Polling Week Three, this time with a (sort of) Theme!

[deeplyunhip]

This time I wanted to stick with one theme, though I guess it's technically a couple of themes.

Comments

[your_downfall]

My intrinsic motivation is inextricably linked to what my mental health is like at the point in time. When I'm doing well (stable, no major highs/lows, feeling okay about myself, anxiety controlled, depression symptoms limited), my intrinsic motivation is through the roof and I am super-productive. When I'm not feeling well, I may *want* to do things, but can never seem to actually get them accomplished, and the resulting depression/anxiety from feeling so unproductive slowly eats away at any motivation I have.

When it comes to things like reading and writing for school, I am often motivated to do the work, but my anxiety about *actually* doing the work shows up and the resulting cognitive dissonance is paralyzing, which increases anxiety and saps my energy so I end up doing nothing. Not good.

When I was in elementary school, motivation to complete schoolwork was never even a consideration. I just *did* it, and never even considered not completing my work to the absolute best of my ability. My parents never had to implement any sort of reward system (other than obviously expressing their support and celebrating my accomplishments with me - it's not like they ignored them, haha) and I never had one at school (although that may have been due to the fact that I was in academically-accelerated programs throughout most of my schooling - we were all pretty intrinsically motivated and very competitive!). I miss having that mindset and I have no idea what happened to it. Burnout? Mental illness? Who knows!

I also second hamsterwoman's comment about respect/interesting topics - at this point, if I can't respect my instructor, I don't take the class, because I'll never do any work. Maybe being intellectually respected is part of my motivation?