Most educators, at least implicitly, believe motivation is something you either have or don’t. So, for the students who don’t, they’ve designed an emotional torture chamber that makes learning so stressful that only a crazy person would ignore the consequences. “Oh, you forgot your final was today? I hope you didn’t want to go to Yale because now you forever have a C on your transcript.” That is fearful learning; although it might work in the short term, it’s wreaking havoc on students’ mental health and creating a society with a Pavlovian association between learning and fear. Many say that the best motivation is “intrinsic,” meaning stemming from internal rewards instead of external rewards, but that is also not the case. Everything in life is a combination of internal and external rewards. This arbitrary bifurcation is nonsensical.
Motivation is simply the natural and almost involuntary movement toward the things we think are important and under our control. If something feels both very important and within our control, our motivation is at its peak. If I truly believed that clicking the elevator button outside my apartment would solve world hunger, I would be sprinting out of the door. Or, for a more practical example, people don’t just take care of babies because they’re cute; instead, they believe that what they’re doing is important and propels them (even enthusiastically) through the tedium (dirty diapers). Instead, the best motivation is “hard to vary.” It must be very precise, and there has to be a good reason for the precision. If someone asks, “Why are you working on this?” your answer should apply very specifically to that thing. It should be difficult to change anything about the explanation and still have it make sense.
For example, imagine two students in medical school. Student A is there because she wishes to be an excellent doctor to save more cancer patients like her mother once was. Student B is there because her parents threatened to cut her off of her sizable inheritance unless she became a doctor. Which would you want when you’re on the operating table? Many of us have seen versions of this story play out. Student A’s motivation is much more authentic and resilient than student B’s because it’s hard to vary. Her motivation is intimately tied with this vision of herself operating on patients to save or improve their lives.
The mission itself is what makes this motivation hard to vary. For something else to pull her attention, it will have to fall within the Venn diagram of “saving people’s lives,” “making little girls like her less sad about their sick moms,” “financial independence,” and “intellectual satisfaction from learning something difficult.” People like student B have shallow, fragile motivation; it’s easy to vary. The motivation Venn diagram is simply an overlap of two circles, one that says “appease parents” and the other that says “be rich.” This is a shallow form of motivation; when she is frustrated with her parents for whatever reason or sees another opportunity for financial gain, the motivation for being a doctor is also tossed out. We create robust motivation by investigating our sense of value— what do we think is beautiful and important in the world, and how do we cause that to flourish? The goal of any person should be to valorize their effort, to let the tentacles of every goal reach deep into the core of their essence and worldview. The more circles in their Venn diagram of motivation and the deeper they are into their character, the more robust and sustaining the motivation will be.
Dr. Gena Gorlin, a psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, writes: “Don’t distance runners famously enjoy even— or perhaps especially—the most “painful” parts of their runs? Does not that enjoyment flow, at least in part, from a visceral understanding of the greater fitness and endurance they are building for themselves over time through their efforts, and the felt, wordless knowledge of how these capacities will continue to enhance every aspect of their lives long into the future? For that matter, would they still be able to enjoy distance running in the same way, or to the same degree if they discovered—and really came to understand and believe—that it was hurting rather than helping their health and fitness over time? Would it literally feel as good to push themselves through that final mile, if they knew they were chipping away at their strength and mobility, rather than cultivating them, every time their foot hit the floor? I suspect not.”
Great runners have built a Venn diagram of motivation that includes ‘’living longer,” “the mental acuity which follows exercise,” “the self-worth which follows doing something hard,” and perhaps even ‘’the respect from our culture for being physically fit.” The best runners then imbue every step with that meaning. And equally as vital they reframe the feeling of struggle. As Chess and Tai Chi champion Joshua Waitzkin says, “world-class performers have simply reoriented their relationship with suffering— they’ve learned to embrace it.” World-class performers love the feeling of struggle because they associate it with growth. They have a growth mindset, believing that all skills can be improved with effort, and feel that existing at the edge of their ability is the best way to accelerate their capacities. As my military mom used to say, they’ve learned to “embrace the suck.” When you combine a hard-to-vary motivation with a growth mindset, you get a person who enthusiastically pursues the edge of their capabilities in a field they feel is deeply significant. Although students will still occasionally need a gentle nudge to continue when times get tough, this is a much healthier framework for the design of a school.
About the author
Garrett Smiley is the Co-Founder and CEO at Sora Schools.
