Motivation
I've been thinking about this subject a lot since I recently stumbled upon several Youtube videos about unschooling.
Now, it's not as if I wasn't already familiar with the idea. The philosophy of unschooling is the reason Mom started homeschooling me and my siblings to begin with. The idea is that children learn things best when they are ready to learn them and when they want to learn them, and that making children follow someone else's schedule is not only unnecessary but actually destroys their motivation to learn by turning learning into drudge work.
That makes as much sense to me as it did to Mom, which is to say, quite a lot. As Mark Twain famously illustrated in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, "Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and... Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do." And obviously, people are generally more motivated to Play than to Work.
But there's more to motivation than doing what you are not obliged to do. Personally I've been quite unmotivated for the last couple of years - at least in terms of education/career - partly because my duties at NFWF definitely constitute Work, and partly because I'm not sure what it is that I do want to do. I tend to heap hypothetical obligations on myself, like working out or job searching, but I don't really want to do those things, so I don't. Instead, I do things to distract myself, like playing tetris for hours while watching youtube videos, or watching TV. But I don't do these things because I am motivated to do them. I do them because they are Not Work, and because they numb my brain. It's like my brain knows it's not needed for anything very interesting, so it just turns off.
Obviously, this is a highly unsatisfactory state of affairs. I already knew that, of course, having been clued in by my constant feelings of dissatisfaction, apathy, and boredom. And I know I'm not unhappy by nature, because I was damn happy as a kid.
Thus far, my solution to dissatisfaction has generally been to think about what I want in terms of a job - something static and well-defined that I could attain by following a series of obvious steps like getting a graduate degree - that would make everything better by virtue of being something I liked. But I'm not sure that's how motivation works either. I like a lot of things - blogging, Tae Kwon Do, keeping up on political drama, playing RPGs, singing, worldbuilding, writing, thinking about international relations. Which of those things should be my job? Would it make me happy to just pick one and do it all the time for money? What if I don't have the talent or can't make it work? Are they really worthy of that level of dedication? Do I really like any of those things so much that I can do it all the time? What if I make it a job and then hate it because it's a job and therefore something I'm obliged to do? In other words, do I have A Passion, and can I, or should I, turn that passion into a job?
I can tell I'm on the wrong track, because ideas that work tend to feel right and click and result in action, whereas ideas that don't work provide no answers and instead result in oscillation and overthinking, of which the preceding paragraph is a splendid example.
However, I am fortunate in living at a time and in a society that is absolutely overrun with creative and interesting thinkers and the means to access some of their ideas. In other words, I spent all day yesterday watching TED talks on Youtube. (New life goal: give a TED talk one day that beats the pants off all preceding TED talks.)
One of the TED talks I watched was given by Daniel Pink, author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us and A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. Unsurprisingly, his talk was about motivation and, all right-brain/left-brain nonsense aside, I think he's got the right idea. He said that extrinsic (outward-originating) motivation, such as carrots and sticks, works well in motivating people to do mechanistic tasks requiring no creativity, but very badly in motivating people to do creative tasks. Engaging creativity requires intrinsic (self-originating) motivation, the three main elements of which are autonomy, mastery, and purpose. We do best at solving problems creatively when we can do something we care about, do it our way, and constantly progress in our ability to do it. And that sounds incredibly exciting to me.
So what do I care about? Freedom. Having it, and spreading it.
Now I just have to work out the details.
Now, it's not as if I wasn't already familiar with the idea. The philosophy of unschooling is the reason Mom started homeschooling me and my siblings to begin with. The idea is that children learn things best when they are ready to learn them and when they want to learn them, and that making children follow someone else's schedule is not only unnecessary but actually destroys their motivation to learn by turning learning into drudge work.
That makes as much sense to me as it did to Mom, which is to say, quite a lot. As Mark Twain famously illustrated in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, "Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and... Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do." And obviously, people are generally more motivated to Play than to Work.
But there's more to motivation than doing what you are not obliged to do. Personally I've been quite unmotivated for the last couple of years - at least in terms of education/career - partly because my duties at NFWF definitely constitute Work, and partly because I'm not sure what it is that I do want to do. I tend to heap hypothetical obligations on myself, like working out or job searching, but I don't really want to do those things, so I don't. Instead, I do things to distract myself, like playing tetris for hours while watching youtube videos, or watching TV. But I don't do these things because I am motivated to do them. I do them because they are Not Work, and because they numb my brain. It's like my brain knows it's not needed for anything very interesting, so it just turns off.
Obviously, this is a highly unsatisfactory state of affairs. I already knew that, of course, having been clued in by my constant feelings of dissatisfaction, apathy, and boredom. And I know I'm not unhappy by nature, because I was damn happy as a kid.
Thus far, my solution to dissatisfaction has generally been to think about what I want in terms of a job - something static and well-defined that I could attain by following a series of obvious steps like getting a graduate degree - that would make everything better by virtue of being something I liked. But I'm not sure that's how motivation works either. I like a lot of things - blogging, Tae Kwon Do, keeping up on political drama, playing RPGs, singing, worldbuilding, writing, thinking about international relations. Which of those things should be my job? Would it make me happy to just pick one and do it all the time for money? What if I don't have the talent or can't make it work? Are they really worthy of that level of dedication? Do I really like any of those things so much that I can do it all the time? What if I make it a job and then hate it because it's a job and therefore something I'm obliged to do? In other words, do I have A Passion, and can I, or should I, turn that passion into a job?
I can tell I'm on the wrong track, because ideas that work tend to feel right and click and result in action, whereas ideas that don't work provide no answers and instead result in oscillation and overthinking, of which the preceding paragraph is a splendid example.
However, I am fortunate in living at a time and in a society that is absolutely overrun with creative and interesting thinkers and the means to access some of their ideas. In other words, I spent all day yesterday watching TED talks on Youtube. (New life goal: give a TED talk one day that beats the pants off all preceding TED talks.)
One of the TED talks I watched was given by Daniel Pink, author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us and A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. Unsurprisingly, his talk was about motivation and, all right-brain/left-brain nonsense aside, I think he's got the right idea. He said that extrinsic (outward-originating) motivation, such as carrots and sticks, works well in motivating people to do mechanistic tasks requiring no creativity, but very badly in motivating people to do creative tasks. Engaging creativity requires intrinsic (self-originating) motivation, the three main elements of which are autonomy, mastery, and purpose. We do best at solving problems creatively when we can do something we care about, do it our way, and constantly progress in our ability to do it. And that sounds incredibly exciting to me.
So what do I care about? Freedom. Having it, and spreading it.
Now I just have to work out the details.