When you Google the word “motivation,” it comes up with two definitions:
“The reason or reasons one has for acting or behaving in a particular way.”
“The general desire or willingness of someone to do something.”
When you think of motivation, odds are that your mind goes automatically to the second definition. How many times have you uttered something like, “I’ve got no motivation to study,” or, “I have no motivation to get my work done,” or even, “They just weren’t motivated enough” as an explanation for someone else? We think of it as a quality that can come and go, and you either have it or you don’t. When you don’t have it, there’s no use in trying to get anything done. When you have it, you try to get everything done before it disappears.
What if I told you that the concept of motivation is a lie?
Of course, we can have goals. At the end of a class, we’re that many credits closer to graduation. At the end of a work day, we’re that much closer to our paychecks. These things act as motivators, and the end goal is very much there. But motivation itself, as a tangible thing that we either possess or lack at any given time, is a lie. It’s like when writers talk about muses and inspiration: it’s all made up.
We as a society have turned “motivation,” “muse,” and “inspiration” into sorts of qualities. You either have it or you don’t. If you don’t have it, then there’s no use in doing anything. Think about the last time that you had a paper to do. What did you do? Did you do it right away? Unless it was due the next day, then you probably didn’t.
Here’s the fact of the matter: you can sit around and wait all semester to get motivated and still not do your work till the last minute, or whenever the panic hits. It’s why writers are never read, why musicians are never heard, and why potentially great papers never get As. If you sit around waiting for inspiration or motivation to strike, you’re never going to get anywhere.
There’s nothing wrong with having a burst of inspiration, motivation, or any other such thing that makes you want to leap out of your chair and get all the work done ever. It’s when you wait around for these moments when it becomes a problem. Statements like, “I wasn’t inspired,” “I didn’t have any motivation,” and “Muse hasn’t struck me yet,” have all become excuses for not doing work.
Have you ever noticed how once you get started on that paper, you slowly become immersed in it? You have these ideas that work great, all of the words start to fall into place, and a nice groove sets in. The same thing can be said about anything, from the studying you need to do to the book you’ve been meaning to write for years. The hardest part of anything is actually starting, but once you do that, everything falls into place.
We’re always going to have motivators, but motivation is going to come to us as we’re living life. It’s why we’re more motivated to write that paper when it’s first assigned to us in class, or write that novel idea when it first comes to us. If we take motivation out of the equation and just sit down to work on something, it’s going to come to us sooner or later anyway. Even if it doesn’t, at least the paper is done and out of the way.
