What Motivates You?
What motivates you? Many people think that motivation comes from the pain or pleasure principle, also known as the carrot-and-stick principle. We, as humans, seek pleasure and avoid pain. I used to listen to Tony Robbins tapes religiously (laugh if you must)and applied that theory to my goals. If I wanted to achieve something, I just needed to link incredible pleasure in achieving it and incredible pain to not following through. However, I found this approach worked for some things but not so well for others. Why was that?
Dan Pink is an author who has written a number of books about the business world, as well as several articles on business and technology. His latest book is called Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us; and in it he uses behavioural science to debate the conventional beliefs about human motivation. After watching a presentation that he gave on this topic at a TED conference, I decided to put this book on my must-read list.
According to Mr. Pink, the secret to high performance and satisfaction in life, is the need to direct our own lives (autonomy), to learn and create new things (mastery), and to do what we do in the service of something greater than ourselves (purpose). Note that the carrot-and-stick works for situations where there is a simple set of rules and no creative thought is required, also known as 20th century tasks.
So, using this theory of autonomy, mastery and purpose, what motivates me in this journey to 100 km is:
- I have control over my successful completion of 100 km, through proper training, diet, and recovery
- I am mastering new skills in managing my own Wordpress site, as well as learning how to train for ultra-distance rowing
- I have a higher purpose in knowing this adventure will directly result in getting a school built in an impoverished community, which will improve the lives of hundreds of children
