I’ve been collecting notes on stoke for some time now. I’ve got work to do to cohere them more, but stoke is very relevant to my ideas on skill acquisition so it’s a good time to get them posted.
I take notes using Obsidian following a Zettelkasten method as explicated by Sonke Ahrens in his book “How to Take Smart Notes.” Appropriately enough, his thoughts on how to take smart notes incorporate stoke! So you’ll see notes from his book in here.
Obsidian and the Zettelkasten method explain the weird formatting, which I only lightly edited.
I use the word stoke as shorthand for intrinsic motivation. To 'be stoked' is to be engaged in an intrinsically motivated behavior. "I am stoked to do X" is the same thing as saying "I do X for the sake of doing X; any external consequences for doing X are incidental to my reasons for doing it."
[[Intrinsic motivation]] is the spontaneous, internally directed drive towards novelty and challenges, with an implication for increasing one's knowledge and capacity. Humans tend to perform better when operating under conditions of intrinsic motivation vs. extrinsic.
[[Intrinsic motivation flourishes with Autonomy and Competence]]. Autonomy, or a sense of being volitional, and Competence, or a feeling of being effective, are required elements for [[Intrinsic Motivation]] to flourish. Put negatively: if one feels externally directed, or if one feels like one's actions won't have adequate effect, then intrinsic motivation is not likely to flourish.
[[External rewards signal lack of autonomy]]. External rewards are evidence that we are not "the center of initiation of our own behaviors". This evidence undermines the idea that we are operating autonomously, and puts us in a subordinate position to some external entity. It literally strips us of psychological power. The implication here is that humans really like the idea that we're the center of the universe and effect our environment.
What could kill motivation and drive more than evidence that nothing we do matters? That we're just pawns?
Following this thought, do [[Plans weaken agency]]? If you make a plan and then start executing it, and then the situation changes but you've got this idea that you've got to stick to the plan or aim for the goal, then you no longer can convince yourself you're doing it because you want to but because the Plan Says So, *which puts the locus of control outside of yourself.*
Nothing signals agency more than the freedom to change your mind.
[[Dopamine is the fuel of stoke]] Dopamine is the mechanism of drive, motivation, and craving in humans. It's what makes us want to get outside of ourselves, get into the world, and make things happen. If your tank of dopamine is depleted, motivation/drive is nearly impossible. No dopamine, no stoke. And [[Dopamine peaks are always followed by dopamine crashes]] that take a while to regenerate to baseline. If enough dopamine peaks are stacked, the baseline level of dopamine in a person can deteriorate.
[[Intrinsic motivation confers adaptive advantages]]. [[Intrinsic Motivation]] drives humans to explore, create, learn, seek novel experiences and challenges, and expand their capacities. It is easy to see how the more humans do these sorts of things, the more they are going to be able to adapt to unfolding circumstances. First, their "default" explorations will likely lead them to develop diverse methods and competencies that could serve them in the event of changing future circumstances. It also suggests the ability of intrinsically motivated humans to "lean in" to the challenge of adapting to unfolding circumstances in realtime.
[[The Purpose of strategy is adaptation]] To Boyd, the ultimate purpose of strategy is to improve your ability to adapt to unfolding circumstances through time (and, in the theater of conflict, to reduce adversary's ability to adapt to unfolding circumstances). Winning is the art of adapting faster and more accurately than adversary.
Since [[Intrinsic motivation confers adaptive advantages]] and [[The Purpose of strategy is adaptation]], [[Intrinsic Motivation]] aka stoke plays a vital role in the design of good personal strategy.
[[A good workflow creates a positive feedback loop]] A good workflow allows a positive feedback loop of good experience/pleasure, which leads to improvement in performance, which leads to even better experience, etc. Anything to be done over the long term needs to have a workflow that allows this positive feedback loop to flourish. External rewards will not establish a positive feedback loop! The work itself must be rewarding for the activity to become self-reinforcing.
If you want to do something for the long haul, design a workflow that generates a positive feedback loop between experience and performance. Understanding intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is key.
[[Is intrinsic motivation necessary for remarkable success?]] Ahrens 2022 has this idea that [[A good workflow creates a positive feedback loop]], and that external rewards are fragile and maybe impossible to create a virtuous circle. The amplifying effect of positive feedback loops is huge, and I'm thinking of all the things I've read about massive success, whether it's organizations or individuals or teams, and it feels like a common denominator is that they intentionally or unintentionally slipped into a positive feedback loop between experience and performance and rode that loop up to high level abilities. And since intrinsic motivation is a requirement for one of these loops, we can say that intrinsic motivation is a requirement for remarkable success.
Related to Ravikant et al advice to [[do what feels like play to you and work to others]].
[[Multiple projects supports stoke]]. If you have multiple projects, when you get stuck on one, you can just switch to the next one. Overall momentum remains high. The key is to not use willpower, because [[Intrinsic motivation kicks willpowers ass]] every day of the week. Also, having multiple projects probably contributes to seeing connections between different projects and enriching them even more.
Luhmann says he never forced himself to work on something he didn't want to - he'd just switch to another manuscript.
[[Intrinsic motivation kicks willpowers ass]]. "Nobody needs willpower to do something they wanted to do anyway." Ahrens 2022
Don't try to whiteknuckle stuff. It literally doesn't work as good as doing stuff you want to do. If you want to want to do something, the good news is that [[You can use your mind to control dopamine response]] so you might be able to convert activities into ones you want to do by [[Visualize the effort, not the win]].
[[You can use your mind to control dopamine response]]. Since [[Dopamine levels increase during anticipation and fulfillment of a desirable activity]], it is subject to conscious (subjective) control. The most powerful form of this is to boost intrinsic motivation by associating the friction of effort and struggle/striving with the aim of the activity. This compresses the time window of the experience and deemphasizes the impact of external rewards.
If you can make the sensation of pursuit the thing that you anticipate and the thing that brings you pleasure, you've established a growth mindset that can establish a virtuous loop. This technique is to essentially place the dopamine response INSIDE of the activity, rather than at the end of it or incidental to it. So in other words, [[Visualize the effort, not the win]]
The keys are:
Subjective control of anticipatory pleasure
And subjective control of celebratory pleasure
And cognition on external benefits
References
Di Domenico SI, Ryan RM. The Emerging Neuroscience of Intrinsic Motivation: A New Frontier in Self-Determination Research. _Front Hum Neurosci_. 2017;11:145. Published 2017 Mar 24. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2017.00145
How to Take Smart Notes, Sonke Ahrens 2019
Huberman podcast on dopamine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmOF0crdyRU&t=1701s
Nature article on biology of dopamine: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41583-021-00455-7
Science, Strategy, and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd, Frans P. Osinga
