Exercises — Chapter 22: Goals, Intrinsic Motivation, and Achievement

These exercises invite honest examination of why you pursue what you pursue — which requires more courage than examining whether you can achieve it. Proceed with curiosity rather than self-judgment.

Part 1: Understanding Your Motivation Profile

Exercise 22.1 — The Motivation Continuum

The SDT motivation continuum runs from amotivation through external regulation, introjected regulation, identified regulation, and integrated regulation to intrinsic motivation.

Think about three significant goals you are currently pursuing or have recently completed. For each:

(a) Classify the primary regulatory style: which point on the continuum best describes why you are pursuing (or pursued) this goal?

(b) If the goal is at the external or introjected end: what would it look like if the regulatory style shifted toward identified or integrated regulation? What would you need to believe or understand about the goal for that shift to happen?

(c) Is there a domain in your life where you have primarily external or introjected regulation but are spending significant time and effort? What is the long-term sustainability of that regulatory quality?

Exercise 22.2 — Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Goal Inventory

Kasser and Ryan's research found that people who prioritize extrinsic goals (money, status, appearance, fame) show lower wellbeing than those who prioritize intrinsic goals (growth, relatedness, contribution, health).

List your top five current goals — the things you are most actively working toward.

(a) For each goal, categorize it: primarily intrinsic (directly satisfies psychological needs), primarily extrinsic (oriented toward external reward/recognition), or mixed.

(b) What is the ratio of intrinsic to extrinsic goals in your current list?

(c) Is there a goal on your list that is primarily extrinsic but that you have told yourself is intrinsic? (Common example: "I want to make more money" framed as "I want security," which may or may not be the actual driver.)

Exercise 22.3 — The Three Needs Assessment

SDT's three universal needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

For your primary work or study context:

Rate each need's current level of satisfaction (1 = very low; 10 = very high):

Autonomy (the work feels self-authored; I understand and endorse the rationale for what I'm doing; I have meaningful choice): ___

Competence (I feel capable; I am learning and growing; my work produces intended outcomes): ___

Relatedness (I feel genuinely connected to people who matter in this context; I feel cared for and cared about): ___

(a) Which need is most satisfied? Which is most depleted?

(b) The depleted need is your highest leverage point for improving motivation and wellbeing in this context. What one change — in structure, behavior, or framing — would most improve that need's satisfaction?

(c) If you have control over the structure of your work (as a manager, educator, or self-employed person): how does the current structure support or undermine each of these needs for the people in your domain?

Part 2: Goals and Goal-Setting

Exercise 22.4 — Goal Quality Audit

Review your three most important current goals. For each, apply the quality criteria from the chapter:

(a) Specificity: Is the goal specific enough to direct attention and produce a clear action? Or is it a vague aspiration ("be healthier," "do better work")?

(b) Difficulty: Is the goal challenging enough to require genuine effort and growth? Or has it been set at a level that guarantees success without real stretch?

(c) Commitment: How committed are you to this goal (1–10)? If commitment is below 7, what would increase it — clarity of rationale, increased autonomy, improved self-efficacy?

(d) Framing: Is the goal framed as learning/mastery or as performance/demonstration? What would reframing it as a learning goal look like?

Exercise 22.5 — The WOOP Process

Apply WOOP (Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan) to your most important current goal:

Wish: State the goal in one sentence.

Outcome: Describe the best possible outcome of achieving this goal. What would it feel, look, and be like? Spend two minutes vividly imagining this.

Obstacle: Name the most significant internal obstacle — what in you most stands in the way? Not external obstacles (though those exist), but the internal one: the habit, the fear, the competing priority, the automatic response that most interferes with pursuit.

Plan: Complete this sentence: If [obstacle] occurs, then I will [specific action].

Review your WOOP: (a) Did identifying the internal obstacle change anything about how you're thinking about the goal?

(b) Does your if-then plan feel specific enough to actually guide behavior in the moment?

(c) Apply WOOP to one additional goal this week. Notice whether the process reveals a different obstacle than you had expected.

Exercise 22.6 — Implementation Intentions in Practice

Gollwitzer's research: implementation intentions approximately double goal completion rates.

Choose one specific action you have been intending to do but have not started.

Write three implementation intentions for it:

When [specific situation/time/trigger], I will [specific behavior] in [specific location].
When [alternative trigger], I will [alternative implementation].
If I miss [day/opportunity], then I will [recovery plan].

After one week: (a) Were the implementation intentions used? If not, why — was the trigger wrong, the behavior too vague, the plan too ambitious?

(b) What would you revise for the next week?

(c) The chapter notes that implementation intentions work partly by reducing the deliberation required at the moment of action. Did you notice this effect? Was the behavior more automatic with the implementation intention than without it?

Part 3: Achievement and Wellbeing

Exercise 22.7 — The Hedonic Treadmill Self-Assessment

The hedonic treadmill describes the return to baseline wellbeing after significant positive events.

