Chapter 7: Motivation and Drive — What Makes Us Move

"People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing — that's why we recommend it daily." — Zig Ziglar

Opening: The Project He Keeps Starting

Jordan had been meaning to write a business development proposal for eight months.

Not because anyone had asked him to — it was self-initiated, an ambitious project he believed would significantly advance the company's strategy. He had talked about it to Dev. He had mentioned it to a colleague. He had a folder of notes on his laptop.

He had not written more than two pages.

The two pages had been written on a Sunday in March when he felt clear and purposeful. The subsequent Sundays had produced other things: a reorganized bedroom, a long walk, an afternoon of reading, two calls with his brother, a project at work that was not this project. The proposal remained at two pages, periodically reopened, looked at, closed again.

Jordan knew he wanted to do this. He also couldn't seem to do it. The gap between wanting and doing — one of the most familiar and frustrating gaps in human experience — was where he was stuck.

7.1 What Motivation Is

Motivation is the force that initiates, directs, and sustains behavior toward a goal. It is the answer to the question: Why does this organism do what it does?

This question is deceptively simple. Human motivation is enormously complex — shaped by biology, history, culture, context, emotional state, and the particular arrangement of a given situation. Understanding it requires more than identifying what people say they want; it requires understanding the forces that actually drive behavior.

Several foundational frameworks have emerged from psychology's attempts to answer this question:

Instinct Theory and Drive Theory

Early motivational theories proposed that behavior is driven by instincts (biologically programmed action tendencies) or by drives (physiological states of deprivation that motivate tension-reducing behavior). Hunger drives eating; thirst drives drinking; sex drive motivates mating.

Drive theory captured something real: there are biological motivational states that push behavior. But it could not account for the full complexity of human motivation — why we seek novel experiences rather than simply reducing tension; why we work at difficult problems we are not biologically required to solve; why motivation can be self-generated rather than driven by deprivation.

Arousal Theory

Related to drive theory is the concept of optimal arousal: organisms seek not merely to reduce arousal (as drive theory suggests) but to maintain an optimal level of it. Too little stimulation produces boredom and seeking behavior; too much produces anxiety and withdrawal.

The Yerkes-Dodson law describes the relationship between arousal and performance: for simple tasks, higher arousal improves performance; for complex tasks, moderate arousal is optimal. This inverted-U relationship is one of the most consistent findings in motivational psychology.

7.2 Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Abraham Maslow's hierarchical model of human motivation, developed in the 1940s–50s, remains among the most widely cited in psychology — despite substantial criticism.

Maslow proposed that human needs are organized in a hierarchy:

         △
        /  \
       / 5. \     Self-actualization
      / self \    (becoming one's fullest self)
     /actuali-\
    /  zation  \
   /————————————\
  /  4. Esteem   \  (achievement, recognition, respect)
 /————————————————\
/ 3. Love/Belonging \ (relationships, connection, belonging)
/————————————————————\
/  2. Safety/Security  \ (physical safety, stability, order)
/————————————————————————\
/  1. Physiological needs  \ (food, water, sleep, warmth)
/——————————————————————————\

Maslow proposed that lower-order needs must be substantially satisfied before higher-order needs become motivationally active. A person preoccupied with survival cannot focus on self-actualization.

What the evidence says: - The hierarchical ordering is not well supported empirically. People pursue love and meaning even in conditions of physical insecurity. - The categories themselves have intuitive validity — people do have basic biological needs, safety needs, social needs, esteem needs, and growth needs. - Cross-cultural research suggests the relative salience of different need categories varies culturally. - Maslow's later work proposed additional levels (cognitive needs, aesthetic needs, transcendence) that are rarely included in popular presentations.

The most useful takeaway: human motivation is genuinely multi-layered. People can simultaneously need security and meaning; connection and autonomy; comfort and challenge. Maslow's framework, imperfect as it is, captures this multi-layered quality in a way that single-drive theories do not.

7.3 Self-Determination Theory

The most rigorously developed and empirically supported motivational framework for everyday life is self-determination theory (SDT), developed by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan from the 1970s through the present.

SDT begins with a fundamental distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation:

Intrinsic motivation: Engaging in an activity for its own sake — for the interest, enjoyment, or inherent satisfaction it provides, independent of external rewards or consequences.

Extrinsic motivation: Engaging in an activity for external outcomes — rewards, recognition, grades, money, social approval, avoidance of punishment.

The initial SDT finding, now robustly replicated, was that external rewards can undermine intrinsic motivation — a phenomenon called the overjustification effect or crowding out. When people who are intrinsically motivated to do something begin receiving external rewards for it, intrinsic motivation often decreases. The activity becomes something you do for the reward, not for itself.

