Motivation and Performance: Maintaining Your Drive on the Journey

There are cases in which, as a solopreneur, you have tasks that you cannot delegate, or dislike, and must be done. It’s that ‘dirty work’ that is extremely important and as unpleasant as it is. It is also the kind of work where we have the least motivation.

“Motivation is what drives you to take action. Intelligence is what drives you to take the right action.” — Aristotle

These are the tasks I write in my agenda, and then I stare at that page for a long time and wonder if it will still be there tomorrow. And it will be there tomorrow if I don’t do something about it. To get things moving, a different type of motivation is needed. However, you must understand that this kind of motivation only helps you in the short term.

When this motivation is used excessively, it becomes toxic.

I propose 5 types of extrinsic motivation that have immediate effects in the short term:

Competitive motivation when you want to achieve better results, a better time. You need a competitor, for sure, who works in the same field or on the same type of activity. The “competitor” can be an adversary or a partner because it often works even better when you have a comrade next to you whom you need to outperform in an activity. This type of extrinsic motivation works very well for achieving ‘quantitative’ results.

Survival motivation, when it’s all or nothing (knife-edge motivation) — short-term, medium-term (until you’re out of survival mode). It’s a somewhat extreme type of motivation but among the most effective. Sun Tzu mentioned this motivation in “The Art of War” with the example of burning ships and bridges, so the army knows it must fight to survive (having no escape or retreat).

Survival motivation — the mind and body will help you survive as long as you don’t give them a “comfortable” option to choose. It’s a kind of — Fight or die! — under the conditions where death was not a desired option. When you have to choose between two extreme options, one of which you desire and the other you hate/detest, the results are much better than when there is a “compromise” option. Personally, I consider it the worst choice. Because it’s about decisions made in anger. And in anger, IQ drops significantly. It drops a lot!

Motivation through anger or rage when you become angry and push yourself to do what you need to do, in fact — short-term motivation, but very intense; how long can anger last? It’s a motivation I wouldn’t want to admit to, but I’ve used it and probably will use it again.

However, I need to get angry with someone (a person) or something (a situation) in order to be able to lower my head and work like a slave. It is said that anger is best treated with work.

I encountered a situation with a friend who had a project he really wanted, which is why he got into a huge argument with his own father, unintentionally, so he could direct his anger toward him into work and get results. All the frustrations of childhood, all the unsaid harsh words to his own parent, all the victimization — he threw them into his own project, because he felt it deserved it, and he felt he needed to be left alone to work.

Usually, when you mess up badly in a particular field, anger helps you make progress in your work.

Deprivation motivation is when you set a negative consequence if you don’t do what you need to do. It depends a lot on what you value or what hurts you.

It’s still a negative type of motivation, but it works incredibly well for some people. For example, you can take a good friend, give them 100 euros (to hand over), explain the experiment, and tell them, “If I don’t have this task done by tomorrow at time X, you can keep the money.”

You’ll have to work to get your money back.

I had a colleague with whom I agreed on the amount to give each other if we missed our deadlines. However, the most important thing in this type of motivation is to respect the consequences. A friend of mine used a similar type of motivation to challenge someone else to quit smoking. He told them that for every cigarette they smoked, they had to break two more.

The next day, the penalty doubled (they had to break four for each cigarette) … and so on. He ended up breaking a whole pack of cigarettes to smoke just one, and at that point, he quit. What needs to be explained is that these motivation tricks work as long as the form of deprivation aligns with your own beliefs. Not every type of motivation works, what matters a lot is to test it.. (on yourself and others)

Fast gratification motivation — when you analyze the things you’ve deprived yourself of lately and decide to reward yourself once you’ve accomplished what you set out to do. It can be a laptop that you give yourself upon completing a task, a car, a phone (objects), or a night out at a club, a tea in the city, or a trip with someone, a vacation in another country (actions).

In the end, I can only say that it’s best to do what needs to be done when it needs to be done, but also to develop intrinsic motivation in every action you take, so you don’t have to resort to the 5 methods above.

“True motivation comes from within, from your consciousness, and your desire to evolve and live in harmony. When you truly follow your path, you will find the motivation to overcome any obstacle.” — Morihei Ueshiba (The founder of Aikido)

It’s best to do things on your own, without needing extrinsic motivation, which, although it helps you, ultimately exposes you. Many times when I need to do something and get stuck, I look in the mirror and ask myself, “Do I really need external motivation?”

Think of a champion, someone you admire, a mentor… and ask yourself if they are self-motivated or if they need motivation tricks to get moving.

“Motivation must come from within yourself. You can’t always expect to be inspired by others. You must have the desire and determination to achieve your goals.” — Gichin Funakoshi (The founder of Karate-Do)