What science teaches us about motivation
How to find your business mojo when you're in a rut
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Nolan felt draggy. He’d lost his mojo. He was dreading the projects on his plate, even though they were projects he would have loved once-upon-a-time. He’d been at this freelance game for over a decade and he felt like things were stale and uninspired.
He was in one of those “not terrible but not great” situations. He was hitting his income goals and doing work for arguably impressive clients. But he was finding it harder and harder to work at a fast clip. His work had started to creep into the evenings, and then the weekends. He came to me because he was working a little bit, all the time. And he was completely uninspired by all of it.
I’ve been there. You’ve been there. We’ve all been there. This is the reason why big tech companies move people through jobs every year or so. Novelty can add motivation and freshness to your workload. But when you work for yourself, you often need to create that novelty all on your own.
Lately, I’ve been teaching my clients about the science of how to find motivation again, especially during these draggy seasons. Today, I want to share some of those insights with you, too. Paid subscribers will also get access to homework related to building motivation! If you’ve been thinking about subscribing, now’s the time.
Motivation propels us through our days. Motivation is defined as a reason for behaving a certain way. It’s a general desire — a willingness — to take action. In my coaching practice and my life, I’ve learned that action and motivation have a bit of a chicken-and-egg relationship. Action can help you find motivation. But motivation is necessary to sustain action. You need both, and they feed off of each other over time. When you’re stuck, you’ll often need to take action before you feel motivated. Little action steps can help you reconnect with your why on a stalled project.
Here’s the science: There are two types of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic.
I’ll start with extrinsic motivation, which involves doing something because of external rewards. (Sometimes, you’ll do the thing to avoid external punishment, too.) Think back on your school days: Grades are a great example of extrinsic motivators. Getting praise from your teachers can make you feel really good. This happens in our businesses, too: Extrinsic motivators include getting paid well, receiving positive feedback from clients, feeling like you have the admiration of others (yes, Twitter likes are an extrinsic motivator), winning awards, or working for a prestigious client.
All of these motivators involve something outside of you that drives you forward. You’re not engaging in a behavior because you find the behavior to be satisfying, necessarily. Mostly, you’re taking action because you expect to get something in return that might benefit you. With extrinsic motivation, the relationship between your actions and what you receive in exchange is entirely transactional.
Nolan had been living off of this extrinsic motivation fuel for years. He was making good money. He had bylines in big-name magazines. People would have killed for his career. For a while, this motivation fed his actions because he was genuinely excited to build his career, see his name in big magazines and push himself out of his comfort zone. He had a great combination of external support and internal alignment. Each time he got a “hit” of external validation, he was able to propel himself into the next assignment.
But then that momentum started to dry up. Slowly, the extrinsic motivators became less and less inspiring, and he wasn’t as jazzed by the challenge of building a career. Eventually, his desire to change external validation dried up altogether. This is a known phenomenon with extrinsic motivators; on their own, they don’t last. Certain studies show that extrinsic motivation actually makes you less effective at learning and growing in your career. If you’re only operating based on external factors, you’ll stall out.
When I meet with people who are at a standstill in their career, we start by interrogating intrinsic motivation. This involves taking action because the task at hand is personally rewarding to you in some way. If we’re using school as an example again, an intrinsic motivator for doing your science homework might be related to the fact that you’re really curious about outer space. As you develop your identity in high school, you may feel motivated by being known as a person who’s smart. Both of those motivators are intrinsic — they come from inside you.
When you’re running your own business, intrinsic motivators come up often related to values. (This is why I ask you about values right away when we start a coaching relationship; mapping to your values will keep you motivated — and able to take action — for a long time.) If you care about freedom, for example, you will feel more driven to set up a client base that supports those needs. If you’re really interested in building a new skillset because it makes you feel invigorated, that’s also about intrinsic motivation. In other words, the action itself is the reward. You’re fulfilled by doing the thing, rather than by what the thing gives you.
Nolan had a sudden aha moment when we started talking about these different kinds of motivation. At first, he’d been working with a good combination of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation in his career. But over the years, his internal motivation had really dried up; what felt motivating 5 years ago didn’t feel motivating now. And without that inner alignment, he was left with extrinsic motivation alone. It wasn’t enough.
He needed to add intrinsic motivators— new internal motivators, because people change — back into the picture. He realized that he needed to follow his core interests. He needed to pitch more stories he cared about, even if they weren’t the most lucrative. He needed to stop using money and prestige as his north stars, and instead orient his career toward personal fulfillment, curiosity and collaboration with other artists. These things filled his soul; just collaborating with someone else felt like a reward in and of itself.
By the time we got off our first call, Nolan was fired up. His mojo was back. His voice had changed. He was inspired to take action again, no drag in sight. He even decided to put exercise back on the schedule every morning — something he used to love — and set defined work hours.
Originally, a lot of researchers believed that extrinsic and intrinsic motivators were opposites. They taught that you should opt towards intrinsic motivators only, and lots of big companies took this to heart. (This is why large tech companies are always trying to get their employees to “align with company culture;” feeling like you’re working toward something important is a much better motivator for productivity than free lunch.) But newer investigations have shown that when it comes to creativity and innovation, you need both kinds of motivation in your back pocket. This is so interesting, and it makes sense to me! If you feel like you’ll get external, relational rewards like community support and money and you care a lot about the creative project at hand, you’ll be more likely to take action and build something really innovative.
When I work with creative folks — which is my entire coaching practice these days — we talk about finding financial stability, surrounding yourself with a supportive community who can cheer you on, AND aligning your work with your values. It’s another both/ and set up: If you don’t have internal and external motivation, taking a risk in your business might feel too groundless. But beware building on external motivators alone — that’s where people get really, really stuck.
This month, I’m inviting you to explore the extrinsic and extrinsic motivators in your business through some really cool homework. Paid subscribers (just $5/ month!) will find those exercises in a second post, zipping into your inbox as you read this sentence.
Motivation is messy, but here’s what I want you to take away from this post: You have control. Extrinsic motivators are based on things outside of our control, which is why they don’t last on their own. Intrinsic motivators are based on things inside of us, and we can absolutely make a choice to pick types of work that align with those needs. There’s a lot of magic that comes from making a choice to work in a way that feels sustainable, long-term.
Hugs,
Jenni
Curious about my background? I’m a writer and business coach based in Central Oregon. I have two small children and I work part-time so I can spend a lot of time with them. Lately, I’ve been obsessed with non-linear business building and teaching people how to build successful businesses that support their human needs first. Check out my coaching offerings here and follow me on Twitter & Instagram!
This was a helpful reminder for me about the role for both external and internal motivations. I feel like I actually struggle with finding external motivators that I feel interested/engaged/fulfilled by! Sometimes they feel icky to me, and I have to remind myself they have their own benefits too!