This finding has been nuanced over decades of research: - Controlling rewards (contingent, expected) undermine intrinsic motivation - Informational, non-controlling feedback preserves it - The effect is stronger for initially high intrinsic motivation - Unexpected rewards have less impact

The Three Basic Psychological Needs

SDT's core theoretical proposal is that human beings have three universal basic psychological needs:

1. Autonomy — the experience of choice and volition; feeling that one's actions are self-determined rather than controlled by external forces. This is not the same as independence; you can choose to follow someone else's direction and still experience autonomy if the choice feels like your own.

2. Competence — the experience of effectiveness; feeling capable and able to meet challenges. Competence need is satisfied through mastery experiences, appropriate challenge, and feedback that confirms efficacy.

3. Relatedness — the experience of genuine connection with others; feeling cared for and caring for others. Not merely social contact, but authentic connection.

SDT proposes that environments, relationships, and activities that support these three needs promote intrinsic motivation, wellbeing, and psychological health. Environments that thwart these needs produce amotivation, controlled motivation, and reduced wellbeing.

The Motivation Spectrum

Rather than a simple intrinsic-extrinsic binary, SDT describes a continuum of motivation based on the degree of internalization:

The practical implication: fully autonomous (intrinsic + integrated + identified) motivation produces better outcomes in most domains — more persistence, better performance, more learning, greater wellbeing. Helping people connect activities to their own values and sense of identity is more effective for sustained motivation than adding external rewards.

7.4 Intrinsic Motivation in Practice

Why is Jordan stuck on his business development proposal?

Several motivational factors may be operating:

The proposal is intrinsically interesting to him — he does genuinely care about the strategic content. But the act of writing may be associated with effortful, slow, uncertain progress — conditions that don't intrinsically motivate him in the way the idea of the proposal does.

The stakes feel high — which produces performance pressure that can convert autonomous motivation into controlled motivation. Writing something ambitious that he cares about risks failure in a way that writing routine reports does not.

The project lacks immediate external structure — no deadline, no assigned obligation, no accountability. In the absence of internal motivation strong enough to sustain effort across weeks of difficult slow progress, the project stalls.

This analysis points to specific interventions — not "try harder" but "restructure the conditions." More on this in the applied section below.

7.5 Flow: Intrinsic Motivation at Its Peak

In 1975, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described a state he called flow: an experience of complete absorption in an intrinsically motivating activity, characterized by:

• Complete concentration — full engagement of attention in the task
• Merged action and awareness — you are "in" the activity rather than observing yourself doing it
• Sense of control — mastery without effortful striving
• Loss of self-consciousness — the monitoring, evaluating self recedes
• Altered time perception — time passes differently (usually faster)
• Autotelic experience — the activity is rewarding in itself, regardless of outcome

Flow is most likely to occur when challenge is approximately matched to skill — neither too easy (producing boredom) nor too difficult (producing anxiety). The flow channel is the narrow zone at the frontier of current competence.

Csikszentmihalyi's cross-cultural research found that flow states are reported across cultures and activities — in sport, in music, in coding, in surgery, in conversation, in chess. The activity matters less than the challenge-skill balance and the quality of attention brought to it.

The practical implications: - Designing work and leisure for flow increases intrinsic motivation and wellbeing - Matching challenge to skill — deliberately taking on tasks at the edge of current competence — produces more flow than either easy tasks or overwhelming ones - The quality of attention matters — fragmented attention (phones, notifications) disrupts flow even in activities that would otherwise support it - Flow is accessible in most domains; the question is how it is designed for

7.6 Goal-Setting and Motivation

While intrinsic motivation is the most powerful and sustainable form, not all motivation must be intrinsic to be effective. Well-structured goals can provide motivational scaffolding for behavior.

Locke and Latham's goal-setting theory (one of the most replicated findings in organizational psychology) shows that:

• Specific goals outperform vague goals. "Write 500 words on the proposal this Sunday" outperforms "make progress on the proposal."
• Challenging goals (at the edge of current capacity) produce higher performance than easy goals — provided the person is committed to the goal.
• Feedback on progress toward goals enhances their motivating effect.

The interaction between challenge and commitment is important: extremely difficult goals only motivate when people believe they can achieve them (self-efficacy; addressed in Chapter 10) and genuinely want to (goal commitment; related to values and intrinsic motivation).

SMART goals — Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound — are a practical application of goal-setting theory. They provide the specificity, relevance, and feedback structure that support motivation.

Implementation intentions — "When situation X occurs, I will do behavior Y" — extend goal-setting to address the implementation gap between intention and action. Jordan's gap: he has a goal (write the proposal) but no implementation intention. A well-formed implementation intention might be: "When I sit at my desk with coffee on Sunday morning, I will write 500 words of the proposal before looking at anything else."

7.7 The Role of Autonomy in Organizational Contexts

Self-determination theory has been extensively applied to workplace motivation — with direct implications for how managers, educators, and coaches can support or undermine the motivation of the people they lead.

