Last week, under heading “What drives you?”, we discussed how Bill Gates was originally driven by intrinsic motivation to become the computer guru that we know today and in the process, he became the billionaire that many admire. Becoming a billionaire can be said to have been a by-product, not necessarily his primary goal at the beginning.
Indeed, research shows that in most cases, people who are driven by intrinsic motivation tend to achieve more than those that are driven by extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation means that your primary trigger is such inner intangible benefits like personal enjoyment or satisfaction. On the opposite side, extrinsic motivation is driven by such external benefits like prizes, money or acclaim.
Today, we will focus on how you can harness intrinsic motivation so that you too can maximise your achievements and success on activities that you pursue.
Challenge: The task that you pursue must give you adequate challenge. This way, you will keep motivated to prove yourself. In the process, you keep getting better and then you achieve better results. In turn, you will want to do more of the activity because you see the benefit of your effort.
Curiosity: You need a curious mind that wants to know more. You want to explore more. This way, you will observe the physical environment around your task. At the same time, you will mentally explore and stretch possibilities around your task.
Control: You will enjoy what you are doing more if you have control on it, when you depend less on others. You need some amount of autonomy. You can direct what you do to a great extent. When you have control, you have freedom and liberty and that will give you a good amount of satisfaction. When choosing what you want to do, you need to consider how much control you will have among other factors.
Cooperation: As you keep progressing with your task or hobby or interest, you will need others to come along with you. You need cooperation from others. The more the merrier. In fact, you will enjoy some healthy competition. You want to benchmark yourself against others. This will push you to keep progressing and to keep getting better with time. Look around you and identify those that if you partner with, will add a lot of value to you. This way, you will truly maximise your potential.
Recognition: Recognition is a natural need for all human beings. As you progress with your task or interest and then you see that others develop interest in what you do, you will be encouraged to do even better. What more when others go to the extent of recognising your achievements? You will want to achieve even far more!
As you can see from the above, being driven by intrinsic motivation can give you true joy. You can gain control over things you do and you can do things that you like. And so, it makes sense to spend time and choose to pursue dreams and choices that appeal to your intrinsic needs than just extrinsic interests. You may have tried it all already, pursuing extrinsic dreams and may be you did not go very far. Then, this is the time for you to give chance to pursuing your intrinsic interests. Just start doing the things that you really like and enjoy. Keep doing that. Follow the five tactics that you can use to harness your intrinsic motivation. You will discover that with time, you will become the best at what you do and then big rewards may come in as by-products. Remember that this is how Bill Gates became BIG in the computing/IT world. All the best!