Last week, I have dedicated considerable time and space to developing a qualitative system dynamics model showing the interplay between the pleasure drive, the aggressive drive and the generative drive.
In this post, I hope to show you the power of this model by illustrating its use in a number of relatable scenarios. By evaluating how your current behaviour and feelings fit within the model, you can more easily assess the underlying cause and work on resolving or further enabling them. In the end, it puts you in a position to have a higher capacity for generative behaviour: to have a higher generative output and a more fulfilling experience overall.
This article follows the line of argumentation presented in the model below. Important to note here is that I refer to ‘generative behaviour’ rather than ‘productive behaviour’ although they are seemingly synonymous. The connotation that people often have with productive behaviour is that it is productive to someone else, e.g. your employer (when working) or your spouse (when cleaning the house). Generative behaviour however is behaviour that is productive to you (i.e. aligned with your values and aspirations).
Managing resources more effectively
As we saw in the last post in the series, our ‘resources’ play an immensely important role in the mediation of our pleasure-seeking, domineering and generative behaviour. Each of those behaviours (taking a nap) requires resources (a bed), consumes resources (time), and creates resources (energy, focus). However these resources are rarely of the same kind (time vs energy).
The first and maybe also most important lesson of the model is therefore to become aware of your resources and how you can manage them.
As we will see later, it can sometimes be useful to engage in pleasure-seeking behaviour to increase our pleasure-drive and enable generative behaviour. However, when you’re already low on concentration, scrolling social media might not be the best pleasure-seeking activity, and going for a walk or listening to some music may be a better alternative.
In any case, it is good to be aware of the penalty we have to pay every time we switch between any mentally-demanding task. It takes our brain about 15 minutes to stop thinking about what we were doing before and activate the neural areas relevant for whatever it is that we want to do next. So, to make the model a little more complete, I will add one last variable to the resources sink in our model.
Start the day correctly
At the beginning of the day, resources that are often required for generative behaviour, such as energy, focus and time are still plentiful. This puts us in a perfect position to enable the empowerment and fulfillment cycles R1 and R3.
However, by the same token, we can also end up in the hedonic reinforcement or over-aggression loops R4 and R2 if the first things we do are of a pleasure-seeking or domineering nature. The only way to get out of these cycles later is through an increase in the generative drive, for which there are no natural dynamics within the model.
So, if you want to want to have a generative day, make sure to start it with a generative activity, in line with your values and aspirations.
Re-engineer your tasks to increase output
Coming back to the empowerment cycle R1, we see that the loop is activated by the fruits of our generative behaviour. The problem with this loop is that it may take a long time before our behaviour yields actual results.
In this case, it can be particularly helpful to set intermediate or side-targets.
Intermediate targets arise from chopping up our output into smaller, tangible deliverables. For example, instead of writing a full article, we may want to focus on finishing one section or even paragraph at a time, so that the empowerment cycle is completed before we move on to the next.
Side-targets are additional outputs that we can pursue on the side of our project. To stick with the example of writing an article, you may want to set some word count objectives, or keep a check-box list on the side. These (superficial) side-targets are generative to the generative behaviour, and depending on how susceptible you are to them can make you feel like your behaviour is yielding results—giving you a sense of agency and enabling the empowerment-loop.
Making your behaviour fulfilling (again)
Do we have a similar mechanism on the pleasure side of things? To find that out, we need to look at our experience and see what has caused us to make our generative behaviour more pleasurable, without changing the behaviour itself.
Here an example from Atomic Habits by James Clear comes to mind1. Clear talks about how you can make tasks like taking out the trash more enjoyable by recognising underlying values, such as ‘tidiness’ or ‘order.’ Sometimes all it takes to get joy from doing things is recognising why you were doing them in the first place. To this end, an engaging conversation with a colleague or friend working on the same thing can be of tremendous help.
Increase your generative drive
A tricky thing about the generative cycle is that it is extremely difficult to get out of the hedonic reinforcement or over-aggression loops R4 and R2, because the only way of doing so is by increasing your generative drive. As pointed out before, there is no natural mechanism in the model that enables you to achieve this.
What can we do to increase our generative drive? Or in other words, what can we do to feel like engaging more in generative behaviour? There might be more than one answer to this question, and I’m inviting you to think along!
