Mark Agnew
Being immersed in nature was a powerful motivator.
External rewards are not as powerful as you think
How do you stay motivated - Thinking about your salary? Thinking about the praise you'll get when you do a good job? What about a bonus? Or even a small reward you promise yourself when you hit a mile stone, like chocolate?
It turns out, the promise of external rewards is not a powerful driver to get result. You are far more likely to stick to your task and get a good result if you are driven by intrinsic motivations.
What's more, there's a correlation between intrinsic motivations and resilience too.
What are extrinsic and intrinsic motivations
A 2000 study into intrinsic motivations said: Intrinsic motivation is defined as the doing of an activity for its inherent satisfaction rather than for some separable consequence. When intrinsically motivated, a person is moved to act for the fun or challenge entailed rather than because of external products, pressures, or rewards.
It went on: Extrinsic motivation is a construct that pertains whenever an activity is done in order to attain some separable outcome. Extrinsic motivation thus contrasts with intrinsic motivation, which refers to doing an activity simply for the enjoyment of the activity itself, rather than its instrumental value.
Intrinsic motivations might include personal growth and development or doing something because the task is fun.
For me, when I kayaked the Northwest Passage in the Arctic with my teammates, the extrinsic motivator was the promise of two World First Records. But more potent was the intrinsic motivators - being immersed in nature and the camaraderie. The goal was important to produce camaraderie as it created common purpose, but the goal was a facilitator, a means to camaraderie.
Intrinsic motivations and resilience
Another study, published in 2020, followed international students in the US.
It concluded: "[S]tudents in the United States who score higher on intrinsic motivations are more likely to score higher on resilience. These findings suggest that students who are intrinsically driven to satisfy their own educational aspirations are more likely to be psychologically equipped with resilience traits that allow them to overcome the various challenges associated with being international students at U.S. universities."
Why the link?
There are many reasons. One lies in the Three Cs of Resilience - challenge, control and commitment. The latter, commitment, means you are more likely to be resilient for an activity you care about, that you are already committed too. Someone who seems resilient might have no resilience for a task they care nothing for.
Camaraderie was a more potent motivator than the end goal.
External rewards may produce a short term boost in commitment, but it will eventually wane. The satisfaction and fulfilment from meeting intrinsic motivations is lasting and more likely to produce the commitment that results in resilience.
In the Arctic, at times, the end felt a million miles away. It was hard to care about it when you had more immediate needs like food and warmth. But the intrinsic motivations of sharing the experience with my teammates, and not letting them down, drove me to complete the Northwest Passage. If the World First Records were the only driver, who knows how long I'd have lasted it.
For me, the most important aspect of intrinsic motivations is the ability to judge success differently. Reaching the end of the Northwest Passage was great. It was objectively a success. But only I can tell you if I had my inherent experience in nature and with my teammates. With intrinsic motivations, I'm free to judge success on my own terms.