The Problem With Motivation

Below, I have written and responded to six questions. All of them have to do with motivation. Hopefully you'll have an answer for each question as well. If not, feel free to comment on other peoples' answers. [quote][b]Why do we do anything?[/b][/quote] There are several answers to this question that I can think of: [b]Necessity[/b] -- that is, because [i]not doing[/i] would be harmful; [b]Profit[/b] -- that is, because the act of [i]doing[/i] has measurable benefits; and [b]Compulsion[/b] -- that is, because the the act of [i]doing[/i] has either established itself as a habit or is controlled by the subconscious. To help differentiate between Necessity and Profit, it should help to remember that necessary acts have no inherently positive outcome, but avoid a negative outcome; whereas, profitable acts have no inherently negative outcome, but strive for a positive outcome. Obviously, anything you do would probably be influenced by more than just one of these factors. Breathing, for instance, is done mostly out of compulsion, but it's compulsive because it's necessary. Your brain is programmed to breath to keep you alive, which makes it a compulsion, and the act of breathing is preferable to the act of not breathing , which makes it necessary. The act of breathing could also be considered profitable in that the act of breathing is more comfortable than the act of holding one's breath or not breathing at all. Killing for pleasure would be viewed as profitable, but entirely unnecessary to the point of being unprofitable in other ways. One could even argue that it is necessary for all those who live within society to abstain from killing for the sake of preserving their own life. Killing out of necessity, on the other hand, may or may not be profitable. In this case, it depends strongly on what makes the act of killing necessary in the first place. Is the act necessary because it protects the killer's life or is it necessary because it prevents the killer from going bankrupt? Killing due to compulsion is, perhaps, the most forgivable (depending on the circumstances), but still completely unnecessary. Once again, the results may or may not be profitable. [quote][b]What is motivation?[/b][/quote] Motivation is the desire to perform a necessary or profitable act due to its foreseeable outcome. It can be physical (the threat of pain, the promise of money, etc.) or mental (fear, happiness, etc.). If I'm hungry, I then become motivated to eat. I become motivated because being hungry is uncomfortable. Eating eliminates my hunger and makes me comfortable again. This, obviously, is an instance of a profitable act. [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhL6cH45BnA]If somebody sedates me with chloroform; brings me to an abandoned warehouse and strips me of all my clothes; performs minor surgery while I'm knocked out, inserting a small key into my right eye socket; attaches a timed vice to my head and locks me in a room; and then tells me that the only way to save myself from the head-shaped clamp filled with nails and poised to kill me is to tear the key out from my eye[/url], then I become motivated to tear the flesh from my face in an attempt to save my life. This, quite clearly, is an instance of a necessary act. While it isn't possible for something to motivate you to perform a compulsive act, it is possible for you to become motivated to make an act compulsive, especially if it seems profitable or necessary in some way. If your mother is constantly yelling at you for keeping the toilet seat up, you may become motivated to make the act of putting the toilet seat down after every use into a compulsive act. If you're trying to avoid your mother's constant nagging (something negative), then this is a necessary act. If you're doing it because you enjoy the feeling you get when you make your mother happy (something positive), then this is a profitable act. In most likelihood, you're doing it for both reasons. [quote][b]What purpose does motivation serve?[/b][/quote] Quite simply, motivation is what makes people [i]do[/i] things. Without it, people would be left only with compulsions. Motivation is essentially the logic that drives our actions. [quote][b]How do we become motivated to do something?[/b][/quote] While it's easy to become motivated to eat or avoid having your face crushed by a "[url=http://www.yourprops.com/norm-450f63a41b3dd-Saw+II+%282005%29.jpeg]venus flytrap[/url]", it isn't always as simple to motivate yourself to do something which doesn't have an easily measured negative outcome to avoid or positive outcome to strive for. The sense of fullness you get from eating is a tangible-enough positive outcome for you to become easily motivated by the idea of eating. The fear of a gruesome and painful death is a powerful enough negative outcome for you to become motivated by the idea of survival. Becoming motivated to learn something new or create something unique is relatively more abstract. You are no longer dealing with instant gratification scenarios. You aren't avoiding death by writing that epic novel you've had floating around in the back of your skull for years. You certainly aren't benefiting from all those sleepless nights spent huddled in front of a computer monitor typing. As profitability becomes more distant -- as necessity becomes more relative -- it becomes far more difficult to ascertain what is and isn't worth doing. When most things in life are instantly profitable and instantly necessary, it's hard to grasp why one should do the most profitable, most necessary, things. Those great achievements that so few ever actually achieve don't result in any profit until one has first experienced a point of unprofitably. The necessity of achieving becomes unclear when one becomes too used to mediocrity and instant gratification. They forget that an unproductive, pointless, mundane life is a [i]negative[/i] outcome to be [i]avoided[/i]. [quote][b]Why do we become unmotivated?[/b][/quote] Quite simply, we lose sight. We forget that the most profitable things are never instantly profitable. Indeed, they are virtually always unprofitable at first. One must lose hours of sleep, and go without eating, and work harder than everybody around them to achieve their goals. It isn't until we've paid our dues that we can reap the greatest benefits. [quote][b]How can we prevent the loss of motivation?[/b][/quote] While this may not be true for everybody else, I've found that motivating myself to do anything (no matter the scale) is simply a matter of breaking it down into smaller goals. After coming up with the big picture, I just don't look at it again until it's actually complete. Instead, I break it into small, easy-to-do components. If there is no benefit to a single component, I come up with some sort of award for doing it (like a candy bar or an extra sandwich that day). I've found that self-motivation has become a relatively simple process for me in the past few years. I still can't motivate myself to do some things, but they're things that I haven't ever wanted to do in the past and continue to have no desire to do. There has yet to be an instance where I've enjoyed doing something and lost the motivation to complete, only to regret having lost the motivation.