Autonomous motivation in the workplace requires:

Autonomy support: Leaders and managers who understand employees' perspectives, acknowledge feelings, provide rationale for requests, offer choice rather than control, and minimize pressure and control.

Structure: Clear expectations, consistent feedback, and predictable consequences — not the same as control. Structure that supports competence is motivating; control that undermines autonomy is not.

Relational connection: Workplaces where people feel genuinely known and cared about — not just performed to — support motivational wellbeing.

The evidence shows that autonomy-supportive management is associated with higher engagement, better performance on complex tasks, lower turnover, better wellbeing, and higher creativity. Control-oriented management may produce short-term compliance but at costs to intrinsic motivation and wellbeing.

The classic example: companies that shift from fixed working hours to results-only work environments often see initial increases in motivation and output as autonomy need is met. The gain can erode if the lack of structure creates anxiety — demonstrating that autonomy and structure are complementary, not opposed.

7.8 Motivation and the Body

Motivation is not purely psychological. Biological states profoundly affect motivational processes:

Dopamine: The neurotransmitter most associated with motivation, reward anticipation, and goal-directed behavior. Dopamine is released not just when a reward is received but when a reward is anticipated — it drives the wanting more than the liking. Understanding dopamine helps explain why anticipation is often more motivating than attainment, and why certain reward schedules (variable ratio reinforcement) produce extremely persistent behavior.

Energy and glucose: Cognitive tasks deplete glucose. Motivation for challenging tasks is reduced by physical depletion — hunger, fatigue, illness. The "decision fatigue" literature (Baumeister; though see replication concerns) suggests that willpower-intensive choices early in the day can reduce subsequent motivation for more demanding tasks.

Exercise: Aerobic exercise reliably improves motivation, mood, and executive function. Regular exercise is among the most accessible motivational interventions available — its effects are mediated by increased dopamine, serotonin, and BDNF, and by direct effects on the prefrontal cortex.

Sleep: Sleep deprivation selectively impairs motivation for complex, novel, or aversive tasks while leaving motivation for familiar, routine, or pleasant tasks relatively intact. The most motivationally demanding tasks (creative work, difficult decisions, sustained effort) are the ones most impaired by inadequate sleep.

7.9 Procrastination: Motivation's Counterpart

Jordan's stalled proposal is a case of procrastination — a topic important enough to merit its own chapter (Chapter 23). Here we introduce the motivational dimensions.

Procrastination is not primarily a time management problem. It is primarily a motivation and emotion regulation problem.

People procrastinate on tasks that are: - Aversive (unpleasant, boring, difficult) - Threatening to self-worth (performance on the task reveals something about ability) - Unclear or ambiguous in their next steps - Distant in their reward (the benefit of doing them is not immediately available)

The short-term relief of avoiding an aversive task is immediate. The benefit of completing the task is delayed and uncertain. In the absence of sufficient intrinsic motivation or external structure, temporal discounting — the systematic underweighting of future consequences relative to immediate ones — produces procrastination.

Understanding procrastination as a motivational phenomenon rather than a character flaw suggests different interventions: reduce the aversiveness of the task (break it into smaller steps; lower the bar for initial output); increase the immediacy of reward (pair the task with something enjoyable; create accountability); address the threat to self-worth (separate the identity from the performance; adopt a growth mindset).

7.10 Motivation and Values

Ultimately, the most powerful source of sustained motivation is alignment with values — the things that matter most to a person at the level of identity and core conviction.

When an activity is experienced as expressive of core values — when it is "the right thing to do" or "who I am" rather than "what I should do" or "what I'm supposed to do" — it is integrated into identity (the top of SDT's continuum). This produces the most durable motivation.

The practical implication for Jordan's proposal: the question is not primarily "how do I generate more motivation for this task" but "does this proposal genuinely connect to what matters most to me professionally?" If it does, the task of motivation is connecting that value more vividly to the specific work. If it does not — if the proposal is something Jordan thinks he should do rather than something he genuinely wants to do — that is important information.

We return to values and their relationship to motivation in Chapter 11 (Values, Beliefs, and Meaning-Making) and Chapter 28 (Finding Meaning and Purpose in Work).

From the Field: Dr. Reyes on What People Are Actually Motivated By

In my clinical work, I found that people were almost always motivated — the question was by what.

The person who says "I'm not motivated to exercise" is usually very motivated to avoid discomfort, avoid risking failure, avoid the social comparison of the gym, or maintain the comfort of their current routine. That is motivation. It is just motivation in the service of the wrong thing — or at least, not the thing they say they want.

This reframe helps. Instead of "how do I get motivated?", the useful question becomes: "What am I already motivated by, and what is that motivation competing with?"

The business proposal Jordan can't write: he is motivated to avoid the risk of writing something that exposes how much he cares about this idea and possibly being told it's not good enough. That's a very real motivation. It's competing with his motivation to make a contribution. Both are real. Understanding the competition changes the intervention.

