Intrinsic Motivation

By Kerry Sullivan I

If you're like many people in the world today, you have probably had moments in life when you felt no passion. Work seemed boring. Your life seemed to be an adventureless routine. Your performance lagged and your ability to innovate wilted.

One of the reasons people sometimes hit this wall is because they have been trying to live on the basis of extrinsic motivation rather than intrinsic motivation. Let me explain the difference between the two.

Extrinsic motivation is when something outside of you--circumstances or people--determine your choices and action. Your boss might require you to work late. To avoid being fired, you follow his orders and do what's required even though you would rather go to the baseball game with your friends. Another form of extrinsic motivation might be the pursuit of money. You might work in an uninspiring job just because the salary is good.

Intrinsic motivation, by contrast, comes from your heart. It's a natural motivation that already exists in you. Think of something you're really passionate about. Where did that passion come from? It's just there. It's natural to who you are.

In an imperfect world almost everyone has to do some things even if they lack the natural passion. Hey, we all have to clean our bathrooms and shovel snow. But the problem with extrinsic motivation is that it eventually drains our emotional batteries, which then leads to reduced performance.

I recently heard a speech by Daniel Pink, who spoke at a recent TED Conference. Pink said that most economic models are based on the belief that people will be motivated by money. This is often true, especially if people are given a very narrow task to complete. For example, if you put a bunch of parts on a table and tell people that the faster they can make a product from those parts the more they will earn, the workers will usually be motivated to get the job done as quick as possible.

But, he said, in situations that are very large and complex, paying people for speed and efficiency often reduces overall performance and productivity. That's because money is a form of extrinsic motivation.

Pink cited what's happening at Google to make his point. The company allows its employees to use 20 percent of their time to work on projects for which they have intrinsic motivation. In other words, they tell their employees to work on an idea that they themselves are passionate about. By tapping into the human need for intrinsic motivation, Google has produced many new products and applications. In fact, a majority of Google's products and services have been developed during that 20 percent window of time when people were free to work on what they were naturally passionate about.

This is not only true for Google. I've read many other studies that show how top performers in every profession are usually people who were intrinsically motivated and passionate about their work. It's this natural passion that enables them to go out and have massive success!

So what's the moral of this story? It's easy. When you're setting goals and making decisions, make sure that you are intrinsically motivated. Then, when you run into barriers and obstacles that everyone encounters, you'll be able to power forward and never look back.

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