Best of: The future of motivation

0:00Hey everyone, this is Russ Altman, your host of the Future of Everything podcast, here to wish you a very happy new year. I hope you're ringing in the new year in good health and looking forward to what's ahead in 2026. As people are setting goals and making resolutions, we're rerunning an episode on the future of motivation. Last year, I sat down with Sushi Wong, an expert in motivation, and she explained how science is changing our understanding of goal setting and achievement. She offered a few tricks you can try when you feel stuck in achieving your goals. I hope you'll tune in again and pick up a few insights on how to sustain enthusiasm and focus on your goals over time.

0:39Before we get started, another reminder, please rate and review. Give us the score we deserve. That helps spread the word. Thanks very much.

0:54So you have a new goal. It's either a financial goal, a personal, physical goal, like a run or something, or maybe it's a professional goal, achieving some professional milestone. You're thinking about it. How do you do it? Is it random? We know that you need to be motivated. Well, it turns out that motivation is not just kind of a random thing. It's something that can be studied by motivational science and can be broken down. So when you're pursuing a goal, there are different strategies for making sure that you maintain focus and motivation on your goals. There's the start period where you have to get going.

1:31There's the middle period where you're making progress. And then there's the final period when you're trying to reach that goal. And then it's a journey. Well, Su Chi Wong is a professor of marketing at Stanford Graduate School of Business and an expert at motivation and motivational science. She has studied a wide range of things we're going to talk about, getting children to eat healthy, loyalty programs at companies, tech companies that create apps to help you exercise, to help you eat right, to help you achieve all kinds of goals. This is what Suchi studies, and she'll tell us that there's a science there and that you can optimize your motivation to optimize the chance of achieving your goals.

2:13Suchi, what motivated you to study motivation as a key part of your career? Ross, what a great question to kick us off. I think you will find that a lot of faculty at Stanford, we study what we are the worst at. And so I definitely found myself struggle with motivation when I was in grad school. I know what's important and it's hard to get myself to do it. And so that constant struggle made me ask a lot of questions and eventually took me to research in this area. Okay, so that's great. So maybe we should start out with very basic, how do you define motivation and motivation science? What are the big questions and what are we really studying when we think about motivation?

2:56Definitely. I think how we usually think about it is that there is a current state. So basically where you are today, your current health level, wealth level, academic achievement level, and then there is an ideal state of where you will wish to become. So you may want to be fitter, You may want to be healthier. You may want to accumulate more wealth, or you may want to get a degree you don't have right now. And this discrepancy between where you are today and where you would like to be in the future, this is how we define kind of a goal pursuit process. And this is what drives us. So every day we wake up, there's something we want to get to.

3:36And that is kind of what defines motivation. Okay. And when you say motivational science, have we gotten to the point where it is a science where we can have hypotheses and test them. That was very interesting to me to see that phrase. Definitely. I know that motivation may sound like a philosophical construct, but definitely it is a big field of study in social psychology, sociology, and even neuroscience. And a lot of researchers have been approaching this topic, how do we get people to reach their ideal state from many different perspectives? And we definitely have all kinds of data from brain-level data, physiological data to behavior choice preference data to real world data and how employees actually work, how Weight Watchers actually attend meetings and lose weight.

4:25We have a lot of evidence to help us understand what works and what doesn't. And so this kind of helps me explain why it's an important function to have somebody like you at a graduate school of business, because I can imagine that managers and people in the industrial, private sector and public sector as well, as a manager, you need to motivate your workers. You need to motivate folks in your family. And so this is not just using just your intuition. There's actually things you can learn about the do's and don'ts. Definitely. And you're definitely right. It is a topic very relevant for business school.

5:01As you think about leaders, it is really all about motivating all your stakeholders from investors to managers, to employees, to even your customers. Now, How do you engage them to come back again? They come back again because there's something they want from you to help them achieve their goals. So by understanding motivation, you can engage all the stakeholders better. Yes, and you've just hinted at some of the really fun application areas that you've looked at, and I want to get there. But before, I know that you have kind of broken down kind of the key elements of sustained motivation. And maybe before we go into these great examples like loyalty programs and children's health, which I definitely want to get to, how should we think about the framework?

5:40work? Definitely. I think an important part of my framework is that motivation really is a long process. So what I mean by that is that traditionally we think about it as igniting motivation. So you're either motivated today or you are not. My whole research philosophy is that it is really about sustaining motivation. So what I hope my research can provide for you and many others is that how can we think about not just being motivated today, but that I can continue you being motivated until I reach my goal. And that process could be days, could be months. For some people, their goal is so big, it could take years.

