Cleaven Chia’s Edublog

From http://-icebubble.blogspot.com, 2 Feb 2006. Article is preserved in its original flavour, save for comments, which are rendered in italics.

I had some random inspiration to blog something about self-motivation and maybe give my views on the canvassing for the Students’ Council elections.

The thing about self-motivation is that it must come from within you. With self-motivation, one can fuel himself (”him” as a neutral gender) over a longer distance. You may, at times, need others to motivate you, but what if that motivation is gone? Who will be left to fuel you? Self-motivation gives you a lot of power, but it is difficult to achieve, and even more difficult to maintain it throughout a long period of time.

To achieve a state where you are able to self-motivate, you should condition your mindset – tell yourself: “I must do this.” A better alternative would be: “I want to do this – I like it so much, when I do it I don’t feel like doing work.” That was a quote from Confucius – “Do what you like doing best and you will not feel like you are working at all.” (This is a very good quote to abide by!) Therefore, the first step should be to tell yourself that you like doing it. This form of motivation, I will term dangling-carrot self-motivation.

It might help to start off your journey of self-motivation by setting some tangible rewards (a 10-minute break or a small snack for example) – then as you continue to employ this strategy, do away with the physical reward and instead aim for some psychological and emotional reward – “I am doing this because it gives me some emotional satisfaction.” (Refer to my post on the (10+2)*5 procrastination hack by Merlin Mann.)

I can testify that the method works, even though I jumped straight into aiming for a psychological reward. I feel a sense of satisfaction when I do my extension for my mathematics assignments (I started doing so since the start of this year), partly because mathematics is one of my favourite subjects, and also partly because I am aiming to score well in mathematics – both will consequently lead to some form of emotional satisfaction.

From this year, I resolved to play less and do my work before I play. The reward was: firstly, a more organised, on-task self; and secondly, better grades. Looking at my grades last year, I resolved to improve on them as I felt there was room for improvement, and hence the self-motivation regime.

Another method of deriving self-motivation is to remove all (or nearly) all forms of distractions (present and potential) so that you can stay focused on the task at hand. I will term this forced self-motivation. This may work because without any distractions, you will not be tempted to do something other than the task at hand. This is a good method, but it might compromise the end results as you are forced to complete the task, and you might not have put in your best in accomplishing the task.

There’s another form of self-motivation which I will name chain self-motivation. In this case when you accomplish some task and achieve some self-satisfaction, you might be motivated to do better because you like it, or that you want to get more satisfaction. This should preferably be combined with dangling-carrot self-motivation because DCSM is the starting fuel, while CSM will serve as a motor that will move you all the way. In short, this is a way of sustaining the self-motivation in you.

And I shall end my essay there. It was kind of impromptu, and hopefully it wasn’t too long-winded.

Filed under: Storm in the Mind