Book review: The Motivation Hacker, by Nick Winter.
This is a productivity book that might improve some peoples’ motivation.
It provides an entertaining summary (with clear examples) of how to use tools such as precommitment to accomplish an absurd number of goals.
But it mostly fails at explaining how to feel enthusiastic about doing so.
The section on Goal Picking Exercises exemplifies the problems I have with the book. The most realistic sounding exercise had me rank a bunch of goals by how much the goal excites me times the probability of success divided by the time required. I found that the variations in the last two terms overwhelmed the excitement term, leaving me with the advice that I should focus on the least exciting goals. (Modest changes to the arbitrary scale of excitement might change that conclusion).
Which leaves me wondering whether I should focus on goals that I’m likely to achieve soon but which I have trouble caring about, or whether I should focus on longer term goals such as mind uploading (where I might spend years on subgoals which turn out to be mistaken).
The author doesn’t seem to have gotten enough out of his experience to motivate me to imitate the way he picks goals.