6 Techniques For Self-Motivation (When You Don't Want To)

6 Reward

Rewards motivate by promising you something desirable if you do something. It might be money, or a toy, or a solid pat on the ass. Whatever it is (a solid pat on the crotch?), it's the process of seeing and envisioning your new terrific life with that reward which prods you to get on with whatever it is you're avoiding.

How This Works In Practice:

How To Fake It:

This is probably the first type of motivation people try to artificially stimulate, and for obvious reasons. A lot of the tasks we need to motivate ourselves to do have no natural rewards built in to them.

Most people's first instinct is to give themselves an arbitrary reward. "If I finish writing this paper, I'll have a chocolate." That kind of thing. But this has its own problems. If you're capable of giving yourself a reward when you complete a task, you're capable of giving yourself that thing anyway. A partner can help here to keep you honest, provided they are themselves incorruptible. For example, if you're having trouble doing the dishes, consider hiring a lawyer to give you a chocolate only when you finish.

5 Fear

Fear is kind of the flip side of reward, the pair of them often referred to as the "carrot and the stick" in discussions of motivation.

Although they approach motivation from different angles, the principle behind both is basically the same. It's just that in this case, we're envisioning a future where something unpleasant happens to us. Maybe it's pain, or the loss of something valued, or the ingestion of a carrot, so we do whatever we can to avoid that unwelcome outcome.

How This Works In Practice:

How To Fake It:

Even though fear is a pretty primal motivating factor, we almost never try to artificially instill it in ourselves. I guess because we don't like hurting ourselves? Cowards.

Again, a partner to keep you honest can work, but the nice thing about fear is this is something you can rig up for yourself. Jogging becomes a lot easier when you have a hungry badger leashed to you.

4 Achievement

This is a variant of the motivation that comes from generic rewards -- the reward in this case being the fact that some accomplishments are impressive in and of themselves. Whether it's because of their inherent difficulty or relative rarity, we're naturally drawn to these challenges. Sometimes for the purposes of bragging, sure, but we also sometimes do these things just for the quiet pleasure of knowing we did something difficult.

How This Works In Practice:

How To Fake It:

This is one of those motivations that's hard to fake. No one's going to be impressed if you do the dishes. But you can kind of trick yourself into thinking you've done something noteworthy by making your tasks more difficult. Like by trying to do the dishes really quickly, then trying to beat that time the next day, as if it's a game or something. But that requires a certain level of self-delusion. Which provides a pretty big hint to the solution. What adds challenge to a task while increasing self-delusion?

That's right: booze. See how drunk you can get while doing the dishes. Then try to beat that mark the next day. This isn't necessarily an impressive achievement, but it will certainly get a few people talking, which achieves essentially the same thing.

3 Growth

Some activities can result in us improving in some way merely by doing them. Although these tasks are often difficult and sweaty, seeing ourselves grow and improve is a very appealing, even addictive sensation.

How This Works In Practice:

How To Fake It:

This is another one which is hard to fake, especially for menial tasks that don't result in any physical or mental growth. You could try to claim they build character, but again, some level of self-delusion is needed for that. The main trick is to try increasing the difficulty -- doing extra practice problems in your math textbook, mowing the lawn while wearing ankle weights, or something like that.

2 Power

Some things we do result in more power for ourselves, increasing the domain we have over others. This is a reward, obviously, as well as a variation on growth, but the reason it's separated into its own category is that the appeal it holds is unique. For a certain type of person (you can often spot them by their scepters), anything which results in more little pawns for them to move around the game board can be very motivating.

How This Works In Practice:

How To Fake It:

This is easily the hardest motivation to fake, simply because most of the chores or tasks that you're struggling to motivate yourself to do won't ever result in anyone bowing or scraping the ground at your feet. Not normal people, anyway. But if you can find someone incredibly gullible, someone impressed by the completely mundane? Then it might work.

Yes, kidnapping several children to watch you do chores is an extreme step, and yes, I childnap my way out of a few too many problems, but you want those dishes done, don't you?

1 Social Factors

This is a bit of a catch-all category that encapsulates the motivation we sometimes feel to do something that will impress others. It can also, if we suck, include the motivation we might feel to avoid humiliation.

How This Works In Practice:

How To Fake It:

Because this combines elements of both reward and fear, we need to proceed carefully, and with full knowledge of the ... OK, it's fear. We're going with fear. Fear of something is a powerful motivating factor, far stronger than the motivation that possible rewards provide. So if there's ever a choice, go with fear.

So let's say you've got some dishes to do. Well that sucks, and you're right to avoid it.

So engineer your life so that some social calamity will result if your dishes aren't done. Like, invite some friends or some ex-lovers or your lawyers over to a party. Gotta clean then. And this is yet another case in which kidnapping several children is one of the smartest things you can do. Not only is that fun and inspirational on its own, but you'll also know you have get those dishes cleaned up for your house to look its best when they feature you on Dateline.

Chris Bucholz is a Cracked columnist and gets off his ass many times a day. The author of the science fiction novel, Severance, his next novel, Freeze/Thaw is available for pre-order now! Join him on Facebook or Twitter.

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