The Science Of Motivation

Let’s talk about the science of motivation.

You see at the end of the day it’s hard to focus on a topic you are not interested in right.

You have to have motivation to do something.

And when it comes to motivations there are two types of motivation.

One is what we call intrinsic motivation motivation that comes from the inside.

We’re motivated to do something because of who we are because of what we believe because of what we

want.

It comes from within.

And then there’s external motivation things like money like salary like gifts like presence.

We sometimes do things for external motivations things that come from outside of us.

Now in the book Drive by Daniel Pink he discusses the idea that you need intrinsic motivation intrinsic

drive to learn and to learn efficiently.

And how do we do this.

He gives us three intrinsic motivations or drives for us to learn and continue to learn.

One is autonomy that is to have control.

We want to work on things that we want to do and that we have control over.

We want to work on things that gives us control of our lives.

The second is mastery.

We’re intrinsically motivated to be masters of something to be good at something and to be recognized

by others as being masters of a skill that makes us feel good.

And then finally we have the third which has purpose.

What is our purpose.

How does this benefit myself and others around you.

What is my destiny.

At the end of the day you can learn how to learn.

You can learn how to be efficient learner but without internal motivation without actually having the

drive to want to learn no trick is going to do the job for you.

And there is a famous effect in psychology called the over justification effect which occurs when an

external incentive actually decreases a person’s intrinsic motivation to perform a behavior or an activity.

Researchers actually found that when something like money or prizes which are external rewards are given

for actions that people actually find intrinsically motivated or intrinsically rewarding they actually

become less internally motivated to pursue those activities in the future.

For example if you’ve always enjoyed playing the piano and you become a professional pianist and all

of a sudden your job becomes to play the piano maybe you don’t get that motivation anymore.

Maybe when you come home from work all you want to do is not look at a piano.

That’s the effect that’s the over justification effect.

Now this isn’t to suggest that extrinsic motivation is a bad thing.

Money is important gifts presence sometimes are important and extrinsic motivations can actually be

beneficial in certain situations.

It can actually be helpful.

Know a person needs to complete a task that they find unpleasant like remember when we talked about

procrastination.

When we’re looking to procrastinate something like an extrinsic motivation like if I do five minutes

of this then I can have a cup of coffee then I can have a piece of chocolate that actually helps when

it comes to a task that we find that we procrastinate on so external rewards can actually help us do

things that as an individual we had no initial interest in doing.

So when we’re just starting off to acquire a new skill or a new piece of knowledge extrinsic motivation

and rewards are really really good.

However once these early skills have been learned for a long term you need to start becoming intrinsically

motivated to pursue that activity.

It’s great when you start to learn how to play the guitar and you get extrinsic rewards.

But after a while if you’re not internally motivated to become better and better at playing the guitar

you’re not going to pursue the activity remember in the lies section of the course we talked about this

idea that to follow your passion is simply a lie.

This is what we’re talking about when you follow your passion and then you suddenly get paid for it.

It doesn’t become a passion anymore.

What drives you should be internal.

The idea of learning of improving if you’re a learning machine learning the idea of becoming better

of getting respect from others of having autonomy mastery and purpose over our work is what will drive

us to continue to push to continue to learn to put ourselves in those uncomfortable situations of active

learning to become better and better.

So the key takeaway is here to put yourself in a situation where you can be praised for your learning.

If you’re surrounded by people who praise you for learning and getting better.

Having good friends having good social connections having a community of people that support each other

well that’s actually going to help with your intrinsic motivation because you’re getting better and

better at something and getting better at something feels good.

And when you’re being recognized for that that’s going to drive you for success.