Working on challenges of an optimal level of difficulty has been found to not only be motivating, but also to be a major source of happiness. It has to do with achieving that perfect blend of hard work and happiness.
#GOLDILOCKS RULE HOW TO#
If you want to learn how to stay motivated to reach your goals, then there is a second piece of the motivation puzzle that is crucial to understand. There were just enough victories to keep him motivated and just enough mistakes to keep him working hard. He was always adding new material, but he also kept a few jokes that were guaranteed to get laughs. Each year, he expanded his comedy routine-but only by a minute or two. Martin’s comedy career is an excellent example of the Goldilocks Rule in practice. The Goldilocks Rule states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities. This is a challenge of just manageable difficulty and it is a prime example of the Goldilocks Rule. Your focus narrows, distractions fade away, and you find yourself fully invested in the task at hand. You have a good chance of winning, but only if you really try. As the game progresses, you win a few points and you lose a few. Now consider playing tennis against someone who is your equal.
#GOLDILOCKS RULE PROFESSIONAL#
In contrast, if you play a professional tennis player like Roger Federer or Serena Williams, you will quickly lose motivation because the match is too difficult. If you love tennis and try to play a serious match against a four-year-old, you will quickly become bored. The human brain loves a challenge, but only if it is within an optimal zone of difficulty. While there is still much to learn, one of the most consistent findings is that the way to maintain motivation and achieve peak levels of desire is to work on tasks of “just manageable difficulty.” Why is it that some people, like Martin, stick with their habits-whether practicing jokes or drawing cartoons or playing guitar-while most of us struggle to stay motivated? How do we design habits that pull us in rather than ones that fade away? Scientists have been studying this question for many years. In his words, “10 years spent learning, 4 years spent refining, and 4 years as a wild success.” And yet Steve Martin faced this fear every week for eighteen years. It is hard to imagine a situation that would strike fear into the hearts of more people than performing alone on stage and failing to get a single laugh. Martin’s story offers a fascinating perspective on what it takes to stick with habits for the long run. I recently finished Steve Martin’s wonderful autobiography, Born Standing Up. He catapulted to the top of his genre and became one of the most successful comedians of his time.
Another 45,000 tickets were sold for his three-day show in New York. He had 18,695 people attend one show in Ohio. He toured sixty cities in sixty-three days. By the mid-1970s, he had worked his way into being a regular guest on The Tonight Show and Saturday Night Live.įinally, after nearly fifteen years of work, the young man rose to fame. He took a job as a television writer and, gradually, he was able to land his own appearances on talk shows. He spent another decade experimenting, adjusting, and practicing.
He had to read three poems during the show just to make the routine long enough, but his skills continued to progress. At nineteen, he was performing weekly for twenty minutes at a time. By high school, his material had expanded to include a five-minute act and, a few years later, a ten-minute show. His first routines would only last one or two minutes. It wasn’t glamorous work, but there was no doubt he was getting better. One night, he literally delivered his stand-up routine to an empty club. Most of the people in the crowd were too busy drinking or talking with friends to pay attention. He was rarely on stage for more than five minutes. The crowds were small and his act was short. He set his sights on becoming a comedian.īeginning in his teenage years, he started performing in little clubs around Los Angeles. Soon he discovered that what he loved was not performing magic but performing in general. He experimented with jokes and tried out simple routines on visitors. Within a year, he had transitioned to Disney’s magic shop, where he learned tricks from the older employees.
Labor laws were loose back then and the boy managed to land a position selling guidebooks for $0.50 apiece. In 1955, Disneyland had just opened in Anaheim, California, when a ten-year-old boy walked in and asked for a job.