There are days when you go to work and you get things done because it’s your job to do so. But hopefully there are also days when you look forward to aspects of your job because the work you’re doing is exciting and meaningful. These two modes reflect the difference between what psychologists call extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation is when there are outside forces influencing what you do. Intrinsic motivation involves your internal desire to get something done.
When you’re feeling driven to do the work you do, your intrinsic motivation is stronger than your extrinsic motivation. This intrinsic motivation may come from a love of the work itself—that is, you may find the particular tasks you’re doing deeply satisfying—or it may be that the work leads to outcomes that are particularly meaningful for you.
If you’d like to have more days when your intrinsic motivation is dominant, there are a few things you can do to figure out what drives you.
Do a values inventory
Your values are guiding principles that influence what factors bring meaning to your life. Quite a bit of research has been done across cultures by Shalom Schwartz and his colleagues to map out the values that people form. The values that a particular person holds reflect cultural influences, social effects, and individual differences.
For example, some people may value tradition: They want to engage with and preserve the customs of their culture, religion, or social group. Others may value hedonism: They want to experience pleasure for themselves. Still others may value benevolence: They want to do good things for others—particularly the members of their own group.
A powerful influence on your intrinsic motivation at work is when the work you do reflects your underlying values. If you haven’t had a chance to explore your own set of values, a great way to proceed is to take a values inventory.
Having work that fits with your values is an important factor that affects your satisfaction with what you do. That feeling of satisfaction comes when you look back over the work you have done and believe that it has led to outcomes that are important to you.
Know yourself
The companion to values is personality traits, which are a reflection of your underlying motivation to do things. Validated personality inventories like those that measure the Big Five traits (Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism) can tell you more about the tuning of your motivational system.
When you engage in tasks that you’re motivated to do, you tend to feel comfortable with those tasks, which is why a job that comports with your personality makes you feel at home. It’s hard to feel driven to do your work when you’re consistently tasked with things that fly in the face of your motivations.
Find your joy
Your values and traits can help you experience satisfaction and intrinsic motivation with your work. But there is also a role for joy in feeling driven. That joy comes from two sources.
The first is that unsolved problems that you feel you can address can get you excited about your work. A finding dating back to the 1920s called the Ovsiankina effect refers to the desire to complete tasks you have started that were interrupted. When you’re engaged in a long-term quest to solve a problem, often that work is interrupted by meetings or the other activities in your life. But if that problem is truly important to you, you’ll be driven back to work on it each day.
In addition, there are some tasks at work that are just deeply fun. These are the tasks that induce a state of flow, in which you’re working at the leading edge of your ability. The task is so engaging that you may even lose track of time. Having elements of your work that create this sense of flow can also help bring you back to work each day by promising you additional opportunities to enjoy what you do.
