What I’ve learnt about motivation
It’s not as deep as you think or, at least, it doesn’t have to be.
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Motivation is a word widely used by lifestyle influencers all over the internet. It is particularly regarded as one of the core elements of success in general. The Cambridge dictionary defines motivation as “enthusiasm for doing something” and “the need or reason for doing something”, which match the overall ongoing discourse.
While I believe motivation is crucial to make every project come to life, there are certain things we should think about when we talk about motivation. I am not a life coach, this is solely based on my personal experience.
Motivation is not consistent, and that’s okay
How many times have we seen motivational quotes along the lines of “find your dream job and you’ll never work a day in your life”? Well, let’s forget them. Indeed, they convey the idea that your dream job will be only filled with highs, joy and success. The truth is, whatever job you have, you will have to complete boring tasks or you will make mistakes or, simply, you won’t have the same energy and motivation level every single day.
This mindset, indeed, can be potentially damaging because you might end up hating an overall good job just because you made a small mistake, you need more time adapting to the workflow and so on. In the long run, you might even end up questioning your entire education and career choices, which can lead to a negative spiral.
But then, how do you know that it’s just perfectionism and not a legit realization about your choices? Personally, I experienced these hardships the very first days or weeks into a new job. The first days, I felt like I had trapped myself into a post I wasn’t made for and I feared that the rest of my working period would have been just as awful as these days.
Actually, it was just the usual discomfort of adapting to a new workplace and environment. Indeed, in the following weeks, I improved drastically, as well as my mood and motivation. So, in this case, my advice is to wait it out, especially if you’re experiencing discomfort during the first days at work or doing a new task. If your disappointment persists for most of your time, or if you can identify an external cause of your discomfort, e.g. toxic co-workers, then it’s better to change your career path or your workplace once you have the chance.
Inconsistent motivation is not just limited to the workplace, but also to your hobbies. There are days when I am an enthusiast about reading books and days where I’d rather do anything else and this has riddled me with self-doubt for quite a long time. I wasn’t always excited about reading, therefore I must have been just pretending to like reading and I actually hated it. The only false thing here was the belief that to be a “real” enjoyer of any activity, I had to be looking forward to it every single day.
No matter how motivated you are, things are going to look forced at first
You can be as motivated as you want, but to start your new activity, you’ll have to make some space in your life for it. This means that you’ll have to schedule a little bit, either on an actual planner or just in your mind. In other words, you’ll have to structure your project a bit, even unknowingly.
I did this with almost each of my hobbies. Once I got my bachelor’s degree (July 2021), I reorganized my free time to pick up again the hobbies I had paused. To do so, I set a daily reminder on my phone for reading books and I outlined a monthly workout goal. However, there was still a voice in my head telling me: “look at her, she has to set reminders for her hobbies, who does that? She must be pretending, she doesn’t really like what she’s doing.”
In retrospect, planning my hobbies not only worked but was very much needed. I had not touched any written piece (besides academic papers and tourism articles) since February 2021 and, realistically, my passion for reading would not reignite overnight. In the meantime, I had not been exercising since the end of May 2021, so I obviously had to gradually restart without overworking myself or getting hurt.
Understandably, things felt a little forced the first weeks, but I slowly regained these habits and, with them, my motivation and passion. I just needed some time to fit them into my routine again.
Should you start something new or restart something you had quit, take some time, not only to build a habit but also to get familiar with the basics of your activity and gain confidence, which will fuel your motivation in the long run. At first, it might sound a bit too structured, but time will tell if it’s the case to quit or continue.
Knowing your approach to a task is key to find motivation
Are you a goal-oriented or process-oriented person? This question has been literally everywhere in online self-help spaces. However, there is a good point when it comes to motivation. Indeed, knowing the answer means that you know what motivates and drives you, as well as your weaknesses that could hinder your chance to succeed in your activity.
In my case, it depends on the activity. In general, I consider myself as mostly goal-oriented, but there are specific situations where I am more process-oriented. For example, I am goal-oriented in the workplace and when I study for university. I get a thrill whenever I complete some tasks, partly because I tend to unconsciously gamify them, so it feels like earning XPs or solving puzzles. I get the same feeling when I study Korean, Spanish and Swedish on Duolingo and Drops because they DO gamify learning.
In my case, it depends on the activity. In general, I consider myself as mostly goal-oriented, but there are specific situations where I am more process-oriented. For example, I am goal-oriented in the workplace and when I study for university. I get a thrill whenever I complete some tasks, partly because I tend to unconsciously gamify them, so it feels like earning XPs or solving puzzles. I get the same feeling when I study Korean, Spanish and Swedish on Duolingo and Drops because they DO gamify learning.
Intuitively, my main motivation here is the feeling of achievement and, conversely, my biggest weakness is impatience. Therefore, I’ll have to take these factors into consideration when making decisions in this area of my life, while learning to be more patient.
When I exercise and read books, however, I am more process-oriented, even though these activities also give me a feeling of achievement. This means that I can immerse in these activities and enjoy them as I go, but also that I quit easily if I encounter some discomfort.
Please consider that these are my own interpretations of “goal-oriented” and “process-oriented” with my life and my experience in mind, therefore your interpretations of these concepts might be a little different, and that’s completely fine.
What’s important here is that, if you feel like you have no motivation, try to find out your approach. You will find your overall drive. It might sound a bit impersonal, but it’s already a start and, if it already gets you to do something, that’s great!
Motivation doesn’t have to be unique and quirky
Ditch this idea that you have to find a deep, unique, elevated or quirky reason to do something. In the worst-case scenario, you will lose more time overthinking it than doing whatever you want to do, thus losing focus on the purpose of motivation: driving your decisions and helping you get things done.
I have experienced this myself. I am a person that puts a high value on authenticity, identity and self-expression. Therefore, realizing that I couldn’t think about a clear and meaningful reason for my choices in almost every aspect of my life put me in great crisis. Was I boring and average? Did I lack a personality?
Not at all. Through some reflection, I came to the conclusion that I do have clear reasons behind my choices, but most of the time, they are considered stupid or superficial. I decided to specialize in modern languages in high school simply because I had good grades and found them easy to learn. I chose to study German because I wanted to meet Tokio Hotel. For my bachelor’s degree, I decided to write a dissertation about the translation process of Being and Time by Heidegger just because I remembered an anecdote that my philosophy professor told me when I was in high school and I didn’t know what else to talk about. That’s it.
However, they were more than enough for me: I ended up majoring in English and German at university and, thanks to my dissertation about Heidegger, I graduated cum laude.
The thing is: unless you are specifically required to, you don’t need a long essay to explain why you do what you do. If you are still working towards your goal with what you have, that’s enough.
If you’re still not sure, think of bullet journals. Lots of people who tried bullet journaling admitted that, at some point, they realized that they were wasting more time worrying about the aesthetic aspect of their spread than the functional one, spiraling in feelings of inferiority and perfectionism. To get out of this negative mindset, they either quit this activity altogether or found a simpler, more functional style. This is exactly what you can do if you think that your motivation is too shallow: you either quit your project, even if things are going great result-wise, or you embrace your motivation with gratefulness and keep working towards your goals.
How to identify your motivation
As of my personal experience, the key to identifying your drive is being realistic, lowering your expectations about work and some self-exploration. Find out how you tackle a task or think if there was any particular event that led you to try out your activity. Free yourself from the words “cringe” and “shallow” and be honest with yourself. But also, don’t beat yourself up if you feel that it’s taking you too much. Chances are, you already had motivation, but you hadn’t realized yet.
