Strong upvote from me, this is a huge cause issue in my life and I’m sure in many others. Any mental stuff aside, it seems the brain has strong control systems around not wanting to do too much of stuff it doesn’t like, and more of stuff it can’t get enough of.
One thing I’ve always wondered about is how a person’s affinities and frustrations are made. Why do some people love to write, so much so that time for writing just appears without conscious effort, whereas others find it a grinding chore they can’t wait to be done with? What makes some people feel a calling to be, say, a veterinarian or a plumber? Why do most people dislike exercise but a few really love it and couldn’t make themselves stop if they tried?
If we can figure this out, maybe we can figure out how to move stuff between categories. Rather than trying to learn how to live with the suck, maybe we can find ways to make stuff not suck, as much as we can, at least.
I suspect this may be related to the feedback one gets. Importantly, not just feedback on having accomplished something, but also on working towards something even if you are not there yet—because this is where you will realistically spend most of your time when working on nontrivial projects.
Writing is probably easy (for an intelligent person) if you have a friendly audience. The question is how to get it before you learn how to write well. Sometimes, the parents provide the service.
I agree feedback is a big part of it. For example, the times in my life when I’ve been most motivated to play musical instruments were when I had regular opportunities to play in front of people. Whenever that disappeared, the interest went away too.
But also I think some of it is sticky, or due to personality factors. We could even say it’s not about willpower at all, but about value differences. Some people are just more okay with homeostasis, staying at a certain level (which can be lower or higher for different people) and using only as much effort as needed for that. While others keep climbing and applying effort without ever reaching a level that lets them relax. Many billionaires seem to be of that second type. I’m more of the first type, with many of my active periods being prompted by external changes, threats to homeostasis. It’s clear that type 2 achieves more than type 1, but it’s not clear which type is happier and whether one should want to switch types.
I don’t have a coherent theory of motivation, because when I look at myself, it seems that different parts of my life work quite differently.
For example, when I used to write SF, the social motivation was very important. I had friends who liked SF books and movies, we talked about that a lot, many of us hoped to write something good one day. So I had a community, and an audience. My first attempts had some small success, which inspired me to work harder and achieve more. And then… at some moment this all went down in flames… skipping the unimportant details, I think my mistake was becoming visibly more successful than some people in our community who had higher social status than me, so I got the “status slap-down” and the community became much less friendly towards me, and I lost an important source of motivation. For some time I was motivated by a desire to prove them wrong (for example I avoided a soft blacklist by publishing my story under a pseudonym), but gradually writing stopped being fun, and I stopped writing.
For an opposite example, I am interested in mathematics. Sometimes I read a textbook, do some exercises, try to figure something out. I would prefer to have people around me willing to discuss these topics, but the fact that I don’t doesn’t stop me at all.
Somewhere in the middle is programming. I am motivated to learn new things, but I am not motivated to finish my projects, and I suspect that having an audience would help here.
I guess I find learning intrinsically rewarding, but producing things requires a social reward (which I need to receive during the process, not only after having completed the product).
With regards to homeostasis, I think I have always tried to achieve more, it’s just that my energy and motivation are very limited (more than previously now that I have kids). When I have some free time, I try new things, but often I feel too tired just trying to survive the day. That is, this is partially about me, and partially about my environment. Of course, a stronger internal drive can compensate for a less friendly environment, but a friendly environment can also make a great difference.
Your examples sound familiar to me too, but after rereading your comment and mine, maybe it all can be generalized in a different way. Namely, that internal motivation leads to a low level of effort: reading some textbooks now and then, solving some exercises, producing some small things. It still feels a bit like staying in place. Whereas it takes external motivation to actually move forward with math, or art, or whatever—to spend lots of effort and try to raise my level every day. That’s how it feels for me. Maybe some people can do it without external motivation, or maybe they lucked into getting external motivation in the right way, I don’t know.
