Surface utility value by connecting a task to goals you already care about

A task you find boring can become motivating when you see concretely how it serves a goal that matters to you.

Why it works

Eccles distinguishes four components of task value: intrinsic interest, utility value (instrumental connection to other goals), attainment value (relevance to identity), and cost. Utility value — the least glamorous of these — is often an untapped lever: even intrinsically tedious tasks become more motivating when their specific connection to higher-priority goals is made explicit rather than assumed. The brain experiences the task differently when it is registered as serving the end-goal rather than as a disconnected obligation.

How to do it

1. For any task you are avoiding, write a one-sentence explicit connection: "This task serves [goal I care about] because [specific mechanism]."
2. If you cannot write that sentence, question whether the task belongs on your list at all.
3. When working on the task, keep the connection visible — not as decoration but as active information.

Evidence

Intervention research found that brief utility-value writing exercises — asking students to write about how course material was relevant to their lives — produced meaningful improvements in academic performance, particularly for lower-performing students. A later randomised trial (Harackiewicz et al., 2012) showed the utility-value lever also works indirectly: coaching parents to convey the relevance of math and science raised the courses adolescents subsequently took. (rct)

The study was in educational settings; the utility-value writing intervention is a specific technique, and its effectiveness in non-academic contexts is promising but less studied.

Sources

• Hulleman & Harackiewicz (2009), "Promoting interest and performance in high school science classes", Science
• Hulleman, C. S., & Harackiewicz, J. M. (2009). Promoting interest and performance in high school science classes. Science, 326(5958), 1410–1412.
• Harackiewicz, J. M., Rozek, C. S., Hulleman, C. S., & Hyde, J. S. (2012). Helping parents to motivate adolescents in mathematics and science: An experimental test of a utility-value intervention. Psychological Science, 23(8), 899–906.

Common mistake

Writing a vague utility connection ("this will help my career") rather than a specific one ("this report will demonstrate to my manager the specific skill that determines my promotion criteria").