Where Does Motivation Come From?

One cool thing about being a parent is that your children occasionally help you to see something in an entirely new light.

This happened to me not long ago when our daughter became quite upset after I asked her to clean up. She wanted to keep playing, got angry at me, and said a few unkind words. 

After dishing out a mild consequence, we sat and talked about it. I asked one of those “parent” questions that may or may not be helpful, but you know… sometimes you’re genuinely curious.

I asked if she acted that way at school when the teacher asked her to clean up. And, without intending an ounce of disrespect towards me, she said, “of course not, that would be embarrassing.” 

It’s not that I had never considered how contextual motivation could be, I had just never heard it said so clearly and without an ounce of pretense. 

My personal contradictions

When it comes to motivation, I have long found the topic to be a bit mysterious and have observed two contradictions in my own life:

1. Big goals, but no motivation

How is it that I can have such a strong desire to achieve some future-goal, but so little motivation to work on it today?

For most of my adult life, I have lived with the assumption that my distant desires and goals would automatically translate into short-term motivation…. eventually. I thought motivation came from my goals and trickled down into some emotional state I call “motivated.”

But with my own behavior, it was as if I woke up each morning an entirely new version of myself. “Today Mike” is pretty clever and recognized that he can have the best of both worlds: I can have the satisfaction of dreaming that I will (someday) achieve my goal, while not having to deal with any actual work or discomfort today. “Future Mike” would take care of that.

Of course, on any one day, this is a perfectly rational position to hold. My actions today don’t matter in the grand scheme. But if I held this position everyday, I would never reach my goal.

2. Motivated in one area, but not another

How can I be so extremely motivated in some areas of my life, but not in others? (Even when both areas are important to me)

In highschool and college I was on my school’s cross country team. As part of the team, I was running anywhere from 50-60 miles a week for most of the year. During that period, I was also an avid reader, frequently reading 2-4 books per month. 

If that’s all you knew about me, you might assume that I was super disciplined across all areas of my life. And while I was very motivated and disciplined about running and personal reading, I would routinely procrastinate on school work and have to pull all-nighters to get my work done. 

And the thing was, I wanted to get good grades and to succeed in school, but somewhere along the way I learned that I could get good grades and procrastinate most of the time. That realization made it nearly impossible to become motivated to work on school work until a deadline was imminent— and then I was motivated again.

Unfortunately, I carried some of this habit with me into my adulthood and have been working on making progress ever since.

The example of my daughter is just another way of looking at this same problem— why did she have the self-control to clean up at school, but not at home? 

Context matters

I keep returning to this idea of motivation being contextual ever since my daughter made that comment.

My daughter knows that if she doesn’t clean up when we ask her, that there is almost always a consequence. Usually this means losing something that she enjoys like desert or screen time.

So, it’s not as if there was nothing in place at home to motivate her to clean up.

But apparently at school there was something even stronger motivating her to clean up— fear of embarrassment. She didn’t want to look bad in front of her friends.

Same task, but vastly different outcomes depending on the motivation of each context.

The same experience can be seen in my school work in college. When the paper was not due for several weeks— no motivation to work on it. When the paper was due tomorrow— suddenly I was able to pull an all-nighter. 

Same task, but a vastly different response due to a changing context.

A path beyond trying harder

I’ll be the first to admit that motivation is still a puzzle I’m working to solve. If solve is even the right word for something so complex.

I’m writing about this topic, even as I’m learning. 

But one thing I have learned, which I think holds the key to even more insights is this: motivation is contextual– it’s produced by some combination of my inner beliefs/values/goals and the environment I find myself in.

I not longer think it’s helpful to think of myself as a motivated or unmotivated person, but rather as someone who is motivated in some contexts and not others.

When you think of the puzzle of motivation with this framework, it’s easy to see that simply trying harder is rarely the solution to not feeling motivated by a task— at least not in the long run.

What you need is to find the things already motivate you and use them to fuel actions that move you towards your long-term goals.