The Surprising Power of Negative Thinking

Everyone tells you to think positively.

You’re supposed to believe in yourself and visualize yourself achieving your goals.

While this might work for some people, it doesn’t motivate others enough. So they keep procrastinating instead of doing what needs to be done.

Some of us need a more powerful motivation to get things done. A darker one.

According to famous neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, this dark motivation technique can be a crazy effective tool in overcoming procrastination.

Let me explain.

I bet there’s at least one thing you have been avoiding for a while.

You know it would be in your best interest to get it done. But somehow you keep procrastinating.

Let's run a thought experiment:

Imagine someone came into your room right now and put a gun to your head.

Either you start working on it right now, or he pulls the trigger.

Chances are, you would do the thing.

Suddenly it wouldn’t matter that you don't feel like doing the thing. You wouldn’t think twice and get straight to work.

I know, this is an extreme example. But there’s an important lesson in this thought experiment:

Fear can be a powerful motivator.

In one of his lectures, Jordan Person talked about a fascinating study.

Researchers experimented with starving rats. They attached a spring to the rats’ tails and placed cheese in front of them to measure how much force the rates produced as a proxy for the rats' desire to get the cheese.

As the rats were starving, you might think they pulled as hard as possible trying to get the cheese.

In the second round of the experiment, the rats additionally smelled the odor of cats from behind their backs.

A double motivation if you will. Not only were they driven by the desire to get the cheese, but also by the fear of the cat.

Here’s the surprising result:

In the second round, the rats pulled a lot harder.

Fear-based motivation made the rats expend more energy.

I know, you’re not a rat. But fear can be an effective tool to get yourself to do what needs to be done.

Here’s how:

Whenever you don't feel like working on your goals and catch yourself procrastinating, visualize the negative consequences of not doing the thing.

Imagine failing to achieve your goal.

Create a clear picture. Answering the following questions will help you:

• How disappointed will you feel?

• How much will it hurt?

• How will failure impact your life?

• What will others think of you?

Now you know what to do.

Let’s explore why it works.

Multiple psychological and physical phenomenons make visualizing failure so effective.

Here are the three most important ones:

Negative emotions

We are hardwired to avoid negative emotions. Expecting a task to be hard or boring is one of the main reasons we procrastinate in the first place.

Visualizing failure helps to make your biology work for you instead of against you.

Thinking about how it would feel to fail creates a fear that is stronger than the negative emotions that arise when thinking of the task you avoid.

Suddenly it's no longer the task, but the negative consequence of failure that you want to avoid.

So you get to work.

Stress response

Visualizing failure increases motivation by triggering the stress response and activating the amygdala, increasing alertness and focus.

This heightened state of awareness can lead to improved problem-solving and a sense of urgency. All of these things push you to work harder and avoid failure.

Loss aversion

Loss aversion is a cognitive bias that refers to our tendencys to strongly prefer avoiding losses over acquiring equivalent gains.

In other words, people tend to feel the pain of losing something (e.g., money, possessions, opportunities) more intensely than they feel the pleasure of gaining the same thing.

That’s why it’s often more motivating to think about failure than to think about success.