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False Beliefs about Motivation

March 22, 2024 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Most theories and beliefs about motivation are quite far removed from the neurochemical reality. But theories that ignore the neurochemical basis of motivation are not only not useful, they can also be harmful. We’ll look at three ways beliefs based on these theories can get in our way, but first, let’s review motivation one more time.

Motivation Redux

The purpose of the brain is to figure out what action to initiate based on its interpretation of the circumstances we’re in. Motivation is the mechanism of movement, the mechanism by which we take an action toward a potential reward or away from a potential threat.

My brain may very likely interpret a set of circumstances differently from your brain’s interpretation of the same circumstances. And my brain has been trained by me to identify rewards and threats just as your brain has been trained by you to identify rewards and threats. Therefore, even in extremely similar sets of circumstances, we are likely to have different interpretations and response, and we are likely to take different actions. The processes are the same; the outcomes of those processes differ from person to person.

This brain training started roughly at birth for each of us and has been ongoing since then. We are training our brain daily to either maintain the status quo (continue to interpret circumstances the same way and take the same actions in response to those interpretations) or to change it. It’s far easier to train the brain to maintain the status quo (reinforce it) than it is to train it to change the status quo. Although that’s probably obvious, it bears emphasizing given that the brain is always looking for the path of least resistance. The current status quo is that path of least resistance so it will always be more compelling.

We don’t need to “motivate” ourselves to take action to maintain the status quo. We are already motivated to take the actions we’re currently taking. It’s a mechanical process: no congratulation or castigation is warranted. Because most of this brain training was unconscious rather than intentional, however, we may be more satisfied by some of the actions we’re currently taking—and the outcomes of those actions—than we are by other actions. But whether we’re pleased or not:

The same process of brain training is responsible for all the actions we are currently taking.
Our brain releases wanting and either liking or stress neurochemicals for all the actions we are currently taking.

This neurochemical activity happens outside our awareness, without our moment-to-moment influence, and faster than our 40-bit brain can process. Yet, if we want to create positive, intentional, significant, and sustained change, we have to modify our brain’s neurochemical activity. If we don’t succeed in doing that, we won’t succeed in changing our behavior.

Hopefully that makes it reasonably clear that motivation is motivation is motivation—meaning there are not different kinds of motivation, such as intrinsic and extrinsic. The belief in intrinsic and extrinsic motivation—and the supposed superiority of intrinsic motivation lead us to think that:

1. We Ought to Be Motivated to…

Current motivational theories strongly suggest that we ought to be (intrinsically) motivated to take some actions rather than others. They also suggest that understanding the value or benefit of taking an action ought to lead directly (meaning motivate us) to taking that action.

This ridiculous notion is even applied to children with the expectation that they ought to be motivated to take the actions we want them to take. That’s not how motivation works. Children don’t come pre-motivated to follow arbitrary social rules, for example. You can train children to take an action you want them to take—if that’s your aim—but your chances of success will be greatly enhanced if you use an extrinsic reward.

Neither adults’ brains, nor children’s brains, automatically produce wanting and liking neurochemicals on demand or because it would be convenient for said brains to do so.

Adults who believe not only that they ought to be motivated to take specific actions that they are not currently taking, but also that their lack of motivation reflects badly on them, tend to have a diminished sense of personal agency and self-efficacy. We have to train our brain to be motivated to do what we want it to do. This takes intention, planning, repetition, and perseverance, which we are much less likely to engage in if we believe motivation ought to be automatic.

2. Enjoying an Activity Is an Indicator of Intrinsic Motivation

Current motivational theories place an undue emphasis on the extent to which we find an activity or an endeavor enjoyable or satisfying in-and-of-itself. I addressed this in previous posts on motivation. What I want to point out here is that there are plenty of things we find enjoyable that we would actually prefer not to do because they lead to undesirable outcomes. If they weren’t enjoyable it would be much easier to not do them.

