This week’s theme is an offshoot of my practicing posts: how do you find your motivation? What keeps you coming back to the practice room, or for that matter back to the gym or class or work? What gets you out of bed in the morning? Why do you keep doing anything?
What is Motivation?
Motivation is one of today’s hot button issues. You can find it in the many webpages devoted to motivational quotes, or your instagram feed filled with #MondayMotivation, or another TED talk making the rounds. Maybe your elementary school classroom had a picture of a kitten dangling from a tree branch, with the words HANG IN THERE on it (classic).
Whatever you find to keep yourself going is motivation. There are two basic types: intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic is an internal motivator, while extrinsic is and external, environmental factor. I’m going to talk about both, and both are perfectly valid. However, I’m going to argue that while intrinsic is more valuable (at least for our purposes), extrinsic can be more useful.
Extrinsic Motivation
Do you go to work so you can get that paycheck? That’s an extrinsic motivator: seeking a physical or external reward for doing something. If you convince yourself to go to the gym by telling yourself you can have ice cream after, that’s extrinsic. If you want to do well on a project so your teacher is proud of you/gives you a good grade, yup, that’s extrinsic too. These are 100% perfectly valid reasons for doing things. Build fire, cook food. Find nice cave, stay dry. They’re great for meeting your physical and even emotional needs. But, they break down when you need to do things that don’t have an obvious, external, reward.
Intrinsic Motivation
So what motivates us internally? These are the things that we want to do because they’re enjoyable, because they seem meaningful, because they’re rewarding for us. Doing them gives you a sense of pride and accomplishment, if you will. There’s no physical gold star or public recognition (necessarily), you do it because you want to. That’s why this is frequently associated with artistic-type endeavors. There is no real, concrete reason to make music: pretty sounds don’t feed or clothe or shelter. It’s just something that we enjoy.
Know Thyself
Are you struggling to stay motivated?* Looking for some tips and tricks? My step one is get to know yourself. I don’t believe that complex problems have simple solutions, and motivation is pretty complex. Therefore I’m going to take a more holistic approach.
If you’re not sure how to motivate yourself, I’m going to suggest first checking out Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies quiz (I think you have to enter an email address to get your results, which is dumb, but you can opt out of all the marketing). It’s your basic personality quiz thing, a step up from buzzfeed at least, but I think it’s a good starting point for knowing what can help motivate you, especially extrinsically. Can you keep yourself accountable, or do you need other people keeping an eye on your progress? Or do other people’s expectations make you not want to do something?
In Which I Tell You To Write Things Down
Next, I want you to consider what it is you want to stay motivated to do. Write it down in as concrete terms as you can. Now figure out what is your main discouraging factor. What is preventing you from doing it? Are you afraid of failing? Do you struggle to stay focused? Are you struggling to find inspiration? Is it too big of a goal (for now)? Do you lack some necessary knowledge or skills? Write that down too.
The next step is to find your hook. Why do you want to stay motivated to do what you want to do? You’re probably now going to have to find some intrinsic factor. What is it inside you that is driving you? What is it that has its steely little claws in you, saying do this? This is your hook. (If you can’t find one, ask yourself if you have an extrinsic motivator. If you don’t have that either, then maybe what you’re trying to do isn’t for you – and that’s ok.) Once you’ve found it (or them!), write it down.
*If you’re suddenly and/or chronically struggling to stay motivated, that can be a symptom of depression. This doesn’t mean that you’re SOL, just that it’s going to be more difficult and you might need more help. This is not a failing.
What To Do
Now I’ll tell you what to do! It’s so easy! All you have to do is… do it.
Now that you’ve written down your big goal, your discouraging factor, and your hook, you should be good to go, right? You know what you want and you know what’s stopping you! That’s the biggest hurdle! Go get ’em, tiger!
Ok obviously there’s more at work here. Even people who know all about what they want and what’s stopping them struggle with motivation. The problem is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. You have to find what works for you. I’ve put together some of my favorite solutions to get you started though!
Baby Steps
You (hopefully) don’t eat a whole cake in one bite, right? And you don’t learn to bake by starting with a croquembouche. Break down your goal into bite-size steps, identifying skills and sub-skills that you might need to work on to get there. It’s much easier to be motivated to do a task that you know you can accomplish.
Progress Tracking
Keep a journal or a log of your practice, so you can see how far you’ve come! This also works if you’re trying to keep a habit going. I like to make a little weekly chart of tasks that I can check off each day, and see how I’ve done that week.
Anti-Distraction
If you’re struggling to stay motivated because doing something else is more interesting in the short term (AKA if you can’t get off facebook), finding ways of minimizing distractions is for you. I use the app Forest to keep myself from wasting time on my phone. You might also be distracted by environmental considerations: if being at home is too distracting, consider going to the library or a coffee shop or a park. If being out in public is distracting for you, try to find or cultivate a little distraction-free sanctuary for yourself.
Support Group
There’s a reason that AA is so popular: having other people help keep you motivated can work really well. Tell your friends or family what you’re trying to do, and enlist them to help keep you on track. I use the app HabitShare to keep track in a very controlled public way. Ideally your friends/family are the supportive kind. You can also try to find a club to join: if you want to write more poetry, see if there’s a group for that near you (or online).
Set a Schedule/Deadlines
Did you find it easier to get things done in school, when assignments had due dates? You can make those for yourself! Often it can be hard to stay motivated to do open-ended things, so setting a schedule and deadlines for yourself will give you a framework to build on. You can also find actual deadlines to work towards: if you want to get into running more, sign up for a 5K.
Motivational Quotes
Find some quotes that resonate with you, and keep them handy. Print them out and pin them above your desk, or keep a notebook of them, like a motivational florilegium. These can be specifically “motivational quotes” OR they can be whatever you personally find to be helpful. And if that’s not words but, say, Rembrandt prints, you do you. I suppose that means this also covers motivational playlists and podcasts, or really any literature…
Final Thoughts
Motivation is tricky, and struggling with it just means that you’re human. We’re at a point in society developmentally where many of us no longer struggle to have our basic needs met, and our big powerful brains don’t know what to do with themselves. We also have so many easy entertainment options to keep us from attaining our goals. There also seems to me to be a misconception that motivation is something that you have or don’t have, instead of a skill that you have to work on. I think staying motivated boils down to this: do you care enough to put in the work?