6:18So sustaining motivation across different stages is my key research focus. Gotcha. Gotcha. And it's interesting that you talk about achieving your goal, because I know that you've written about the journey is just as important as the final goal. So how do you balance the importance of, I want to reach this state versus making sure that getting to that state maintains that motivation and maybe changes even the goals over time definitely i think uh that kind of speaks to a very important part of it why do i keep on focusing on sustaining motivation because that what that implies is your approach actually needs to keep on changing so your mindset how you think about your goal the tools you use and kind of the feedback you should be seeking should actually change from stage to stage that's how you sustain sustain it.

7:07So it's not like one tool that will fit all parts of your journey. So like you said earlier about journey and destination, definitely as you are working toward the goal, we do find that keeping your eyes on the prize is better. You want to focus on that destination. This is where I want my house to be. And I have a lot of different tools to help you get there. But the journey mindset is really helpful once you reach success. And because many people may have that struggle that once I reach success, what am I supposed to do now? Should I keep my diet going? Should I still go out and walk every day?

7:38And we all of a sudden lose that motivation because we don't have the next goal anymore. And so that the journey mindset is very helpful to help us reflect on what you really did to help you achieve success, why those actions and habits were valuable to you and why they reflect now part of you. And we found that just by doing that kind of exercises and switching your mindset, you can actually be more likely to continue doing those things that are beneficial. Great. So now I think it would be fun to dive into some of your recent, and if I pick the wrong ones, just tell me they're the wrong ones and we can go to another one.

8:10But I have this list. And one of the things is childhood health, which people might find like an interesting and surprising thing for a business school professor to study. So tell me about how child health and motivation link together. Definitely. So I actually started this line of inquiry because I met a representative from UNICEF many years ago. I think that was 2015 at Stanford on campus. So she was visiting and she read about some of my work on motivation. And for UNICEF, their focus is younger consumers like children. And so she approached me and was asking me what part of my research can speak to the phenomenon she's thinking about.

8:49And my answer is none of it because I've been studying adults and not children. I knew nothing about children. And so that kind of sent us on this journey that let's collaborate and learn more about what actually motivates children. Because as you can imagine, for young children that we are studying with UNICEF, we're talking about children 6 to 11 years old. And they are in different developmental stages. It is really hard to think about abstract long-term goal for them. Even what health means is not really as concrete as what it feels like for adults. So you have to kind of think about motivation very differently.

9:27And so we tested a lot of different tools to kind of think about how we can incentivize children to feel like, hey, making healthy choices has a lot of value and is actually a very fun thing to do. Well, and then what did you do and what did you learn? Yes. So one thing we did is we actually went to Panama. We worked with the government there. We went to the elementary schools and we tried different things. But what really worked out for us at the end is give children gamified coupons. So we realized that health education is just boring. And the children sit there and it's a tap-down process. And you told them this is what you should do.

10:03And they just don't feel like doing it. The food pyramid is not very exciting. It's very informative. But yes, it's not very exciting. And they want to feel like they are making choices. And the children in Panama, they actually bring money to school. and they actually buy their own lunch and snacks during the day. So it's very different from the system in the U.S. where a lot of times we have packed lunch or we have school fixed programs. And so they are making independent choices already, and they are really just choosing based on whatever packaging is attractive to them or maybe what they ate yesterday.

10:34So we give them another reason to pick healthy options. We give them very cute coupons highlighting healthy options, and we tell them that, hey, during this period, it's a different price. To our surprise, children actually understood that and they like to play that game. So basically now they are getting a good deal by buying maybe cereal shake this week. And we kind of play with some concepts on the coupon. So we may not just tell them the final price right away. We will say, well, during this week, if you buy the large cereal shake, you pay for the price of the small one. And so it's almost like a mental mapping, a puzzle for them to solve that.

11:12Okay, how much money do I really need to take? And it's fascinating. It sounds like in that age group, I think you said 6 to 11, that's advanced enough in terms of their cognitive capabilities that they understand this game. Like they understand the value of a good price for a milkshake or whatever. They understand this. Exactly. So they understand, but it is to some extent still a game because there's some challenge. So it's a challenge that fits their ability. And so we saw that that really helped to boost children's interest in these healthy products. And what's even more exciting is that we observed that at some schools, once we removed the coupon, the sales dropped back.

11:50And that is to be expected. There's no discount anymore. There's no game anymore. But at some schools, actually, the supply, the demand actually sustained. So that means that they actually didn't go back or become lower than before. They actually become higher than before this intervention that we did. And we've investigated further. We found that the key difference was that in those schools that we found a sustained demand, we actually promoted healthy products that was moderately priced. So that wasn't extremely expensive to begin with. And so we can understand that basically with the coupon, we are drawing children's attention now to value and price.

12:30Maybe that's something they weren't thinking about as much before. Now they do. So after the coupon ended, they continue to pay attention to price. So if I was promoting healthy products that weren't too expensive to begin with, they realize, hey, this is actually a good deal all along. They continue to buy them. But if I pick these very extremely expensive healthy products to promote, yeah, I'm going to see a big demand during the promotion period. But afterwards, children are going to realize and they do learn, this is crazy expensive. I'm not going to buy it again. Then we see this big drop.

