It’s hard to draw a line between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. In an ideal college, everyone would be motivated intrinsically. We would be concerned with the learning process, and grades/GPA would come second. We would enjoy the process of studying and the process of solving difficult problems because of the fun they provided us. Even if this material had no practical value, we would still be attracted to it.
In an ideal world, everyone would be constantly learning. Whether working as an engineer or a janitor, whether running a gas station or a large business, we would all be fascinated by a variety of fields and we would study things for no reason but to study them.
In his book Flow, Csikszentmihalyi marks a distinction between pleasure and enjoyment. As expected, people experience the most pleasure when they’re engaging in acts such as eating and sex, and when not much is expected of them in terms of responsibility. But people experience the most enjoyment when doing difficult things (not that sex and eating can’t be enjoyable; he dedicates entire sections to sex and eating), such as solving scientific problems or taking part in competitive athletics. His subjects consistently reported trying moments as the most enjoyable in their lives, such as when they overcame obstacles or dangerous situations. They liked this more than they liked vacation.
But we seem to have constructed our mentality in the opposite way. Studying and taking tests are almost universally regarded as painful, stressful acts. Being on break or vacation is regarded as the best thing ever.
And there’s a reason for it. You might enjoy problem-solving sometimes, but who could ever forget that 1000-line program that didn’t work properly because of a mistake on line 577? And you might enjoy learning, but who can forget that ECS122A proof that no one could understand and therefore just memorized? The thing about external circumstances is that they force us to go through certain painful processes. Out of necessity, we learn. Out of necessity, we complete.
So while I typically don’t enjoy things like finals week, I feel that Csikszentmihalyi makes a good point: If we weren’t learning and we weren’t working and we were just on vacation or relaxing all the time, we wouldn’t be having a good time at all. What is it that motivational speaker said?
You can’t truly appreciate relaxation until you’ve worked hard.
Or something like that.