What is motivation?

Hi everyone! I'm Atticus and I'm a new forum supporter here in the Student and Career sub-community! I'll be focusing on the Homework, Exams, and motivation corner! If you're a teen, always feel free to PM me about student support.

Today, I wanted to talk a bit about motivation. Motivation right now is especially hard when we are in quarantine and have no sort of "routine" in our lives. A lot of my friends lack the motivation to get out of bed in the morning and it's a common thing to lack motivation to get started on schoolwork, work, and other important things in the situation we're currently living in. Even I myself, a pretty productive person, struggle with finding the motivation to do some important tasks that I need to complete for some mental health projects or even some 7 cups stuff. I wanted to talk a bit about what motivation is and offer a few tips as well!

What is motivation in psychology?

In psychology, motivation is asking what causes behavior and why behaviors vary in their intensity. In everyday usage, motivation describes why we do something and what the driving force is behind the actions that we engage in. Often in school, we need the motivation to finish assignments (especially the tedious and hard ones!) and to study for tests.

What are the different types of motivation?

Extrinsic motivation is the motivation that often involves rewards.

Examples of extrinsic motivations might be good grades, money, social recognition, or other external motivations that offer rewards.

Intrinsic motivation is the motivation that does not involve rewards from external forces but are motivations within ourselves.

Examples of intrinsic motivation can be doing sports because you truly enjoy it or reading for personal gratification.

Three major components of motivation:

Activation: The decision to initiate the thing you're about to do or the behavior. Example: signing up for math tutoring if you're struggling in math.

Persistence: The continued effort to go through with the activity that you're engaging in. This is the component that requires perseverance to continue investing time and energy into things even when there are obstacles that exist. Example: continuing to go to tutoring even though you feel discouraged by a bad math grade.

Intensity: This is the concentration that is put into pursuing the goal that one is going for. The intensity of your motivation might be the extra effort you put in. Example: putting in hours outside of math tutoring hours to study math and going to your teacher for extra help.

Motivation tips that you might not have heard of:

Mental Contrasting

Mental contrasting is the balance of thinking about the obstacles that stand between you and your goals and figuring out how to achieve them. This balances overly-positive thinking of your possible success with your goals and overly-negative thinking of your possible failures with your goals as well.

Mental contrasting can be important in setting goals for yourself. Think about what obstacles lie before you and studying for the exam you have coming up or the next deadline for work! How will you get around or go through those obstacles?

Effects of "play" on motivation

According to science, it turns out that the idea of "play" or "fun" is the strongest motivator for sustained behavioral changes. This means that we tend to stick with enjoyable activities more than we do with non-enjoyable activities.

Ask yourself, how can I make school or work more fun for myself? How do I achieve this sense of "play" in the work I do and make it more enjoyable?

Who do you look up to and what are you inspired by

This is a more commonly heard tip. Look for a person in your field of study or someone you want to be more like. It can be a friend, a peer, a celebrity, or anyone that has good observable qualities.

Ask yourself, what qualities do they have that you want yourself?

Discussion questions:

1) What does motivation mean to you?

2) What are some things that you do in your life that are motivated by extrinsic motivation? What about things you do in your life that are motivated by Intrinsic motivation?

3) What are you inspired by?

Also feel free to share how you're doing with motivation in this quarantine period! :) Thank you for reading!