Setting objectives is the easy part. Keeping people genuinely motivated toward them is where most of the difficulty lives, and the reason is that motivation is not a resource you top up. It follows from what people believe about themselves and the work.
Three Drivers
Martin Seligman, whose work founded the positive psychology movement, identified three sources of motivation and satisfaction. They are not equally powerful, and the differences matter.
The pleasant life. Seeking out enjoyable experiences. A good meal, a walk on the beach. This turns out to be a weak driver, because we habituate. The pleasantness wears off and the same thing stops working.
The life of engagement. Being in flow, where our perceived skills are in balance with the challenge in front of us. Not bored, not overwhelmed. This is a strong driver, and it is the one most within reach at work.
The life of meaning. Where our goals line up with our values and our sense of purpose. Also a strong driver, and the most durable of the three.
Notice that two of the three are about perception rather than circumstance. That is where there is room to work.
Flow Is a Belief Problem
Flow depends on the relationship between two assessments: what we believe our skills to be, and what we believe the challenge to be. Both are perceptions, and both are routinely inaccurate.
Underestimating our skills puts us out of flow and into anxiety. That includes underestimating our capacity to learn what we do not yet know, which is one of the most common and most limiting versions.
Overestimating the challenge does the same thing. Exaggerating its severity, or how long it will last, or what failure would mean.
This is the difference between the two kinds of stress. When we believe we can meet a challenge, we get the useful sort that sharpens us. When we believe it far exceeds us, we get the draining sort. The operative word in both is believe.
So the way back into flow is not more encouragement. It is checking whether the two assessments are accurate.
Micro Practice: Checking the Balance
- Name something you are currently avoiding or dreading.
- Ask what you are telling yourself about the challenge. Are you making it bigger than it is?
- Ask what you believe about your skills here. Are you recognizing them accurately, or dismissing them?
- Ask what you are refusing to accept. Are you expecting this to be easier than it is?
- Ask whether you have handled something similar before. Not identical, just similar enough that the same skills apply.
Perfectionism Is the Common Culprit
One belief does more damage to motivation than most.
Perfectionism is the belief that anything short of flawless is unacceptable. It guarantees failure, because perfection is not available, and it makes starting genuinely aversive.
Excellence is doing your best within reasonable limits and treating mistakes as part of learning. Moving the goal from “be perfect” to “pursue excellence and keep improving” brings expectations back into contact with reality, and a challenge that felt impossible often becomes merely difficult.
If something still feels overwhelming, break it down. A large project is daunting. A single next step is doable.
What We Are Actually Choosing
Something worth understanding about how motivation works mechanically.
Our brains rank goals by importance, and that ranking drives behavior. Much of the ranking happens without conscious involvement. Once a goal is ranked and a behavior is underway, the lower levels of the brain execute it without checking back in.
What we can influence most directly is the ranking itself. We can pause, reflect on our options, and re-examine whether the goal our brain has put at the top is really the one that serves us. Shift the ranking, and behavior follows.
This is why meaning is such a strong driver. A goal that connects to something you value gets ranked highly without effort. A goal that does not has to be pushed uphill continually.
For Managers
The practical implication is that motivating someone is mostly a matter of understanding their perceptions rather than adjusting their incentives.
Someone who has stalled is usually not lazy. They are out of flow in one direction or the other, and it is worth finding out which. Are they underestimating what they can do? Are they inflating what the task requires? Is the goal disconnected from anything they care about?
Those are different problems with different answers, and encouragement addresses none of them.
It also helps to remember that people will not surface an honest answer to any of this unless it is safe to do so. Where mistakes get judged rather than assessed, nobody admits to being stuck until it is expensive.
Related Reading
Reducing Stress and Increasing Well-Being, Mindful and Compassionate Leadership, and Increasing Focus and Productivity.
