” The good news is that the scientists who’ve been studying motivation have given us this new approach.It’s built much more around intrinsic motivation. Around the desire to do things because they matter,because we like it, they’re interesting, or part of something important.”
As a student, I always had a hard time to motivate myself to start studying in some specific subjects that I do not interested in. When I was in high school, I tried my best to avoid history related courses because studying history was too boring to me. I just memorized and crammed course related materials in order to get a good grade in that course.
In the TED talk video that I am referring, Dan Pink proves the traditional reward system of using rewards and punishments that business people mainly use to motivate employees will not work effectively anymore in our 21 century society. He claims that we need to focus on intrinsic motivators in order to achieve high performance and work efficiency 1.
Figure 1. Relationship of Various Needs Theories
Dan emphasizes the importance of autonomy, mastery, and purpose as three main factors of intrinsic motivation and I figure out that they are interrelated the various needs theories that we discussed in our class. According to the textbook, autonomy promotes active engagement and self-direction and it affects higher order needs of Maslow’s Hierarchy (self-esteem and self-actualization), motivators of and needs for power and achievement 2.
Personally, I never felt happy or satisfied while studying history. However, I loved spending time in art classes. Finishing a piece of artwork made me really satisfied and helped me to relieve my stress. I never thought that time was boring and spent a lot of personal time in visual art classroom because I was intrinsically motivated.
To sum up, I believe it is really important to take some time in order to think about some activities that you like to do in order to motivate yourself intrinsically. By trying to work on our own puzzle of motivation, we could all benefit ourselves and explore more about inner potentials.
References
- Langton, Robbins, Judge, Organizational Behaviour, 7th edition, p. 128-133.
- Pink, Dan. “The Puzzle of Motivation.” TED. Jul. 2009. Lecture.