The Three Sources of Motivation
Understanding the basics of motivation, both in yourself, as well as in people you deal with, can help you be much more effective in accomplishing goals that are meaningful to you.
When we keep drilling through the layers of why we do things, we find that there are really only three sources of motivation to take action:
- Fear.
- Self Discipline.
- Direct Desire.
Fear
The worst one of these, but also the most effective to get us to take action, is fear.
I do not have any research to support this, but based on the number of people struggling with burnout and the general lack of emotional wellness in the world today, and from many conversations over the years, I believe that this is the most common form of motivation that drives most people to do what they do, most of the time.
Fear of poverty, fear of losing a job, fear of being seen as inferior to others, fear of looking worse than before – There is a litany of fears that we can think of, and fear drives action like nothing else does.
The problem with fear, however, is that it also tends to activate a whole bunch of activities in our brains and nervous systems that cause us, especially in environments where clear thinking is important, to function sub-optimally. Fear reduces your ability to think creatively and clearly. Fear reduces your ability to interact effectively with people around you. Fear is contagious. If you are fearful, people around you pick that up and their experience of working with you becomes tainted with negative emotions – reducing your ability to work together with them effectively. If you are in a leadership position, that influence is probably strong enough that you also reduce their ability to work together effectively.
Discipline
The second form of motivation, which is a whole lot better than fear, is discipline.
Discipline is when I choose to do something I do not really want to do for the sake of a reward or positive outcome in the future.
Notice that the behaviour can look exactly the same as the behaviour driven by fear. One person can love getting their salary at the end of every month, even though they hate their work – and for the desire of that salary, use discipline to do the best job that they can.
Another person may work from a position where they fear losing their job, and force themselves to do the work as well as they can force themselves to do it, because of that fear.
If two people have roughly the same ability and capacity for the work, and the one is motivated by desire, whereas the other one is motivated by fear, there is a very good chance that the one motivated by desire will outperform the one motivated by fear. They will be in a more creative and energetic state, driven by that desire. It will be easier for them to believe that maybe, if they work well enough, they could even get an increase or a promotion or a bonus – and that would drive them making a greater effort.
Direct Desire – Autotelic Work
The most positive form of motivation is what I call direct desire. This is where you do the work because you want to do the work itself. You desire to do the work directly – hence my term, “direct desire.” You do not do the work because you desire the reward, or because you fear the outcome of not doing it. This is called autotelic work. A test of whether work is autotelic is to ask yourself whether you would do this work even if you got no reward for it, or if there were no negative consequences to not doing the work.
Many years ago, I worked as a driver for Mr. Delivery. There are few things I enjoy more than driving. Driving for me was autotelic work. Writing for me is autotelic. I don't write because I get paid for it. I hope that eventually one day I will figure out how to get paid for it. But in the meanwhile I keep writing, regardless.
David Senra built a business reading autobiographies and then telling people about them. He loves reading autobiographies. That anyone could make a living from that, seems highly improbable – but he's done it. However, he was reading autobiographies long before he figured out how to get paid for it.
Fear is the most common motivator
Most people choose to keep allowing themselves to be driven by fear because they cannot see how the work that would be autotelic for them could become something they could do for a living; and because they do not trust their own ability to discipline themselves enough to do what must be done to get to the rewards they desire in life.
It is probably nearly impossible to live a life where one makes a living doing 100% autotelic work.
Start moving your environment
However, it is possible, by thinking about our sources of motivation, and how they influence us, to begin to move in that direction. As an entrepreneur, this should inform the people you employ, and the vision and goals that you set.
You should employ people for whom work is autotelic that is not autotelic for you.
However, since you will probably not immediately, (and maybe never) be able to get everyone to do only autotelic work, you should set goals and create a vision that is inspiring enough that you, and the people working for you, would be able to use that to inspire yourselves to be disciplined to do the work that needs to be done, even when that work sucks.
And if you find that you are driven by fear most of the time, you should do the work to deal with that – because if you are working from a place of fear, I can almost guarantee you that you are poisoning your team. It's not easy, but it's possible to break free from that. It took me about 3 years of intense personal effort to break free from 30 years of having had fear as my primary motivator.
It's not easy.
But it is possible.
To your success
Ashton
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