14. Hmmm, nah, can't be bothered

Over the past year or so, it’s pretty safe to say that our collective motivation has, at times, gone to shit.

In theory, having more time than ever provided us with the perfect opportunity to do all that good stuff like read more, learn more, exercise more, and generally be productive AF.

However, the reality’s often been a little different... with the desire to do anything, other than order 12 Deliveroos a week and watch Friends for the 2,926th time, having vanished without a (track and) trace.

Of course, there’ll be a whole host of reasons for this; the monotony of spending 98% of our lives in our living room, and not being able to spend any time with anyone other than our own anxiety (always a laugh), just to name a couple.

Having said that, there have been those amongst us who have, with seemingly relentless self-discipline and motivation, been smashing it... and in doing so, leaving the rest of us in disbelief.

Similarly to the above, there will no doubt be a multitude of factors and reasons why. And in the interest of delaying yet another Deliveroo order, let’s look at one of these potential factors in a bit more detail; motive.

When we see people excelling in life, it can often leave us asking questions along the lines of "how on earth is [insert name] so bloody good at [insert thing]?".

You know the type of stuff, “Shannon, how are you so high up in your Accountancy firm?” or “Johnny, how are you in such good shape?”

Fair questions.

Though by asking these, we may, amongst other reasons, hear about Shannon’s 80 hour working weeks, and Johnny’s diet of kale, broccoli and protein shakes.

I mean, cool... but that also sounds about as appealing as another year in lockdown.

We all inherently know that those things are likely to produce those results, so that’s not really the answer we’re looking for.

What’s probably more interesting is understanding what on earth possesses them to do those things in the first place.

So, let’s dig a little deeper, and lean on the expertise of the leading minds in the field of behavioural psychology; The Backstreet Boys.

They weren’t singing “Tell Me How?” were they?

Nope, their qualitative-based research was driven by the question “Tell Me Why?”. And after all these years, we can give Nick, Brian, Howie, Kevin and AJ some answers...

“Shannon, why are you so high up in your Accountancy firm?” and “Johnny, why are you in such good shape?”

This time, if they’re being honest, we may hear about Shannon trying to add some meaning to an otherwise meaningless life, or about Johnny’s massive insecurities and that he’s really trying to get laid.

The kale, broccoli and protein shakes make a bit more sense now.

I’m not sure if he was referring to #gainz per se, but as Friedrich Nietzsche put it “He who has a powerful why can bear almost any how”.

In this case, because there’s a strong enough reason to do so, Shannon can deal with her brutal working hours, and Johnny can deal with his brutal bowels.

And broadly speaking, someone’s reasons for doing anything fall into 2 different categories: Extrinsic and Intrinsic.

So, what’s the difference?

Extrinsic motives are basically doing things because we want a load of praise and attention. It’s the seeking of external rewards, recognition or gratification, or avoiding some sort of pain or punishment. For example:

• Doing a job just for the money

• Taking a photo for the Insta likes

• Reading Blogs and Dogs otherwise you’ll upset Howie (me, not the Backstreet Boy)

On the flip side, intrinsic motives are more just cos we like doing it. It’s personally rewarding, with no need for external recognition:

• Doing a job because it’s enjoyable

• Taking a photo because we’re passionate about photography

• Reading Blogs and Dogs because you just bloody love the content (OK, appreciate that’s not the most relatable point...)

As you can probably guess, intrinsic motivation is often painted as the good guy (doing something for the love of it, how noble), with extrinsic motivation seen more as the bad guy (attention-seeking git).

This makes sense. Intrinsically driven stuff is good, as we can’t really lose. There’s no metric for success other than our own enjoyment… so if we’re having a good time, who cares what anyone else says?

Having said that, this can be much easier said than done. Due to one simple fact: we’re human.

Let’s be honest, our eyes do tend to light up at the thought of praise, recognition and generally getting lots of attention.

I mean, largely, I enjoy writing this blog… but does a cheeky like or follow add a bit of extra motivation? Of course (and no, not just cos they’re so rare).

Similarly, who hasn’t been motivated to run that extra KM, do a couple of extra reps, or hold that plank a few seconds longer at the thought of someone noticing our progress (and lavishing us with compliments)?

However, despite being very fun, extrinsic motivation as a whole is pretty volatile, as external rewards and recognition are fundamentally out of our control.

In contrast to intrinsic motives where we can’t really lose, with extrinsically driven stuff, we definitely can.

We’ve all been there; our banging social post (that we spent about 3 hours writing the caption for) died a painful death... or wanting to lose a certain amount of weight, and then getting nowhere near it.

For any endeavour to go well - whether that’s a new job, personal project, diet, online course, fitness programme, or anything - it’s often largely down to us just persevering long enough to see the rewards of our efforts. And that can, at least in part, be down to our reasons to persevere being stronger than the reasons to quit (and there’s always a load of those). As such, I’d say that the motives behind us doing anything are pretty important.

In the age of social media, we may occasionally (slash frequently) lean towards being more extrinsically motivated, despite a much higher chance for us being left in a pit of anxiety and disappointment.

As such, there’s probably quite a lot to be said for getting involved with activities that are predominantly intrinsically driven, as often they can be more fulfilling, we can’t really lose at them, and we’re less likely to fall into the aforementioned disappointment and anxiety pit.

Having said that, we all know how powerful externally driven factors can be, and so a healthy sprinkling of extrinsic motivation is always encouraged...

And on that note, you know where those like and subscribe buttons are… 🙂