13:03So I think it's quite informative for us to think about what we should incentivize. Yes. And it's really good news that it's sticky and it lasts beyond the game. Otherwise, you would have to be playing games all the time and interest would extinguish, etc. Okay, so that actually helps me understand the next area a little bit because I was like, okay, then you also have worked on loyalty programs for like consumer, like, you know, frequent fly. I'm a frequent fly. You know, I've made a study because as you know, as a professor, we travel a lot. And so there's great opportunities. So tell me how the motivational theories behind loyalty programs.

13:42Some of it is obvious, but I bet some of it is not obvious. I think reward programs and loyalty programs are such an interesting environment to study because this is one way where firms can actually motivate their customers. And then what the firms are doing with reward programs, if you really think about it, is they're giving us a goal. United Airlines fly a lot with them. They give us a goal every year. They're like, this is the goal. If you reach it, we give you prizes, right? We give you upgrades next year and stuff. So they tell me this is a goal that's important. Now, once they set the goal, I have a whole journey.

14:17I have a whole year to complete this goal. Then the way I conceptualize it is you have early stage where it could be the beginning of the year. You have zero progress. You are very far away from this goal. Then you move closer and closer to it, hopefully, by the end of the year. So you have a later stage. If we just conceptualize that, you have early stage and later stage. Our research showed that the psychology is actually very different for customers and for everybody. But a lot of companies don't realize that. They give us a fixed structure, and that structure doesn't change throughout the year.

14:50But what is going on in customers' minds actually changes a lot. We can put ourselves in the shoes of the customer, since many of us are in reward programs. In the early stages, really the question is, is this possible or not? Can I even do this program? If this program seems very impossible, I'm going to fly with other airlines that make it seem more possible. Yes. So in the early stage, the most important thing that companies can do is to help your customers feel like they are making progress. And you're doing great. This is the program for you and you are going to get there. So I need that boost of confidence.

15:24And I always that's why I always say, you know, start with progress when you are starting on the goal. Start with progress. Yes. You've written about this a lot. and I wanted to ask you, so I'm glad I'm just going to stop for a moment because you said that I didn't understand what you meant because I wasn't reading the whole papers. I was reading the abstracts. And I said, what does she mean start with progress? But this is a great example. It was like early in the journey, you need kind of some quick wins to give you like a good feeling about the whole procedure. Exactly, yeah. So you can think about examples of, I can't even just give you free miles because you did something, right?

15:57So something very simple, I just boost you up. So you already jumpstart the process. Or in one of our tests, we actually designed a reward program with the company. And what we did is every action you took, let's say every dollar you spent, actually give you a lot more points, a lot more miles than what I would have done when you're getting closer to the goal. So in the beginning, you are kind of moving very fast. And every action you take, every cup of coffee you bought at Starbucks, for instance, it gained you a lot more points. And this is very important in the early stage because in the early stage, people are evaluating, is it possible or not?

16:32And if this goal is not possible, I'm just going to disengage right now. Why spend more time and money into it? But the important thing is this doesn't last forever. You can imagine the customer who gets closer to the end. You're about to get to the mileage goal that you're not worried about feasibility anymore. And this is where actually focusing on the bigger goal, the bigger purpose. Why are you even doing this? What's the big value of it? is more important than thinking about how I can make it possible. So there's this switch from starting with progress, but ending with a big, simple purpose that I want to really convey and make sure everybody embraces because I think that this switch of mindset is really critical.

17:11Right. And then I guess the advice to the companies is you really need to have two almost like separate but connected marketing approaches in those two phases. Like in one phase, it's the you can do this, you can do this. At the end, it's more like you're close. Here's why we're doing this. You're going to get you're going to get upgrades on the flights and blah, blah, blah. And so they and that might be hard for them, right, because there's an investment then in almost two different program. Totally. And two different communications. Exactly. But it is very critical because I think if we step away from reward program, I work with Wells Fargo for a while on their retirement savings.

17:49That's something very relevant for all of us. And if you think about retirement goal, I mean, that's 50 years working towards that goal. Very big, right? So this starting with progress is so important. If I don't think I'm going to be able to save for retirement, I'm just not going to do it. And so the way of Sparkle started giving people very quick feedback. You're doing great. This is why we think you are doing great. So you feel like you are having a momentum. You can keep on saving. But if you save more, you're kind of crossing that threshold. You're not worried about whether it's possible or not.

