Comment by divan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by divan | Hacker News Reader

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> It's a complete misconception of human psychology that motivation precedes action.

It's not a misconception, it's the definition of motivation.

The misconception is using the word "motivation" only for intrinsic motivation. If you have a gun pointed at your head, you'll be quite motivated to do whatever the person holding the gun tells you. External motivation can be extremely powerful, it just doesn't last long.

> Act first, become motivated later.

You're right. You need some external motivation to start "acting first". There are four types of external motivation (from more external to more internal) – fully external, introjected, identified, internal. Rewards and punishments are the first (external), rewards/punishments "in your head" (aka image of your parents telling you to do homework or you don't get TV time) are the second (introjected), part of your identity ("I'm Muslim, thus have to wear hijab") - third (identified), and "I truly believe I have to do something" is fourth (internal). Internal type of external motivation differs from intrinsic motivation (which is defined as "acting because I enjoy the process", and you can truly believe you have to do something but not enjoy it).

Discipline and self-discipline are somewhere between introjected and internal types, but it's essentially a codename for external motivation nevertheless.

In many cases you really want to instill intrinsic motivation in kids/athletes/employees/etc. But you need to "act first" and repetitively link it to the positive emotions – and that's where external motivation (and discipline) can be used strategically to create intrinsic one. Unfortunately a lot of people/fields/disciplines get stuck in the external reward systems and don't use it strategically.

This is all fine modelling, but doesn't have much bearing on the experience of being human. It's a description, and describing something (regardless of which words you use) does not change its nature.

Motivation, in the sense of "I feel a desire to perform an act I deem to align with what I want to do although it will bring me immediate-term discomfort", that type of motivation, whatever you call it, does not precede prior success in that activity; that type of motivation, whatever you call it, will go away in the face of hardships and struggles; that type of motivation, whatever you call it, is not necessary to perform the task at hand.

>, that type of motivation, whatever you call it, does not precede prior success in that activity; that type of motivation, whatever you call it, will go away in the face of hardships and struggles; that type of motivation, whatever you call it, is not necessary to perform the task at hand.

I didn't downvote but I wanted to comment that your explanation doesn't work for a lot of "unmotivated" people. It just moves the difficulty/mystery to a different set of words in an attempt to describe it.

E.g. "How do I get that intitial urge?/trigger?/spark?/agitation? ... to start the activity that creates post-activity motivation?"

Which of course, the answer always ultimately ends up with a variation of ... "You Just Need To Start". Ah yes, "just start".

And thus, we circle back to the same Mt Everest of difficulty for a lot of unmotivated people. They're still stuck and can't get started.

I think the issue is that there are well-meaning people who honestly think they're "not motivated" and then "just force themselves to get started on acting anyway". Now, being in the groove of acting can then become the self-reinforcing "motivation". They then think this personal experience of cause-&-effect of acting-precedes-motivation in their mind can be transferred to other people. But it does not work on a lot of unmotivated people. So, those who are still struggling look for any mental hacks that might work better than "just get started instead of waiting for motivation".

> "I feel a desire to perform an act I deem to align with what I want to do although it will bring me immediate-term discomfort"

It's an _internal type_ of "extrinsic motivation", right.

> will go away in the face of hardships and struggles

Yes, and this is true for all types of extrinsic motivation.

> doesn't precede the success

Well, that's where things get interesting. There are three main factors that influence motivation – autonomy, competence and relatedness.

Autonomy - perception of your actions being connected to your own values/beliefs/desires. Competence - perception of your actions being connected to the growth or achievement. Relatedness - perception of your actions bringing closer to the people you care about.

Those 4 types of extrinsic motivation go mostly on the scale of decreasing autonomy. And it's important to say that all types of motivation have slightly different natures and can work simultaneously, just one of those will dominate.

So you are probably right saying that the internal type of extrinsic motivation doesn't require prior success. But, once you start doing it, the perception of success (whatever that means in a given context) will greatly contribute to shifting your dominant motivation either closer to the intrinsic motivation (i.e. you'll start enjoying) or towards amotivation (opposite extreme side).

Perception of success is mostly a "competence" part. That's how the coach might choose the right level of challenge for the athlete, to keep their motivation growing (or at least not falling). And if you really want to build intrinsic motivation, you absolutely need it.

And yes, not every task require intrinsic motivation. But it would be also true to say, that every task will benefit greatly if people performing it are intrinsically motivated. There are two main reasons: efficiency and... people happiness.

An intrinsically motivated person will require less pressure/incentives, will keep doing the task amid hardships. Which directly translates into economic value. It also directly linked to the feeling of wellbeing and vitality (aka happiness). It might not be very important for whoever needs task to be done, but a society where autonomy is inhibited and extrinsic motivation is dominating is very different from society with high level of autonomy. It's like, people are just happier.

If you didn't know of this already, you might find Edward Deci's Why we do what we do : Understanding Self-Motivation useful.

Thank you! I study SDT (Self-Determination Theory, the main theory of motivation authored by Deci) in a sports coaching context for a few years now. It's a life-changing theory.

The "seminal" books like Self-Determination Theory (Ryan&Deci, 2017) and new The Oxford Handbook of Self-Determination Theory (Ryan, 2023) are really deep, but might be a bit academic and aren't suitable as a good intro into SDT. I usually recommend free course on Coursera by Ryan. But if Deci's book is an approachable intro, that would be nice!

I recognized from your comments that you were already familiar with the works of Edward Deci and just wanted to recommend this book as a must read for the "general public" who might be interested in the subject of Motivation and how best to cultivate it.

IMO in today's world, Deci's SDT on Intrinsic/Extrinsic Motivations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination_theory) and Gary Klein's NDM (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_decision-making) and RPDM (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recognition-primed_decision) should be a must study (just understanding the basics/overview is often enough) for everybody in any organization.

Link to the cited free Coursera course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/self-determination-theory

> that type of motivation, whatever you call it, is not necessary to perform the task at hand.

and on what basis have you determined that the article is about "that type" of motivation, as opposed to the other type which you acknowledge is necessary to actually do anything?

The other types of motivations are descriptions of other people.

It's like being tall. You can see if someone else is tall, or short, but you yourself don't experience your own height, you feel the same size as you did when you were a child. You can see it in a photograph or a mirror, of course, but that is seeing yourself as though you were a different person. Your height is not part of your subjective experience.

Likewise, these other forms of motivation do not have a subjective experience associated with them, they are properties observed in others. Feeling encouraged or discouraged to perform an action, however, is a subjective experience. We can experience in ourselves, but not observe it in others.

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