Why do We Lack Motivation?

Have you ever wondered why we often lack motivation?

Last week I came across this interesting podcast “Not Overthinking” hosted by Ali and Taimur Abdaal. In that episode, they discussed about the theories of motivation and possible reasons on why sometimes we lack motivation when doing things.

During my university life, I encountered this gazillions of times. Often I find myself blaming ‘lack of motivation’ as an excuse for me to delay my assignments. This is certainly not a good thing as I will tend to keep on procrastinating until nearing the deadline. And by then, I have no other choice but to rush every research that I should've done weeks before and ended up not submitting my best.

What is motivation?

To get a clear understanding on what motivation really means, let us take a look at the basic definition of motivation. According to Nakata (1996), the term motivation is considered as something that gets us going, keeps us moving, and helps us get jobs done. While dictionaries define motive as ‘the state of being motivated’. Thus, ‘motive’ seems to be a factor while ‘motivation’ is more a psychological state.

Does motivation actually exist?

One article titled “Screw Motivation, What You Need is Discipline” in wisdomination.com says it all. It says people tend to think that motivation operates on the assumption that a particular emotional state is necessary to complete a task. While in reality that is not always the case. Productivity has no requisite mental states; If action is conditional on feelings, waiting for the right mood becomes a particularly dangerous form of procrastination.

While motivation is like manually winding up a crank to deliver a burst of force, discipline is more like an engine that once started, supplies energy to the system. For consistent and long-term results, exercising discipline will eventually be the one that drives motivation. In short, discipline is self-perpetuate and constant, whereas motivation is more incidental. You can’t always wait until you feel like doing it, then you start doing it. You have to cultivate discipline in order to make a positive feedback loop in doing an activity.

So what can we do to keep ourselves productive, knowing that we can’t always depending on our emotions? There are 2 things we can do to increase motivation:

1. Target the actions

All of us must’ve gone through that project that just drag on and on, and seem to never end. It can be really tiring to stuck in some part, which is why seeing how you’ve made visible progress feels so good.

Start targeting the small simple actions that you could think of. By setting clear and achievable goals, it will add a boost of motivation every time you manage to conquer that step.

Another tip to help lift up your mood is by making the actions more pleasurable.

For example, if you like listening to music, try making Spotify study playlist to keep you motivated while studying. Or if you like watching videos like I do, you can watch educational videos on Youtube. By making it more fun, these actions will seem a lot easier to do and eventually, you can be more motivated to do the action itself.

2. Target the outcome

Sometimes things are very complicated that you just can’t vision the end goal. In this situation where things could be very demotivating, try bringing the outcome closer to you.

Personally, I am a visual person and I see ideas better with designs, pictures and colors. To me, seeing is believing and not the other way around.

When I had just graduated from high school and was applying for universities, I used to put the pictures of my dream university as my desktop wallpaper and put its posters all over my bedroom walls. It successfully motivated me to keep on studying every day and to always do my best on the university’s entrance exam.

Realistically speaking, not all goals can be visualized easily and some goals requires a long-tough process before it reaches the goal. One of the ways to make the outcome more obvious when there’s no way for you to envision the end goal is by having a role model. If your goal is to get in shape by the end of this year, you can try getting inspirations from other successful people out there. Follow them on social media to keep yourself inspired and motivated to go to the gym. By doing so, it helps to bring the outcome closer to you.

Punishments

Have you ever wondered why it is easier to be motivated whenever it is getting nearer to your assignment deadline? All those brain cells suddenly cooperate well with you just days before the project is due and it seems like all the “motivation” that you need all this time just comes up in a split second.

When we get closer to deadlines, it becomes easier to motivate ourselves. That’s because the pain of not doing the action itself exceeds the pain of doing it. Simply put, the consequences of you not submitting your assignments on time is greater than the pain that you have to suffer by sitting on your chair for 2-3 hours brainstorming ideas. You know for sure that if you don't submit the assignment by tomorrow, you might fail your degree. Instantly, it leaves you with no option than to do it right away.

From this simple example, we know that pressure sometimes plays a part in injecting the extra kick and motivations to our actions. What if we change the equation a little bit? So instead of being pushed by the pressure, why not try utilizing that pressure to motivate ourselves?

Call this a “Punishment method”, make a commitment to one of your friends that every time you fail to fulfill your promise, you’ll have to bear the punishment of paying your friend $500 as an example. You have to make sure that the ‘pain’ you’ve committed is significant enough to get you out of your bed and start doing it. Hence, the punishments will depend on one’s capacity.

All in all, we understand that motivation adds the extra kick to you just like caffeine does its magic to our brains. But in real cases, we can’t always be dependant on our emotional state in order for us to get things done. Two simple tips to overcome this is by targeting the simple actions to get you started and to focus your mind on the end result. If these two tricks do not work for you, try using what we know as ‘the punishment method’ to drag the lazy you out of your comfortable bed.

Let me know in the comments below what do you think about this. Everybody has their own style and approach to motivate themselves. This might be applicable for some, but not for others. What do you do to motivate yourself when you don’t feel like doing things?