‘Who Broke Our World’ – Role of Motivation

I was working on my book last night and as I was writing I my thoughts on motivation I realised that I should put this bit up as a post because on one hand it is so obvious but on the other humans tend to marginalise its importance. I think, particularly in the digital environment, the role of motivation on our behaviours is vital because motivation is the ‘controller’ or thing that we measure all input against in order to come to an action…

To understand ‘who broke our world’ we need to understand why we take action, we need to understand the reasons why a decision for a specific action was made. It is not enough to simply say ‘we took a course of action because it was the best solution’. This ‘best solution’ may have been for you, the system or even other parties like advertising. What is important is that the motivating factors would likely be different for each source.

The tricky part about motivation is that it actually comes from within the individual, no amount of external influence can implant, or sway true motivation but we seldom acknowledge this. The amazing thing is that true internally driven motivation is extremely powerful because it aids humans in adjusting the systems in which they operate. Unfortunately, most people do not understand the mechanics of why their motivation arises from within. They may pay lip services to this view but they tend to view the motivator as as being an external entity. For example, they believe their motivation to work hard is so that they can buy a car when in fact the true motivation may be that they want recognition. This may appear to be a subtle difference but it has major consequences, especially in the digital environment where behaviours tend to be amplified.

It is our motivation that drives us to take action but we forget that our motivation is shaped by our values. Our values can be described as what we be believe we have to offer the world, what the world has to offer us, and our understanding of how these exchanges between our self and the world occur. Our motivation could be loosely described as a summary of our internal and external value exchanges, and our motivation triggers us to take action which ultimately determines our behaviours in society.