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Episode Summary

Rob breaks down why disconnecting on vacation is so hard for driven people, and why it is a motivation problem rather than a willpower one. He maps the specific Octalysis Core Drives that keep high achievers tied to work during a break, including Core Drive 2 (progress addiction), Core Drive 8 (FOMO and Black Hat urgency), and Core Drive 1 (the mission needs me trap). Drawing on his own routine of leaving the phone at the apartment near the beach, he shows how to name each drive and switch off its trigger before the break starts. Listeners learn a pre-break diagnostic and how to design time off the same way they would design a user’s exit from an engagement loop.

About the Host

Rob Alvarez is Head of Engagement Strategy, Europe at The Octalysis Group (TOG), a leading gamification and behavioral design consultancy. A globally recognized gamification strategist and TEDx speaker, he founded and hosts Professor Game, the #1 gamification podcast, and has interviewed hundreds of global experts. He designs evidence-based engagement systems that drive motivation, loyalty, and results, and teaches LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® and gamification at top institutions including IE Business School, EFMD, and EBS University across Europe, the Americas, and Asia.

Key Takeaways

• Driven people stay tied to work on vacation because their Core Drives keep firing in the background. This is a motivation issue, which is why pure willpower so often fails to deliver real rest.
• Core Drive 2 (Development and Accomplishment) shows up as progress addiction. With no momentum at work, a break can feel like your progress is being trumped, which pulls you back to the phone to make something move.
• Core Drive 8 (Loss and Avoidance) is Black Hat motivation built on FOMO. The fear that something breaks, or that everyone else is still shipping, creates urgency and pushes you to check in even when nothing is wrong.
• Core Drive 1 (Epic Meaning and Calling), the sense that the mission needs you, is the noble sounding trap. It can justify sacrificing rest you have earned, so naming it is what lets you stop it from firing back.
• The fix is to design your break the way you would design a user’s exit from an engagement loop: kill the notifications, remove the triggers (Rob leaves his phone at the apartment), and push yourself out instead of staying half in.
• A real emergency that truly needs you is rare, roughly 0.1 percent of the time. Plan ahead, brief your team on what actually counts as an emergency, and trust them to handle the other 99.9 percent without you.

Topics Covered

• [0:00] Why driven brains can’t switch off
• [0:49] Disconnecting is a motivation problem
• [1:21] Core Drive 2: progress addiction
• [1:54] Core Drive 8: FOMO and urgency
• [2:30] Core Drive 1: the mission trap
• [3:08] Name the drive, deactivate the trigger
• [3:54] Leaving the phone at the beach
• [4:50] Why productive resting backfires
• [6:00] Design your break like an engagement loop
• [6:36] Diagnose your pull-back drive first
• [8:05] Rest is switching off the drives

Mentioned in This Episode

• Core Drives in the Wild, Rob’s free guide (one Core Drive example per day)
• The Octalysis Group
• The Octalysis Framework and its Eight Core Drives (Yu-kai Chou), the basis for Core Drives 1, 2, 5, and 8 discussed here

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Looking forward to reading or hearing from you, Rob Full episode transcription (AI Generated)

Why driven brains can’t switch off

Rob Alvarez (0:00): I am about to take a couple of weeks off trying to disconnect as much as possible. Here’s the hard thing that nobody likes to admit. The hard part of taking off is not really planning. But hey, don’t get me wrong. My wife has been planning and it is a lot of hard work. I’m not talking about that being hard work or not being hard work. Very important clarification. Because it is hard work. I’m not saying planning is easy. I’m not saying planning does not take a lot of energy. It does, but we’re talking about a different thing here. What I’m referring to here is that the real hard part for your brain, especially if you are a very driven person, you are a Type A personality, as they like to call it nowadays, your brain doesn’t let you stop. You’ll want to check the phone, just quickly do something. And the more driven you are, the harder it gets.

Disconnecting is a motivation problem

Rob Alvarez (0:49): And the thing is, this is not a willpower problem, this is a motivation problem. And once you can’t see what are the motivational drives or the Core Drives that are keeping you from switching off, it is a lot easier to be able to shut them off. Temporarily, don’t get me wrong, these are Core Drives you want and that keep you active, productive, and motivated throughout the rest of your working time. So let’s take a look at a few of the potential Core Drives that are keeping you entirely connected all into your work when you’re not working.

Core Drive 2: progress addiction

Rob Alvarez (1:21): Core Drive 2, Development and Accomplishment. You could be having a little bit of a progress addiction. You stop feeling that momentum. Of course, you take off and you’re not progressing in whatever endeavors you had at work, whether that’s your own company or somebody else’s, it doesn’t matter. You feel like that progress is being trumped by this very annoying thing called vacations. But trust me, you do need that. So you wanna be able to identify that that might be one of the Core Drives that is getting you to go back and take a look at your phone.

Core Drive 8: FOMO and urgency

Rob Alvarez (1:54): The next one is Core Drive 8: Loss and Avoidance. The fear that if you step away, something breaks, you miss out, fear of missing out, everyone else is working, still shipping, doing the stuff, still posting. For you, disconnecting can feel like being a bit left behind. You fear that you are FOMO, fear of missing out literally is something that your brain is telling you, whoa, watch out. You don’t want to be left out. And it drives you into immediate action because remember, this is a Black Hat motivation. It creates urgency and it gets you to act right now.

Core Drive 1: the mission trap

Rob Alvarez (2:30): Could also be a case of Core Drive 1, Epic Meaning and Calling. The mission needs me. This is something greater than myself, so I might need to sacrifice my hard-earned vacations just to be able to do this because work is so important. Noble sounding thing might just be a trap. Honestly, yes, you are important. Yes, our works is important every single time. But remember, if Core Drive 1, Epic Meaning and Calling, is the one keeping you from taking that well-deserved and well-needed rest and disconnection. You want to be able to identify it, to be able to get it to not fire back at you rather than make you more productive.

