The Myth of Motivation

Source: Unsplash (@Benjamin Davies)

Many Motivations

At the swipe of my fingers, I can see the daily doings of hundreds of mutual friends. Another swipe, and I can see into that of strangers: short-form comedy sketches, insightful video essays, the newest trends, and other fleeting windows into lives different from my own. An original song, a moving artwork, or even a well-timed joke can be invigorating.

There’s something energizing about engaging with what others create, achieve, and ultimately choose to share, whether that be from chatting with friends or through social media posts. Everyone has different interests, hobbies, and goals that manifest in their own ways, offering endless opportunities to fail, succeed, try again, and, importantly, to witness others doing so. Inspiration often feels inevitable — I mean, how could you not be motivated to go on a run after seeing a childhood friend finish a marathon? To go practice the guitar after hearing a beautiful riff from your favorite song? For many, this is the origin of a lifelong hobby or mission. What starts as a moment of awe can transform into something truly beautiful. That being said, most of the time, these moments go just as easily as they come.

Perhaps we “do the thing.” For me, after being touched by talented creatives and expert artists, I reached for my old sketchbook and pledged to draw more consistently. But one burst of energy later, I always found myself back in the same routine, falling straight back into the comfort zone. Especially when it comes to creative hobbies or tasks, motivation feels so necessary, yet so rare. Evidently, the same hands that open the apps, the pages, the door — whatever it is — can just as easily close them. 

It can be really tempting to interpret these moments of indecision as failures, or to judge ourselves as undisciplined or unmotivated. But what if nothing is wrong with us at all?

The Biological Basis of Motivation

Our brains are wired to crave novelty and seek out the next new or big feeling. According to one NIH-funded study, “humans regularly seek participation in highly complex and pleasurable experiences such as music listening, singing, or playing, that do not seem to have any specific survival advantage.” Previous literature cites that music-evoked pleasure leads to similar effects on the brain’s reward pathway as primary and secondary rewards like food, sex, or money. Evidently, music and other similar emotional stimulants make our bodies feel good. But does it make us do anything?

Another NIH study claims dopamine affects how the brain decides whether a goal is worth it. In March 2020, scientists gathered fifty people ages 18 to 43, who were asked to pick between memory tasks of varying difficulties, with the harder tasks granting higher monetary rewards. Those with higher dopamine levels in a brain region called the caudate nucleus were more likely to focus on the benefits and choose the more difficult tasks, while those with lower dopamine levels were more sensitive to perceived costs and ultimately opted for easier tasks.

Moments of inspiration feel powerful because they are biologically powerful. The dopamine we receive from participating in something, even just by perceiving it, can help us weigh benefits over costs and more easily “do the thing.”

Fun fact: This is how prescription stimulants like Adderall work! They increase dopamine and norepinephrine levels in the brain, which are perceived to improve focus. But research shows that they don’t actually change your raw ability, especially in people without ADHD; instead, your perceived benefits of performing a demanding task are elevated, while perceived costs are driven down. These effects are linked to changes in brain circuits involved in attention and decision-making, particularly in our prefrontal cortex. You might have heard jokes about our prefrontal cortices not fully developing until around age 25. While that’s not a fixed deadline, this region does continue maturing into early adulthood and plays a big role in how we weigh costs and benefits.

The Myth of Motivation

But enough of the science! If dopamine is so powerful, does that mean we are just extraordinarily lazy when we fail to carry something out after being inspired? The short answer is no.

Dopamine doesn’t stay elevated forever; in fact, it’s not meant to. Our brains, due to neuroplastic changes like habituation, adapt rapidly to repeated experiences, making once-novel tasks familiar and ordinary. This is one of our brain’s oldest survival strategies, preventing us from wasting energy sustaining high-energy or high-alert states when nothing extraordinary is happening. So, the same system that charges us with motivation is the same one that drains it.

The issue isn’t that we “lose motivation,” but rather that the motivation was never designed to stay. It’s, by our brain’s biology, simply not meant to be consistent!

If we rely on these sparks to power long-term change, we risk chasing something that will always keep running away from us. “I’m not motivated to go for a run today,” so I’ll wait for the next big dopamine hit to push me out the door. Or, “I don’t feel like cleaning my room,” but I’m sure I will when the sun is out, and I feel motivated to do it. Firstly, these thought patterns are normal and not a signal of laziness or incompetence or a lack of discipline. What they do signal is how rare motivation actually is, if what we need to activate it is external and ultimately out of our hands. Waiting for this motivation is like waiting for lightning to strike the same spot — it’s not predictable at all. For me, at least, this is how many habits fade after a week of success. From my perception, this isn’t that uncommon either.

The myth of motivation is this: We mistake a temporary biological signal as a requisite for action. Motivation is unreliable by design and out of necessity, making it a weak source of energy for our actions. What we need is something more stable, which is where identity and character-based goals come in.

Making Motivation

If our dopamine alone isn’t enough to sustain habits, which brain systems are? We each have clusters of nuclei called the basal ganglia, which are heavily involved in habit and action-control circuits. Here, effortful decisions that were once processed by our prefrontal cortices are gradually assimilated as automatic. Once a pattern is solidified, it can be carried out with significantly less effort.

For instance, tasks like brushing our teeth are more or less controlled by the basal ganglia. We don’t need much negotiating or inspiration to do it; we don’t necessarily run a cost-benefit analysis each time we approach the sink, and we certainly don’t get a great dopamine hit from it each time. We just do it because the behavior has become hard-wired as automatic.

Our brains are inclined towards these predictable and consistent tasks because they conserve and optimize our energy. What this tells us is that difficult tasks take dozens, maybe even hundreds, of repetitions to become nearly automatic, but once they do, they really stick.

Identity

However, this “learning curve” is another common problem. Surely we all understand that most things don’t immediately come easily to us, and that the repetition is the hardest part. Here’s where identity comes in!

We are wired for consistency, as evidenced by our brain’s inclination towards patterns. Our self-concept, as coined by psychologists, is an internal model of long-term patterns like traits and tendencies. When our actions align with our self-concept, behavior works; when in conflict, we might experience cognitive dissonance, or basically psychological discomfort. This means that identity can guide behavior when motivation cannot.

Someone who believes that they are a runner doesn’t rely on inspiration to go for a run, because it simply aligns with their identity. Skipping a run might even prompt a slight level of cognitive dissonance. Meanwhile, someone (like me) who views themselves as not particularly athletic may find it much more comfortable to stay in. I would need far more motivation to do the same thing as someone who has internalized running as part of their identity.

Ultimately, identity changes the conflict from “I don’t feel like doing this” to “This is the kind of thing someone like me does.” So, motivation can be powerful, but identity is reliable. Motivation isn’t a requirement — just an additional opportunity to do the thing. Instead, we can build small, repeatable habits based on identity and allow these new behaviors to reshape identity over time.

You don’t need to become a more motivated person! There is nothing wrong with you. What you can do is create identity-based goals and habits and carry them out in small, easy ways (as discussed in my previous blog post!). Our brains can take care of the rest.