People sometimes resist this framing because it feels like blame: "You are motivated to avoid discomfort, therefore stop complaining about not exercising." But that's the wrong interpretation. Understanding the actual motivation — including the avoidance motivation — allows you to address it appropriately: to make the feared outcome less threatening, to strengthen the competing motivation, to design the environment so that the avoidance motivation doesn't win by default.

The question is never "why aren't you motivated?" It is always "what are you motivated by, and what would it take to reorganize that?"

Research Spotlight: Deci and the Overjustification Effect

Edward Deci's original 1971 experiment on intrinsic motivation and external rewards is one of the most elegant and counterintuitive in all of psychology.

Participants were students who spent three sessions working on an intrinsically interesting puzzle (Soma cubes). In the middle session, one group received money for solving puzzles; the other group did not. In the third session, no one received money.

In a free-choice period during the third session — when there was no instruction and participants could do anything — the group that had been paid spent less time with the puzzles than the control group. They had been paid for something they were initially intrinsically motivated to do; the payment had undermined the intrinsic motivation.

This was counterintuitive to folk wisdom (surely rewarding good behavior makes you want to do it more?) and to behavioral theory (reinforcement should strengthen behavior). But it has been replicated extensively, across many types of activities, populations, and reward structures.

The mechanism appears to be attributional: when you are paid to do something, you attribute your behavior to the payment ("I did it because they paid me"). When the payment stops, the behavioral attribution changes ("I'm not getting paid anymore, so this must not be worth doing"), and intrinsic motivation decreases.

Importantly, not all rewards undermine intrinsic motivation. Unexpected rewards (not contingent on performance) have minimal effect. Informational feedback that confirms competence can actually enhance intrinsic motivation. The key variable is whether the reward is experienced as controlling or informational.

This research has significant implications for parenting, education, management, and self-motivation: rewards used as the primary motivational tool for intrinsically interesting activities tend to erode engagement over time. Building autonomy-supportive environments — where people feel they are choosing to engage, and where feedback confirms competence rather than controlling behavior — is more effective for sustained motivation.

Common Misconceptions

"Motivation is either present or absent." Motivation is multi-dimensional and multi-sourced. The more useful question is: what type of motivation is present, and does it match what the task requires? Controlled motivation (driven by pressure, guilt, or external reward) may initiate behavior but is less effective for sustaining complex effort.

"External rewards always increase motivation." As the Deci research shows, external rewards can undermine intrinsic motivation for already-interesting activities. For activities that are not intrinsically motivating, external rewards can provide scaffolding — but the goal should be helping people internalize the motivation, not sustaining the reward indefinitely.

"Highly motivated people don't procrastinate." Procrastination occurs when the motivation to avoid an aversive task competes with — and wins against — the motivation to complete it. Highly motivated people procrastinate on tasks that are aversive, threatening to self-worth, or poorly structured, regardless of how motivated they are in general.

"If I were really passionate about something, it would feel easy." Flow requires matched challenge and skill — and skill development requires passing through phases of difficulty where the challenge exceeds current skill. The initial stages of learning something genuinely difficult involve effort, frustration, and slow progress. Passion sustains people through this phase; it does not make the phase disappear.

Chapter Summary

1. Motivation initiates, directs, and sustains behavior — it is the force behind goal-directed action
2. Maslow's hierarchy — multi-layered model of human needs; basic structure is useful even if the strict hierarchy is not empirically supported
3. Self-determination theory — the three basic psychological needs (autonomy, competence, relatedness) and the motivational spectrum from amotivation to integrated intrinsic motivation
4. Overjustification effect — external rewards can undermine intrinsic motivation for inherently interesting activities; controlling rewards are especially damaging; informational feedback is less so
5. Flow — Csikszentmihalyi's optimal experience, occurring when challenge matches skill; associated with intrinsic motivation, absorption, and wellbeing
6. Goal-setting — specific, challenging goals with feedback outperform vague or easy goals; implementation intentions bridge the goal-behavior gap
7. Procrastination — primarily a motivation and emotion regulation problem, not a time management problem; driven by temporal discounting of delayed rewards and avoidance of task aversiveness
8. Bodily motivation — dopamine, energy, exercise, and sleep all significantly affect motivational states

Bridge to Part 2

Part 1 has covered the foundations — the machinery of mind that underlies all human behavior. We have examined the brain, perception, cognition, memory, emotion, and motivation.

Part 2 turns inward to examine the self — the personality that organizes and expresses these capacities, the identity that gives them coherence, the self-esteem and efficacy that calibrate our relationship to challenge, the values that direct our motivation toward what matters, and the development that has shaped us over a lifetime.

Chapter 8 opens Part 2 with personality — the blueprint of who you are.