18:21You're already in the moment of saving. Then what they want you to focus you on is why are you even saving, right? So what is the benefit of saving this money so that that purpose propel you to continue saving? Yeah, that's such a great example. Even the Social Security Administration, I'm now thinking, I remember like I was 30 years old and they were telling me what my retirement, what my monthly retirement would look like with different levels. so they must have known a little bit of this even then that it was that for a 30 year old I was nowhere near retirement I wasn't even thinking about how much money I was going to make you know when I was 70 but they were telling me this so I could say oh that's interesting you know and I looked at it for like two seconds but it was good to remind me okay this retirement really is a thing this is the future of everything with Russ Altman we'll have more with Su Chi Huang next

19:20Welcome back to The Future of Everything. I'm Russ Altman, and I'm speaking with Sushi Wang from Stanford University. In the last segment, we learned about the basics of motivation, the start period, the middle period, the end period. They all have different characteristics and different challenges. In this section, we're going to focus on the social aspects of motivation. You might think you and your goals are very private. Sushi's work and others has shown that the network around you can create competitors and can create allies, and that this is important for maintaining motivation and achieving the goals.

19:54I wanted to ask about an area that I know you've worked on, which is connecting motivation to social connections and social issues. People might not think of that. They say, well, that's my goal. I'm working on it. What does it have to do with other people? So what is the role of social connections in pursuing goals and maintaining motivation? What a great question, Russ. And definitely, I think a lot of the motivation science studies have focused on situations where you are working on your goals alone. And it is true, it is your goal. But we live in a social world, and you may realize a lot of people share the same goal as us.

20:30So we are noticing a trend where consumers and individuals are participating in kind of a shared goal programs, and they want to be with other people who are working towards the same goals. So for instance, you think about training for a marathon. You may sign up for those support groups and do it together. Weight Watchers and many companies, they've built their whole business around the idea that people want information from other people who share the same goals. And these days you also have a lot of apps that allow you to see how other people are doing when they are cycling. The Peloton is another example, leaderboards.

21:02So there are a lot of social information we now have is built on, there are a lot of people working on the same door as you, where are you right now compared to them? And that's kind of why we want to explore the question of, are those kind of social feedback helpful? How should people you leverage it to actually sustain? Yeah, you know, I must say that before you tell me what, you know, what your findings are, from the start, I'm not sure if this is like a good thing or a bad thing, because I could, you know, I was a pre-med. And I remember that at certain times, I had to just get away from the other students, because they were getting so worked up that it was like unhealthy.

21:39So I can imagine that there's a two-edged sword. So we'll get to it. But before you tell me the answer, I'm just thinking that I've definitely been in groups where we're pursuing similar goals and we support each other. But I've also been in goals where there's like an insidious, like competitive nature. So we'll get to it. But a very interesting topic. Okay, please. So what do we find? What do we find are the dynamics and the issues here? And it's exactly like you said, there are two psychologists here, right? You can imagine, Why do people sign up for Weight Watchers? Because they want that support.

22:10And we can all see that. That's why we join study groups. We want other people. And kind of going back to the psychologies we talked about earlier, we say start with progress. So in the beginning, you want to feel great. You can do it. And so in that case, support is so important. And that's why people sign up for these apps and platforms and programs. Because in the beginning, you want to be surrounded by friends, especially friends who understand the struggle. They understand how hard it is to get started on a health goal or on a new diet. So in the beginning, seeking the support is very, very helpful.

22:41But we definitely find that this kind of a competitive pressure starts to happen in the middle. We found that repeatedly in the middle of a goal pursuit journey, people tend to feel a little bit like they are losing the momentum. Think about the summer if you have a year-end health goal. In the beginning, you are excited, anxious about it. at the end you are getting closer to the goal so you are also excited but the middle stage is where you have this uh what we call stuck in the middle effect you're kind of stuck your momentum is a little bit lower your focus is a little bit now less less less uh focus on the goal yes and so that middle stage is where we saw the interesting behavior we call social information avoidance because they people know that they are not making as much progress as they should and they started avoiding people around them because they don't want to feel pressured.

23:30And so you can imagine that if I'm managing a platform or an app, and I'm looking at how much users actually check up on the leaderboard or social information, I'm going to see this U-shaped pattern. In the beginning of the year, a lot of people are checking to make sure they are well calibrated. At the end of the year, a lot of people are checking to make sure they can finish the goal before other people. The middle of the year is where I saw a lack of activity and engagement on these social information. Is that the time when we might get competitive with one another during that U, the bottom of the U?

24:02I think that's the time where we feel threatened to some extent. Like we want to compete, but then we are not sure we are doing well enough to actually compete. So we shy away from social information. But the important thing is we do find that staying connected is especially important in that middle stage. Oh, okay. Because you're already losing momentum. You don't really have a benchmark that kind of propeller you to continue going. So I will say that when you feel the discomfort from social information, you're like, oh, I really want to mute this. I don't want to look at it. When you feel that that is actually a moment, you should be looking at it.