Banner by Troy Barlow
How to Self-Motivate
By Troy Barlow
Motivation may seem like some uncontrollable force — sometimes it is there, and other times it is not, even when we need it to be. It may seem that we have no choice in the matter, and so we end up putting off work until the last minute. A next-day due date seems to be the only thing that can get us to start working. But this does not have to be the case. In fact, people who understand the different theories of motivation can use these principles as a toolkit to better motivate themselves. A large part of motivation is based on cognition (how people think about a task); by changing how they think, people can increase their motivation. It is even possible to build a cycle of growing motivation as previous success in a task can lead to a greater motivation to continue. To illustrate these concepts, let’s see how a hypothetical student, Jane, applies these theories to her own life. Jane is taking a philosophy class and has a month to write a 2,500-word essay. She knows that she needs to begin her research, yet the project seems daunting, and as a result, she is unable to get started.
Contemporary theories of motivation, although focusing on different areas, tend to overlap around a couple key ideas. One of these is the concept of self-efficacy, the “perceived capability to learn or perform at a certain level.” The more self-efficacy people have, the more motivated they are to perform a task, and thus the more effort they put into that task. An interesting note is that memories of past experiences influence self-efficacy. Past failure or success decreases or increases one’s self-efficacy respectively. This influences the level of effort put in, which influences the outcome. And this in turn serves as a memory to motivate for the next task.
However, a person’s perception of a memory can lead to different conclusions about success or failure, and different perceptions will influence self-efficacy in different ways. For instance, attribution theory posits that every person has a subconscious desire to explain negative or unexpected outcomes. In motivation, this translates into blaming failure on certain conditions, and the recipient of this blame — the attribute — determines future motivation. People are more motivated to try again if they blame the previous result on something changeable or temporary that will not affect the next attempt. In Jane’s case, she worries about her last philosophy paper, for which she received a lower grade than expected. But Jane also remembers that she did not put a lot of effort into it, and her professor was not great. Some of it was even just bad luck, and despite not doing well last time, Jane feels that she has the potential to write a good paper. This cognition improves her self-efficacy.
But besides attributions, which are perceptions of past experiences, people also have preconceived ideas of what they want to accomplish — also known as goals. Goal orientation theory identifies two goals for a task: looking good (performance goals) and learning (mastery goals). Both are motivators, but they accomplish different things. Jane views her paper as practice; if she gets a poor grade, that is fine because she can learn from it and become a better writer. Tom on the other hand only wants to get a good grade. Jane and Tom hand in their papers; neither does too great, but Tom’s is somewhat better than Jane’s. However, Jane moves up to the higher-level philosophy class without Tom — he dropped out. Although performance goals lead to greater immediate success, learning goals allow for more long-term commitment to a goal. While Jane believed that ability came from effort, Tom believed that ability was innate. In Tom’s mind, he could not succeed in the higher class. Jane received a similar grade, but she viewed her poor performance as a consequence of a difficult task. Each person’s mindset influenced each person’s goal orientation: people who believe that ability is innate will prioritize performance goals because they believe that they can never improve. On the other hand, people who believe that they can improve will prioritize mastery goals because they know performance comes from learning.
In her next philosophy class, Jane performs better, and she ends up with more self-efficacy than before. This self-efficacy will continue to improve as Jane engages in more tasks because a higher self-efficacy leads to more motivation, which leads to more effort, better outcomes, and more self-efficacy, forming a cycle. But this self-motivation cycle only works for tasks that already come with previous experiences. When Jane takes environmental sciences, a class she has no experience with, she needs to apply another theory to jumpstart the cycle.
Self-determination theory categorizes motivation based on type. A person can have motivation ranging on a scale from amotivation, to extrinsic motivation and finally to intrinsic motivation. Amotivation is a lack of motivation, extrinsic motivation comes from external rewards such as good grades or money and intrinsic motivation comes from internal rewards such as interest or meaningful work. As with the two goals of goal-orientation theory, extrinsic and intrinsic motivation have different outcomes; the latter correlates with improved learning, performance and creativity. Jane does not have much control over her interests, and some parts of the environmental science class are boring to her (she is not too interested in chemistry). However, she does find a use for the class that is meaningful to her: preparing for later work in protecting the environment. Then, although Jane finds some parts uninteresting, she has a meaningful purpose that maintains her motivation.
Another way to create intrinsic motivation for a task is to integrate and internalize a preexisting extrinsic motivator into one’s self identity. Grades are an extrinsic motivator, but Jane alters her perception of them. Instead of viewing grades simply as rewards, Jane views them as measures of her own ability, so getting a good grade is personally desirable because it indicates her skill. To Jane, grades are analogous to awards for winning a game, although Jane must be careful to recognize that whatever grade she receives is only indicative of her skill at that particular moment. Otherwise, Jane will go down the same path of Tom, who believed that a single failure was an indicator of permanent inability — the mindset associated with performance goal orientation.
Once Jane initially motivates herself in her environmental sciences class, she can use the skills she applied in her philosophy class to build her cycle of self-motivation, where each task performance produces higher self-efficacy, and thus higher motivation. At that point, Jane only has to continue to have a reason for performing the task — whether that be extrinsic motivation from grades or intrinsic motivation from interest and meaningfulness.
To apply this to your own life, find some meaningful reason for why you should accomplish a task. If you cannot do that, create a challenge or game to see how well you can do. This will engender personal interest (intrinsic motivation), so that you are not just doing it for extrinsic motivators such as grades or money. After that, set goals to master the task (mastery goals), which both motivate and commit, and understand that improvement is possible. If you do have setbacks or fail, look to see if it is because of something temporary or something that will not affect you the next time (attributes). This will improve your belief in success (self-efficacy), which will improve your motivation. Then, it is just a matter of building up successes to further improve self-efficacy and maintain motivation.
A lack of motivation does not have to hold you back in life. In many cases, self-motivation is as easy as changing your perception. And the more you practice self-motivation, the easier it becomes to find motivation blockers or new avenues of motivation. Just think about the ways a lack of motivation has impacted you in the past, and then think about the times when you really were motivated and what you could accomplish.