Name the drive, deactivate the trigger

Rob Alvarez (3:08): These drives are the ones that are making you very good at your job. However, when you’re on a break, you’re just literally pointing in the wrong direction. Naming them, putting a title and understanding what is going on is where you’re able to catch them and start deactivating their triggers. So if the problem is the Core Drives are the ones that are keeping you from taking that well-earned and very necessary break, that vacation, be it small or very large, then if you want to flip it around, what you want to look at is the triggers that are saying, oh, this is the thing that is keeping me going forward in the job and not in the break and the vacation that I’m taking right now. So I can be present in the moment, engaged, and motivated to exactly everything that I am doing in this point.

Leaving the phone at the beach

Rob Alvarez (3:54): In my case, one of the things that I like to do, at least for as much as I can, or most of the time, is grab the phone, which brings in a lot of the Core Drive 8 and that urgency. You know, message pops in, an email comes in, even if people know and are very aware that, you know, they shouldn’t be contacting you. And probably they won’t. This is just a copied message or whatever. If you don’t have your phone there. You’re triggering Core Drive 8 saying, let me check my phone because something happened. It might be important. It might trigger my Core Drive 1, Epic Meaning and Calling, that the mission is so important and I don’t want to be disconnected. So one of the hacks is just put your phone away whenever that is possible. In my case, I like to go to the beach. The place we stay at tends to be very, very close to the beach. So I even sometimes leave it at the apartment. I don’t even take pictures with my phone. So it doesn’t trigger me into saying we need you back at the job.

Why productive resting backfires

Rob Alvarez (4:50): And some people like to do this whole sometimes it’s at the end of the year, sometimes it’s in a break. Oh, reflect back on your year, plan ahead of what’s gonna happen. And that is a trap most of the time if you don’t do it at the right moment. If you’re doing it in the middle or especially at the start of your vacation, the problem is you’re not really putting that endpoint, cutting things off. If you’re the kind of person who actually needs to have that, you know, moment of that plan very specifically, maybe the first day you. You know, double down, go all in with that planning ahead of the year, you know, that new thing, whatever that is, go all in with that and then get it out of your mind. Genuinely disconnect. You don’t want to do some productive resting if you’re really on a break on vacation, especially if you are with your family. Because there you start triggering also. You should also look at what are the other triggers that you’re having there, Epic Meaning and Calling for your family. It’s something greater than just yourself. Core Drive 5, because your family, your friends could be there also. Make sure those drives are also being there and you realize what you want to be motivated to on that break. That’s something that is also good. It’s hard earned and trust me, it’s not productive resting, but it is productive to get better at what your job might actually look like.

Design your break like an engagement loop

Rob Alvarez (6:00): So what I’m saying here is if you were the one designing for an engagement loop, right? Then people are coming back, coming back, but then you need them to step back and reflect or do something else or literally get out of the app because you’re worried that they might end up with a little bit of addiction or that risk might be there. You wouldn’t design for them to go out and at the same time stay connected inside the loop. You would somehow be able to stop that from happening, give them no notifications, or if they come back, just literally push them out. Do that same thing for yourself. You need it and you’re gonna be better at your job once you do take that well-deserved, well-earned rest that you need to actually be better at what you do.

Diagnose your pull-back drive first

Rob Alvarez (6:36): So the key takeaway, how do you use this in your own professional, slash personal in this case, life? Before you take your next break, don’t just block the time. Also ask, what is the Core Drive that typically pulls me back into work? That thing that maybe on weekends on time or on times when you know you shouldn’t be working, it’s bringing you back into work. Set up a disconnect for those triggers ahead of time. Make sure that you’re able to disconnect one thing from the other. Is it Core Drive 8? Things falling apart, really plan so that things will not fall apart with you being there. If you’re part of a team, one of the things that we do in Octalysis is we are part of a team of consultants. Plan well ahead, do the work, trust the team as well. If you have a team, you’re working together, trust others to be able to step up. And if you still feel bad about that, have an emergency route. But let your team know. And people are very smart when you let them, you give them this opportunity. What does an emergency look like that they really have to? You know, step, make you step out of a vacation. And when, which is 99.9% of the time, it’s not an emergency and can actually be solved without you needing to jump in. So give them that freedom and know if something really happens, they will contact me. And that gives you also that peace that many of us actually need. So design your break. So your own Core Drives are not breaking your break. The same way you design for any behavior you actually want to happen from your user.

Rest is switching off the drives

Rob Alvarez (8:05): I’m signing off for a couple of weeks. There is a planned episode that you will be seeing. That is not going to be problem for the podcast we record frequently, a lot of episodes, even in advance. So that’s going to be okay. However, I just want you to remember that resting is not about being lazy, it’s about switching off all those drives that keep you from resting. So you take that rest that needs you, the rest needs you as much as you need it. Recharge your batteries. Be present, get better at what you do by disconnecting and then plugging yourself right back in. And even though we’re talking about rests, you know, I’ve connected it, I think, too directly to your professional life and also to the Core Drives. And if you like these kinds of breakdowns off the Core Drives and want to use them in your own professional settings, we have set for you up our free Core Drives in the Wild guide. You can find it on the link in the description. Just click there, put in your email, you’ll get access to that one email per day until you get all the Core Drives. You’ll see examples like this one out there in the wild from previous episodes in my take as an Octalysis consultant from the Octalysis Group. However, at least for now and for today, it is time to say that it’s game over. End of transcription