But we’re only motivated to do what we’re motivated to do—that is, what we’ve trained our brain to be motivated to do. So if we want to get a different outcome, we have to train our brain to do something different. Again, this is a mechanical process. There’s no underlying meaning in the fact that you or I are doing something we don’t want to do or are not doing something we want to do. If we want to develop a new behavior we need to artificially generate liking neurochemicals which the brain will eventually take notice of and begin generating dopamine (the wanting neurochemical) in order to get.

We may come to enjoy the new behavior or activity in-and-of-itself or we may not. In any case, the brain will generate the neurochemicals that motivate us to do the thing and get the desired outcome—which is something we need to identify if we want to create change. Focusing on momentary enjoyment rather than long-term satisfaction is extremely short-sighted. It generates unreasonable expectations about the kind of experience we think we should be having. And it keeps us from developing a relationship with our future self: the person our current actions are creating.

3. Using an Extrinsic Reward Is Cheating

This is based on the false belief that doing the thing is not good enough; we also have to be doing it for the right reason. Presumably we have a reason for wanting to do the thing and whatever it is it’s a good enough reason. The point is to do the thing we want to do instead of the thing we don’t want to do—and to be motivated to continue doing it. Extrinsic rewards are excellent contrivances (tools) to facilitate the motivational process.

If we believe we shouldn’t need a reward or that extrinsic rewards are somehow unnatural, we further handicap ourselves in our attempts to create change. In case anyone hasn’t noticed, transformational change is possible but it isn’t probable. We need all the help we can get!

Recognizing the neurochemical nature of motivation and using the process intentionally can help us cut to the chase so we can act as we prefer to act and be who we prefer to be.

This is the third of three posts on motivation. The first one is here. The second one is here.

What Do You Want to Have Done?

March 11, 2024 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

Common perceptions or definitions of motivation vary somewhat, but most are based on the work of Richard Ryan and Edward Deci, the developers of Self-Determination Theory. Self-Determination Theory incorporates the belief that humans have various needs they attempt to satisfy; it associates extrinsic and intrinsic motivation with the levels of needs Abraham Maslow described in his hierarchy, which was itself a misguided theory of motivation.

Oh, well, humanist psychology seemed like a good idea at the time, as I explained last year. But the fact is that people need air, water, food, sleep, shelter, and other people. Anything else is a preference, not a need. Treating preferences as needs trains your brain to focus on detecting threats (the lack or potential lack of something you’ve convinced your brain to perceive as a need) rather than on seeking rewards. That means it’s another impediment to creating transformational change. It’s also a great way to amp up your anxiety.

Ryan and Deci differentiate between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation based on whether you are doing an activity for its inherent satisfaction (your enjoyment of it in the here and now) or for some separable consequence (your potential enjoyment of a future outcome that will or may result from what you’re doing now).

They don’t, however, appear to make much of a distinction between the nature of the outcome (or reward) you are aiming for, as if a cash prize—an extrinsic reward—for correctly estimating the number of marbles in a jar is no different from the joy you experience—an intrinsic reward—when you finally master Corcovado on the saxophone after slogging through weeks or months of practice. (As I mentioned last time, although all motivation is intrinsic, rewards can be extrinsic or intrinsic.)

Just as all humans have six needs, we are all intrinsically motivated to do everything we’re currently doing, regardless of how much—or even if—we’re enjoying those activities. The notion that enjoyment in the here and now is a sign of intrinsic motivation is as nonsensical as the notion that we need respect or acknowledgement or appreciation.

Having Walked

I have walked every day for over 2,000 consecutive days. That’s over five and a half years. I always want to have walked. That hasn’t wavered from the first day to the present day. I wanted to have walked yesterday and the 2,000+ plus previous days, but on any given day—in the here and now—I may or may not want to walk.

Fortunately my walking does not depend on my day-to-day or moment-to-moment enjoyment or desire to walk because I always have a desire to have walked. Long ago, the impulse to walk became a habit. It’s part of my mental model, which is entirely intrinsic. When I don’t want to walk, it’s because I want to do something else. That’s how dopamine, aka motivation, works. But I still want to have walked. And I know that tomorrow I will want to have walked today, so I will walk today.

