Gabriele Oettingen’s WOOP (Wish – Outcome – Obstacle – Plan) is a model you can use to increase the likelihood that you will take the actions required to realize your wishes. Just be careful not to wish for too much too quickly or easily;) The whole point of WOOP is that realizing a wish takes effort. By extension, realizing a big wish almost always requires that you put forth a lot of effort over a long period of time.
Psychologist Gabriele Oettingen developed the WOOP model based on research showing that there is a role for negative ideation in wish realization.
Some popular psychology books suggest that when you are aiming to achieve a big change, goal or dream, you should imagine that you have already achieved it. The idea is roughly based on William James’s proclamation that “what holds attention determines action.” Some have interpreted this to mean that if you imagine your wish has already been achieved, your mental and emotional resistance and skepticism will melt away and you’ll roll smoothly toward actually realizing the wish.
Oettingen cites research indicating that just the opposite true. When you imagine you have already achieved the wish and everything about that achievement is positive, your motivation to actually take the actions required to make it come true drops along with the likelihood that you’ll realize the wish. She calls this kind of positive ideation “mental attainment.” She cites research showing that those who used their minds for mental attainment were left feeling relaxed and sated rather than excited and motivated to take the actions necessary to realize the wish. She infers a link between mental attainment and motivation to take action.
Instead of imagining that you have already achieved the wish, Oettingen suggests that you try what she calls “mental contrasting.” Start by articulating the wish you wish to achieve, but then go on to imagine the various “obstacles” that could prevent you from achieving the wish. Visualization of both the attainment of the wish AND obstacles that could prevent attainment of the wish sets the stage for imagining the actions you can take to “overcome” those obstacles and create an action “plan” to move you closer to wish attainment.
This is a very sensible approach to goal achievement. It seems completely reasonable that you are more likely to realize a wish if you take action to realize it, and those actions are likely to be effective if you consider in advance what obstacles you might need to overcome along the way.
According to Oettingen, an additional benefit of using the WOOP process is that it forces you to imagine in more detail both the wish and the actions required to achieve it. She found that as people imagined what it would really take and what it would really look like to achieve the wish, it became easier for them to judge whether or not it was actually realistic to pursue the wish or not. Many subjects actually decided to abandon their wishes because having imagined them in detail, they realized that the experience of actually taking the actions might be unpleasant or unrealistic. Some also realized that attainment of the wish might not be that great after all. This enabled them to give up their unrealistic wishes and move onto to focusing on something else that was more attractive and/or realistic.
This left me wondering if WOOP is really a formula for achieving wishes at all. Although I love the practicality of the WOOP model, it probably isn’t a magic bullet for those looking to achieve huge dreams or breakthroughs. Huge dreams or breakthroughs are almost by definition difficult and improbable. You often can’t imagine what the outcome will look like in detail, and the obstacles can seem so big that are left feeling like a deer in headlights. In the process of going through the steps of WOOP, you may just decide that the status quo isn’t that bad after all and give up on that moonshot dream. While Oettingen might consider this wise, some might call it boring or hopeless.
In fact, many a dream is foiled by inertia. The first steps are often the hardest, and momentum can be fleeting. This is where WOOP might come in handy after all. WOOP simplifies the tactical planning required to keep you moving forward toward the milestones (small wishes) that get you closer to realizing dreams (big wishes). In the real world, you are not likely to become a CEO of a large company, Hollywood star or professional athlete, but as we all know, you almost certainly won’t become any of these things without taking steps that bring them closer to reality.
One of the interesting things about the “wishes” and “outcomes” described in Oettingen’s experiments is that she doesn’t make a clear distinction between “be” and “do” outcomes. Many of the examples she cites are actually wishes to “start and maintain a new behavior” which fit within the latter category.
To illustrate, I can wish to be 10 pounds lighter. This is a “be” outcome. Alternatively, I can wish to eat more vegetables and less meat. This is a “do” outcome. Many of the “wishes” described in Oettingen’s research are much closer to “do” outcomes than “be” outcomes.
WOOP is useful as a cuing process that raises your commitment to “doing” something new. Most of the outcomes we wish for are at least partially driven by action. Action cued through WOOP may not guarantee the outcome, but it does help you choose and commit to doing something that may get you closer to it. Once you have chosen a moonshot dream, you can use WOOP on an ongoing basis to imagine the next milestone, the obstacles in the way, and what you can do to overcome them.
Over time, with enough WOOP cycles, you may indeed realize even a very improbable dream because WOOP can keep you doing things that get you just a little bit closer to its realization.
Small WOOP successes might even bolster your belief that the dream you are working toward is worth all that effort by generating ongoing evidence that it isn’t a pipe dream after all.
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When you dig into the details, you see that something like WOOP is woven into X’s approach to moonshots. By taking on the most challenging obstacles first, X attempts to convert fast, cheap failure into long-term success and learning.
It’s not about fairy dust and magic wands so much as calculated risks and experiments based on the assumptions that: 1) most of those experiments will end in failure, 2) it will only take a few big improbable successes to pay for all the failures, 3) there is usually no way to get to those improbable successes without a lot of failures along the way.
This leads Teller to conclude that the fastest way to get to the improbable successes, is to incent people to do lots of experiments based on a process very much like WOOP. You accomplish this by rewarding and valuing the efforts of the experimenters, whether they succeed in finding one of those glorious unicorns or just ruling out another one of the many impotent mules…
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For the kind of “tactical” wish planning that Oettingen seems to be focused on, I’ve developed a similar tool that I call CIAO (CONTEXT – INTENDED outcome(s) – ACTION(S) – Actual OUTCOMES(S).
You can use CIAO to ideate and plan future actions OR to reflect on past actions as you choose what to do next. Some of my clients have used CIAO to replace coaching models like GROW and feedback models like SBI. CIAO allows them to look backward for reflection AND forward for coaching and ideation using a single model.
CIAO fits into the Iterate (experimental) stage of another model I use called the EDIT (ideapractice) cycle. The stages of EDIT are EXPLORE – DEFINE – ITERATE – TRANSFORM / TEMPLATE / TRANSITION.
Here is a link to Oettingen’s Hidden Brain interview introducing WOOP:
https://podcasts.apple.com/jp/podcast/hidden-brain/id1028908750?i=1000489049939
Here is the identifying information for Oettingen’s book on WOOP:
Gabriele Oettingen, Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the new science of motivation, Penguin Random House 2014
The links below lead to a few essays I’ve written on similar topics:
EDIT: A formula you can use to convert change (変化) into transformation (変革) by writing stories of agency, purpose, growth, connection, contribution and meaning
Never let the facts get in the way of a good story – unless cognitive dissonance makes you pretty sure it isn’t true:)
Mindset – Do you REALLY believe you can learn?
TRUE GRIT = Passion + Perseverance x Purpose
Here is a link to Astro Teller’s talk on how moonshots are built on a process that sounds very much like a systematic implementation of WOOP:
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