Why Do You Do a Given Thing?
Some things you want to do even when no one's making you: playing games, drawing, digging into a topic you love—the doing itself is enjoyable. That drive that grows from within is called intrinsic motivation.
Other things you only do to get an outside reward or avoid a punishment: working overtime for a bonus, turning in homework to avoid getting scolded. That kind, driven by external rewards or pressure, is called extrinsic motivation.
A Habit Is a Little Three-Step Loop
Flopping onto the couch to scroll your phone the moment you get home is almost automatic—and behind it hides a fixed little loop.
It has three steps: cue (walking in, sitting down) → routine (picking up the phone to scroll) → reward (relaxing, not having to think). When the same cue repeatedly brings the same reward, the behavior becomes more and more automatic.
Use This Loop to Build or Break a Habit
To build a habit: give it a clear cue, make the routine easy, and reward yourself right away. Want to read more? Put the book by your pillow (cue), read just one page a day (easy), and check it off as a little treat when you're done (reward).
To break a habit: don't just rely on brute willpower. Try keeping the cue and the reward and swapping out the routine in the middle. If walking in makes you want to scroll, change it to drinking a glass of water or changing clothes first—you still get the "unwind a bit" reward.
自测 · 学完检查一下
想真正动手做题、记进度、攒连胜？到互动课里练。
Which of the following is most like "intrinsic motivation"?
答案：Practicing guitar purely because you love it and enjoy doing it
Intrinsic motivation comes from the interest and satisfaction the activity itself provides; the other three rely on external rewards or pressure, making them extrinsic motivation.
True or false: "sticking to clocking in every day at work just to get the perfect-attendance bonus" counts as extrinsic motivation.
答案：True
The drive comes from an external bonus (an external reward), not from the work itself making you happy, so it's extrinsic motivation.
The three parts of the habit loop, in order, are?
答案：Cue → routine → reward
The habit loop is: a cue triggers first, you carry out a routine, and finally you get a reward; the reward keeps reinforcing the loop.
In the habit loop, the first part that triggers the whole action (like "walking in the front door" or "the phone rings") is called the ____.
答案：cue
The cue is the signal that kicks off the habit; only after it come the routine and the reward.
To break the habit of "reaching for the phone the moment you sit on the couch," following the habit loop, what's usually the smartest approach?
答案：Keep "sit on the couch" and "relax," and replace the middle phone-scrolling with flipping through a few pages of a book
The effective way to change a habit is to keep the cue (sit on the couch) and the reward (relax) and only swap the middle routine; relying on raw willpower or wrecking your environment is impractical and hard to sustain.
True or false: to build a daily reading habit—putting the book by your pillow (cue), requiring only one page a day (lower difficulty), and giving yourself a small reward when done (reward)—is designing according to the habit loop.
答案：True
A clear cue, an easy-to-do routine, and a reward when finished is exactly using the cue → routine → reward loop to build a habit.