Motivation

It seems that more and more lately people are finding motivation to be harder and harder to come by. Call what you will (lazy, work-shy, lackadasical). And sometimes these are terms are the truth. Sometimes people are just plain lazy. But I'm willing to guess that most of the time people want to do things, they just can' find the motivation to.

So what motivates people? I asked myself this question because I've been wondering what motivates me personally. Ask yourself and the answer may surprise you.

I myself am a person who strongly dislikes running. However, I recently found that in a game of capture the flag I am more that willing to run, long after the shallow breathing and chest pains begin. I am willing to run myself to exhaustion, until my muscles cramp up and my knees ache, all for the sake of competition. I'm not sure I realized how competitive of a person I am until this game of capture the flag occurred, and I put aside my dislike of running in order to win.

But not all people are motivated by competition with others. Each person is motivated by something different based on their own selfish needs and interests. "We each have different concerns, needs and interests. We each have our own priorities."* Some people are motivated by power or money. Some are motivated by wanting to better themselves, to wanting to help others.

Researcher Fredrick Herzberg found that the leading motivators are:
1. Achievement
2. Recognition
3. The work itself
4. Responsibility
5. Creativity and growth
6. Economic benefits
7. Companionship
8. Supervision
9. Working conditions*

Motivational factors 1 through 5 on the list above motivate people to excel at tasks and want to do well. They make people feel good about themselves and their achievements. 6 through 9 are not so much motivators, but things that keep us from becoming dissatisfied. They don't have as much impact on our inspiration to excel.*

For me, competitive motivation doesn't extend to school, where the motivation would be to beat out my peers and be top of the class. Why doesn't the competitive drive in me carry over? That question is answered in the list above: the work itself. A game of capture the flag is a lot more entertaining than reading from a history book. But that principle is subjective as well. Some people that I know have absolutely no interest in sports at all whether it be playing them or watching them. However, they are avid history fans and are more than willing to sit for hours studying the times of the past.

Knowing what motivates you is important. "[Too] often our lifestyle, and in particular our jobs, don’t match well with our motivational profile... Too great  a need for affiliation can cloud your judgment and make it hard to take tough decisions. You will also suffer a lot of extra stress because the decisions you have to make will conflict with your basic motivation." **

So how do you find out? Well, there are a number of quizzes online, however they come with varying degrees of accuracy, and almost none are from professional or ever reputable sites, so take the results with a grain of salt. In my (non-professional) opinion, the only way to find out what motivates you is to do a bit (or maybe a lot) of personal examination. What are you likes and dislikes? What are you passionate about? What do you hope to achieve? What are you willing to do in order to achieve your goals? What situations do you enjoy, and which ones cause you stress?

In the end, motivation is a key aspect in life because without it, we would never accomplish anything. 

Weigh in on this in the comments. I'd like to know your thoughts :)

* http://www.evspedia.ro/wiki/what-motivates-people

** http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-winner-effect/201310/what-motivates-you