I’ve been a walker at least since I was three years old and set out on my own to check out the unknown lands beyond the block where I lived. But I didn’t make a commitment to daily walking until five and a half years ago. I couldn’t have known that I want to have walked every single day until after I had some experience with walking every single day. I started out with a 30-day commitment, which provided me with the additional information (experience) that resulted in an ongoing commitment.

After doing it for several years, I now know that having walked is extremely satisfying. Furthermore, the experience of having walked every day for the past 2,000+ days is far more persistently satisfying than any individual experience of walking could possibly be!

Having Written

Writing is an even better example. Over the course of several decades, I wrote a lot of fiction. During that time I subscribed to and read many magazines and books aimed at writers and attended classes, workshops, and conferences for writers. “Writer’s block,” something even non-writers have heard of, is addressed in many of those spaces and places. Although, I was never really afflicted by it, I definitely didn’t always want to write.

It’s said that there are two kinds of writers, those who enjoy writing and those who enjoy editing. I fall into the latter category. However, unless you write, there’s nothing to edit. In the case of writing, as in walking, sometimes I wanted to write and sometimes I didn’t, but I always wanted to have written.

The actual experience of writing is described by very many writers as something they go to great lengths to not do. A Google search for “writing is hard” revealed 2,760,000,000 results. One writer said:

I also hate writing when I have better things to do. Doze, eat cheese and crackers, solve easy Sudoku puzzles, shop for books on the Internet, doze some more. I’ve concluded that even some unpleasant chores are less hateable than writing. Cat box cleaning, evacuating the hard drive of viruses, defeating drain clogs. Sometimes I feel like I would trade a writing obligation for a trip to the emergency room for stitches. More than once I’ve promised the gods in their pantheon a year of my life if they would get me out of a writing commitment.

Although this person talks about a writing obligation and a writing commitment, remember that no one forces anyone into becoming a writer and those who do undertake the writing life could certainly find more enjoyable hobbies or easier or more lucrative ways of making a living. But they don’t.

Here’s a post about all the things you have to do before you can begin writing, including:

Patch all the nail holes in your walls.
Deep clean anything. Some ideas: the washing machine, the bathtub, the kitchen counters.
Try a new recipe that requires an ingredient you have to go to the store to find.

No deadline is required; simply being faced with a blank page can get writers to tackle all the household chores they’ve been putting off.

So if the extent to which you enjoy what you’re doing is a signal of intrinsic motivation, then the logical conclusion is that most writers are not intrinsically motivated. And yet the vast majority of people who write are deeply committed to the writing itself rather than to the possibility of fame, wealth, or even publication—which is fortunate because the chances of achieving any of those things are extremely slim. Whether or not they want to write in this moment, they want to have written.

When you consider your future self—tomorrow’s or next week’s or next month’s version of you—ask yourself what that you would want to have done. What would that you be satisfied or joyful or exhilarated by having done? And then try doing that in the here and now.

This is the second of three posts on motivation. The first one is here.

Who Will Your Future Self Be?

June 14, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 4 Comments

Your past self, your present self, and your future self are three different selves. Daniel Gilbert, who wrote Stumbling on Happiness, explains that we can’t predict what will make our future self happy because the future is fundamentally different from the present–and we lack the imagination to fully recognize and take into account that very basic fact.

I recommend the book and the short TED talk below.

At every stage of our lives we make decisions that will profoundly influence the lives of the people we’re going to become, and then when we become those people, we’re not always thrilled with the decisions we made.

Most of us have a tough time imagining a tomorrow that is terribly different from today, and we find it particularly difficult to imagine that we will ever think, want, or feel differently than we do now.

Imagination cannot easily transcend the boundaries of the present, and one reason for this is that it must borrow machinery that is owned by perception. The fact that these two processes must run on the same platform means that we are sometimes confused about which one is running. We assume that what we feel as we imagine the future is what we’ll feel when we get there, but in fact, what we feel as we imagine the future is often a response to what’s happening in the present.

Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished. The person you are right now is as transient, as fleeting and as temporary as all the people you’ve ever been. The one constant in our life is change. –Daniel Gilbert