Hi,
This week’s email is about a type of motivation that plays a particularly important role in driving our behavior.
The information here is from a research article (open-access).
Here are the key practical points you should know:
People are intrinsically motivated when they feel that engaging in a certain activity is its own reward.
For example, a student is intrinsically motivated when they study because they find studying enjoyable and meaningful, rather than because they want to get a good grade (an extrinsic motivator).
People perform and feel better when they’re intrinsically motivated to take action.
To increase your intrinsic motivation, you can focus on the positive aspects of an activity as you experience them (e.g., the feeling of working together with a team), add immediate incentives to the activity (e.g., energizing music), and prioritize activities that you connect to better (e.g., a workout plan that you really enjoy, even if another plan might theoretically be slightly more effective).
Intrinsic motivation isn’t mutually exclusive with extrinsic motivation—you can have both at the same time—but depending on the circumstances, it’s sometimes better to focus only on intrinsic motivators.
Understanding this can be useful for increasing your own intrinsic motivation in a way that improves your wellbeing and performance, as well as for increasing the intrinsic motivation of others.
As always, I'm happy to hear your thoughts.
Have a great week,
Itamar