Motivation

I am a transfer student who had to medically withdraw from university one year ago. When I was in high school and in my first college, I really lacked motivation. I would simply do the work with the least amount of effort to still get good grades. Ever since I was unable to continue college and had to withdraw- my motivation for everything has been higher than ever. I was able to take a lot of personal time to focus on myself and really strive to be the person I want to be.

My motivation is described perfectly by Daniel Pink’s idea of a third drive: the intrinsic reward. I want to do so many things, including college, simply for the satisfaction of doing them. Basically what I understand from Pink’s idea is that I’m going to college because it matters to me. Yes, I will get a college degree and that will be extremely helpful in the workforce but that’s not what motivated me to go back to school or to get the highest grades I can. What motivates me is myself. I know that if I study and work hard and really apply myself to the fullest extent, I’ll make myself really happy.

Another factor in my motivation is that I actually just really want to learn and know things. I am studying business because I enjoy learning about that. I want to know even more though. My motivation drives me to want to do the boring Economics readings because I want to understand it better. I would say that this part of my motivation is hugely helpful in getting me through things I don’t want to do, because I can look and see the end result. An example of this would be not wanting to read a textbook for homework, but I know that if I read it I will learn something that will help me further down the road. 

The way I see motivation is that I deserve to make myself happy and feel good after so many years of slacking off and tearing myself down, and college is one place where I know I can succeed in that- and that is all the motivation I need.

Watching the motivation videos and reading the articles really helped to spark a fire in my brain about motivation. I was so fascinated by both the videos, even though they were very similar, because he brings so many pieces of evidence to the table. The biggest and most powerful one to me was, “There is a mismatch between what science knows and business does.” I not only wrote that down and starred it, but I thought about it for a little while- and it still baffles me. I just am so confused as to why business is the way that it is still, even if they know it doesn’t work as well as other ways. I understand that it’s changing at a very rapid pace, but after being raised by two people in the field of business, it is a hard concept to wrap my head around.

Another thing that surprised me was the entire MIT experiment. I don’t really have much to say about it other than I found it really interesting that when being tested on the cognitive skill (rather than the mechanical skill) people did better without a reward. I find that fascinating. I can see how incentives (“If you do this, then you get that”) can block creativity, I just would have never thought that on my own until the data was put in front of me. I really loved all the articles and videos we used to help focus on motivation. I love learning and writing about things that interest me.