Blueprint >> Extrinsic Motivation

Disclaimer: This document is in raw form as I process and distill 4 years-worth of my personal development notes. Expect some typos and cryptic language for now. I will be updating frequently and polishing up.

Prescription: Eliminate extrinsic motivation.
Related Concepts: Motivation, Social Conditioning, Be Principle-Centered

What is Extrinsic Motivation?

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Why is it Important?

Extrinsic motivation isn't reliable or strong enough to create anything great. You won't deeply fulfilled if your life is a game of chasing carrots and avoiding sticks.

Extrinsic Motivation Videos

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Extrinsic Motivation: Key Points

As a long-term strategy, seek to identify and convert all externally motivated activities in your life into internally motivated ones. Do things because you want to, not because you have to. Do things that are deeply meaningful for you, regardless of who it fits others.

For example, if you are only motivated to go to work because it pays your bills, identify that as a source of extrinsic motivation and make plans to change it. If you're sticking in your marriage just to please the kids, but you no longer want it any more, makes plans to change. Everything you do should be driven from you own internal energies, not from society, friends, family, or life circumstances. You need to position yourself to be driven from the inside, not the outside. This is important because outside drives can't get you very far. The only thing extrinsic motivation can do is drive you to serve other people's agendas and create an average existence for yourself. But that's not living your own life, that's living a half-life. You cannot be in your Zone of Genius while driven by external rewards and punishments.

If you're doing something right now for extrinsic reasons, and yet you feel its important for you to keep doing it because it also satisfies intrinsic value, drop all the extrinsic reasons and only do it for the intrinsic ones. This is not mere semantics. It's often the case that we do things that we truly value, but as we do them we are driven by extrinsic motives. For example, you might be in school earning good grades because you really like the approval of the teachers and your parents. But deep down you also value learning and knowledge. However, you are actively driven by the external validation you parents give you. The solution is to do some soul-searching and connect with your intrinsic desires, cutting off the external validation. This is an internal shift, but it's not trivial. Do this in all parts of your life.

References

1. The How of Happiness, Sonja Lyubomirsky