‘Doings’ Reinforced by Prosocial Motives Optimize Achievement

I recently uncovered a perspective that helps motivate me in my various domains of achievement: this is the notion of ‘doings’ or actions that implement goals or purposes, both near term and long term.

These doings could be eating less, changing your diet (no cream in coffee for example to promote weight loss) or putting down a certain number of words and phrases for a day of writing.

Whatever the means–end activity that helps implement your strategy for success, seeing these doings as meaningful in themselves because they embody your values or goals is a optimal tactic for moving forward.  “Meaningful in themselves’ is key because it takes you away from a focus on  benefits and rewards that may  or may not show up.

My new mantra is: Do the work and results will follow. Sometimes this isn’t true but you need to keep it up and not flag in your efforts because you aren’t getting the result you expected.

This recently happened to me:  I started counting calories with an IPhone app in hopes this tactic would help in weight loss.  But lo and behold, no results followed, though it has only been about 10 days. I am discouraged and I’m thinking of giving it up as it is a bit of a bother.  But like the cold calling example, persistence is sometimes the key. I once made 35 calls over three years to a company that finally said ‘yes’.  The activity was key, not the results.

Similarly, whatever the striving domain, persistence pays dividends but if you keep the way of viewing focused on the ‘doing’ rather than the results, you won’t be so likely to throw in the towel, perhaps prematurely.

A ‘doing ‘perspective is strengthened if it is backed up by prosocial motivation, researchers have discovered. Persistence is positively correlated with prosocial motivation or the“voluntary behavior intended to benefit another" or society as a whole," "such as helping, sharing, donating, co-operating, and volunteering." These actions may be motivated by empathy and by concern about the welfare and rights of others, ^[4] as well as for egoistic or practical concerns.

In the research cited above, callers who reported high levels of both prosocial and intrinsic motivations raised more money 1 month later, and this moderated association was mediated by a larger number of calls made.