this process several times.