(a) Think of an achievement you were anticipating significantly — something you worked toward for at least six months. How did it feel to achieve it? How long did the elevated wellbeing last?

(b) Compare your anticipated duration of satisfaction ("when I get this, everything will be better") to the actual duration. What was the gap?

(c) Looking at a current significant goal: how much of the motivation is based on the anticipation that achieving it will produce lasting wellbeing? Is this assumption consistent with your past experience of achievement?

Exercise 22.8 — Fear of Failure vs. Hope for Success

The chapter distinguishes motivation organized primarily around avoiding the bad outcome (fear of failure) from motivation organized around approaching the good outcome (hope for success).

(a) In your most effortful current pursuit, which orientation is more characteristic: are you primarily moving toward something you want, or away from something you fear?

(b) What is the specific outcome you are most afraid of failing to achieve? Write it explicitly. Then: is the fear of this outcome the primary driver of your effort?

(d) The research suggests that fear-of-failure driven achievement produces more anxiety, more performance-sensitivity, and less pleasure in success. Does this description fit your experience?

Exercise 22.9 — The Intrinsic Question

Dr. Reyes's field note: "What would I pursue if no one was watching? What is engaging to me simply because it is engaging?"

(a) Answer this honestly. Remove the audience: no one will know you pursued this, no one will be impressed, no one will be disappointed if you don't. What still has pull?

(b) How much of your current effort portfolio is aligned with this answer? How much is misaligned?

(c) If there is a significant gap between the intrinsic answer and the current effort portfolio: what would it take to close it by 20% in the next year? Not to abandon the external commitments — but to shift the balance modestly toward what is genuinely engaging.

Part 4: Autonomy in Context

Exercise 22.10 — Your Work Context and SDT

If you are currently employed or in school:

(a) How much autonomy do you have in your work — in how you do it, when you do it, and why you are doing it? Is there more autonomy available than you currently exercise?

(b) Does your manager/instructor engage in autonomy-supportive or controlling behavior? What is the effect of their style on your motivation?

(c) If you are in a leadership position: rate your own autonomy-supportive behavior (1–10). What specific behaviors would shift it toward greater autonomy support?

Exercise 22.11 — Rationale and Endorsement

Identified regulation — the point on the SDT continuum associated with high performance for non-intrinsically-interesting tasks — requires that the person genuinely understand and endorse the rationale for what they are doing.

(a) Are there significant demands in your work or study that you comply with without genuinely endorsing their rationale? What is the motivation quality in those domains?

(b) For one such demand: can you identify a genuine rationale that you could actually endorse? Not a rationalization — a real reason that actually matters to you?

Part 5: Building Intrinsically Engaged Pursuit

Exercise 22.12 — Designing for Need Satisfaction

The research suggests that autonomy, competence, and relatedness need satisfaction can be designed into goal pursuit — that the structure of how you pursue a goal affects motivation, not only the goal itself.

For your most important current goal:

(a) Autonomy: How can you increase the sense of genuine choice in how you pursue it? Can you make one aspect more self-directed?

(b) Competence: Is the challenge level appropriate — neither too easy nor overwhelming? If it is boring, how can you increase the challenge? If it is overwhelming, how can you build competence steps?

(c) Relatedness: Is there a way to pursue this goal in connection with others who share it, who support it, or who are engaged in related work? What would it add to the pursuit?

Exercise 22.13 — The Values-Goal Connection

The chapter emphasizes that goals rooted in genuine values produce more sustained motivation than goals chosen to satisfy external expectations.

(a) For each of your top three current goals, name the value it serves. Be specific: not just "success" or "health" but the specific thing this goal is an expression of — the value that makes this goal feel worth pursuing.

(b) If you cannot name a specific value for a goal, that is information: either the value is unclear, or the goal is not genuinely yours.

(c) What would it look like to pursue each goal in a way that makes the value connection explicit — so that the pursuit of the goal feels like an expression of who you are rather than a task you are completing?

Part 6: Integration

Exercise 22.14 — The One-Year Goal Audit

Imagine your professional and personal life one year from now in the version that reflects your genuine values and most important priorities.

(a) Describe it specifically: what have you achieved, what have you built, what do you spend your time doing, what relationships are most active?

(b) What are the three most important things you are currently not doing that would most move you toward this version?

Exercise 22.15 — The Quiet Question

Jordan sat in his kitchen after the initiative's success and asked, out loud: "Okay. So we figure out what we're actually working on."

This is the question that follows a significant achievement when you discover the achievement did not fill what you had hoped it would.

If you have had this experience — or can imagine having it:

(a) What is the thing you have been working toward that, when achieved, you suspect will not fill what you hope it will?

(b) What is the underlying need that the achievement was serving as a proxy for? Name it specifically.

(c) What would it look like to address that underlying need more directly — not through another achievement, but through something closer to the source?