Carrot or the Stick? Or Something Else?

Eight years ago I was living in London and asked, “Why is London always the stick?” Needless to say, whenever the phrase “London isn’t for everyone” comes up, I know that “everyone” was certainly referring to me!

The carrot or stick approach is a simple way of thinking about the source of motivation. The stick is being punished for doing badly, while the carrot is being rewarded for doing well. For much of my life I’ve found that the stick is far more effective at motivating me. Something goes wrong and suddenly I’m remarkably effective at fixing it. A deadline approaches and the work gets done. A problem becomes painful enough and I’ll make the change I’ve been putting off.

This makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. Humans evolved in an environment where being good at noticing and responding to bad things was rather important. The poisonous berries, the snake in the grass, the hostile person nearby: those who were good at recognising and reacting to threats were more likely to survive. In the modern age most of us face relatively few immediate physical threats to our wellbeing, but it still seems that the threat of punishment can be much more motivating than the possibility of reward.

I’ve often thought this was something I should change about myself. Instead of waiting for the stick, shouldn’t I become better at chasing the carrot? Rather than being motivated by avoiding something bad, shouldn’t I learn to motivate myself by moving towards something good?

But recently I’ve started to think I had the question wrong. Perhaps the progression isn’t from stick to carrot at all. Instead there is an evolution of motivational states:

Stick → Anticipation → Systems → Freedom → Intrinsic Motivation

SASFI. (Yes, I know. I’m working on the name.)

Stick

The stick is the simplest form of motivation. Something bad happens, you receive feedback and you change your behaviour. Drive through a red light and you get a ticket. Hopefully you don’t hit another car! Don’t take a shower or change your underwear and eventually you begin to smell. Don’t pay your electricity bill and eventually the lights go out. When the bad thing starts happening you receive very clear feedback that something has to change.

The interesting thing about the stick is just how effective it is. Before the consequence arrives we can procrastinate for weeks or months, but once the problem becomes real the motivation suddenly appears. The bill becomes urgent, the deadline gets met, the problem gets fixed. The stick works, but the obvious disadvantage is that by the time it motivates you, you’re already being hit by it.

Anticipation

The next stage is being able to see the stick before it arrives. You don’t need to receive a traffic ticket every week to understand that following the traffic rules is probably a good idea. You eat breakfast before leaving the house because you know that otherwise you’ll be hungry later and tempted to eat junk food. You take the garbage out when it gets full rather than waiting until there are flies in the kitchen. You pay the bill before the required date rather than waiting until the electricity gets cut off.

Nothing bad has happened yet, but you understand the relationship between what you do now and what is likely to happen later. Instead of something bad happened, therefore I need to do something, it becomes something bad is likely to happen, therefore I’ll do something now. The stick hasn’t disappeared; you’ve just become capable of seeing it while it’s still far enough away to do something about it.

This is already a much nicer way to live. You don’t need reality to continually punish you in order to learn the same lessons. But there is still a problem: you have to remember all of these things. If the same predictable responsibilities keep coming back again and again, continually anticipating them is itself work.

Systems

This leads to the next stage. If I already know that the same things need doing repeatedly, why do I need to keep remembering and anticipating them? I know my phone needs charging. I know bills need paying. I know the car needs servicing. I know there are areas of my life that require regular attention. Rather than keeping all of this in my head, I can build systems that make sure they surface when they need to.

This is part of the thinking behind my MRC × C framework. I wanted a way of creating some structure around the areas of my life where I want continued progress: Mastery, Relationships and Contribution, multiplied by the Commitment required to actually do something about them. It also led to Tuesday, my recurring to-do system. Rather than waiting until something becomes a problem, or continually trying to remember everything that might become a problem, I can let a system periodically bring the right things back to my attention.

Tuesday might remind me to check the solar panel meter to see that everything is in good order. Other recurring tasks can make sure that something gets maintained or checked before I forget about it for six months. The important difference from Anticipation is that I no longer need to consciously foresee the same consequence every time. I’ve already done the thinking once and put a system in place to remember it for me.

Freedom

Something interesting happens when those systems work: you stop thinking about them.

There are clean socks, underwear and a T-shirt in the drawer. Your phone has enough charge. Your power bank is ready, perhaps with enough charge to help a friend who has run out. If you decide to go for a drive, the car has fuel, the tyres are inflated and the servicing isn’t six months overdue. You aren’t suddenly in a mad rush because something that could have been dealt with weeks ago has unexpectedly become tomorrow’s emergency.

Of course this doesn’t mean that nothing will ever go wrong. The tyre can still go flat, the phone can still die and life retains an impressive ability to surprise us. The difference is that the predictable responsibilities don’t need to occupy as much of your attention. You aren’t constantly wondering whether you paid that bill, when the car needs servicing, whether you checked the meter or what important thing you might have forgotten.

This is what I mean by Freedom. It isn’t freedom from responsibility. It’s freedom from having to constantly think about responsibility. Because you trust the systems you’ve put in place, many of the ordinary responsibilities of life can happen without occupying your thoughts until the appropriate moment. You become less encumbered by the weight of keeping everything in your head, and therefore more free to decide what you actually want to do with your attention.

Intrinsic Motivation

This is where I think the carrot-and-stick model finally breaks down. Once enough of the sticks have been anticipated, and enough of the recurring responsibilities have systems around them, you have attention available that doesn’t need to be directed by either punishment or reward. You can simply ask: What do I want to do?

Watch a movie. Binge a TV show. Go for a steak dinner. Study a language. Read a history book. Spend two hours chatting to AI about some obscure topic you’ve suddenly become fascinated by. Make a new app. Search for a need elsewhere in somebody else’s life and see if perhaps you can help. Or even just relax and have a long lie in bed.

These are things where the motivation to do them isn’t that you’ll be punished for not doing them. But I don’t think they’re necessarily carrots either. If I read a history book because I enjoy reading about history, what exactly is the carrot? If I make an app because I’m fascinated to see whether the idea works, where is the reward? If I spend hours thinking about a subject simply because I find it interesting, what am I trying to obtain?

The activity itself is the reward. That’s intrinsic motivation.

Personally, I find that when I spend my time doing things from this state, I get the most satisfaction out of life. By systematising the lower-order responsibilities and taking responsibility for ensuring that they get done, I create the freedom to move towards activities that don’t require an external reason to do them. Nobody needs to threaten me with a stick and nobody needs to dangle a carrot in front of me. I want to do them because I personally get satisfaction from doing them.

So, Carrot or Stick?

I started with the assumption that I needed to become better at carrot motivation. The stick worked extremely well on me: something became painful and I acted. But that felt like the wrong way to live. Surely I should learn to move towards rewards rather than merely escape punishment?

Now I think I was asking the wrong question. The progression isn’t simply Stick → Carrot. It’s Stick → Anticipation → Systems → Freedom → Intrinsic Motivation. Or SASFI.

At first, reality provides the motivation by hitting you with the stick. Eventually you learn to anticipate the consequence before it happens. When you notice that you’re anticipating the same things repeatedly, you can build systems so that you don’t need to keep thinking about them. When those systems work, they free your attention from many of the predictable responsibilities of everyday life. And with that freedom, you can increasingly spend your time doing things that don’t require either punishment or reward to motivate you.

So perhaps the objective isn’t to become better at chasing carrots after all. It’s to get better at seeing the sticks coming, build systems around the predictable ones, and create enough freedom that, for more and more of your life, neither the carrot nor the stick is necessary.

You do the thing because you want to do the thing.