Strong upvote from me, this is a huge cause issue in my life and I’m sure in many others. Any mental stuff aside, it seems the brain has strong control systems around not wanting to do too much of stuff it doesn’t like, and more of stuff it can’t get enough of.
One thing I’ve always wondered about is how a person’s affinities and frustrations are made. Why do some people love to write, so much so that time for writing just appears without conscious effort, whereas others find it a grinding chore they can’t wait to be done with? What makes some people feel a calling to be, say, a veterinarian or a plumber? Why do most people dislike exercise but a few really love it and couldn’t make themselves stop if they tried?
If we can figure this out, maybe we can figure out how to move stuff between categories. Rather than trying to learn how to live with the suck, maybe we can find ways to make stuff not suck, as much as we can, at least.
I suspect this may be related to the feedback one gets. Importantly, not just feedback on having accomplished something, but also on working towards something even if you are not there yet—because this is where you will realistically spend most of your time when working on nontrivial projects.
Writing is probably easy (for an intelligent person) if you have a friendly audience. The question is how to get it before you learn how to write well. Sometimes, the parents provide the service.
I agree feedback is a big part of it. For example, the times in my life when I’ve been most motivated to play musical instruments were when I had regular opportunities to play in front of people. Whenever that disappeared, the interest went away too.
But also I think some of it is sticky, or due to personality factors. We could even say it’s not about willpower at all, but about value differences. Some people are just more okay with homeostasis, staying at a certain level (which can be lower or higher for different people) and using only as much effort as needed for that. While others keep climbing and applying effort without ever reaching a level that lets them relax. Many billionaires seem to be of that second type. I’m more of the first type, with many of my active periods being prompted by external changes, threats to homeostasis. It’s clear that type 2 achieves more than type 1, but it’s not clear which type is happier and whether one should want to switch types.
I don’t have a coherent theory of motivation, because when I look at myself, it seems that different parts of my life work quite differently.
For example, when I used to write SF, the social motivation was very important. I had friends who liked SF books and movies, we talked about that a lot, many of us hoped to write something good one day. So I had a community, and an audience. My first attempts had some small success, which inspired me to work harder and achieve more. And then… at some moment this all went down in flames… skipping the unimportant details, I think my mistake was becoming visibly more successful than some people in our community who had higher social status than me, so I got the “status slap-down” and the community became much less friendly towards me, and I lost an important source of motivation. For some time I was motivated by a desire to prove them wrong (for example I avoided a soft blacklist by publishing my story under a pseudonym), but gradually writing stopped being fun, and I stopped writing.
For an opposite example, I am interested in mathematics. Sometimes I read a textbook, do some exercises, try to figure something out. I would prefer to have people around me willing to discuss these topics, but the fact that I don’t doesn’t stop me at all.
Somewhere in the middle is programming. I am motivated to learn new things, but I am not motivated to finish my projects, and I suspect that having an audience would help here.
I guess I find learning intrinsically rewarding, but producing things requires a social reward (which I need to receive during the process, not only after having completed the product).
With regards to homeostasis, I think I have always tried to achieve more, it’s just that my energy and motivation are very limited (more than previously now that I have kids). When I have some free time, I try new things, but often I feel too tired just trying to survive the day. That is, this is partially about me, and partially about my environment. Of course, a stronger internal drive can compensate for a less friendly environment, but a friendly environment can also make a great difference.
Your examples sound familiar to me too, but after rereading your comment and mine, maybe it all can be generalized in a different way. Namely, that internal motivation leads to a low level of effort: reading some textbooks now and then, solving some exercises, producing some small things. It still feels a bit like staying in place. Whereas it takes external motivation to actually move forward with math, or art, or whatever—to spend lots of effort and try to raise my level every day. That’s how it feels for me. Maybe some people can do it without external motivation, or maybe they lucked into getting external motivation in the right way, I don’t know.
Relevant previous discussion: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XYYyzgyuRH5rFN64K/what-makes-people-intellectually-active