Quotes About Motivation

Goals justify the effort they demand at the outset, but later it is the effort that justifies the goal.

Ideally, the end of extrinsically applied education should be the start of an education that is motivated intrinsically. At that point the goal of studying is no longer to make the grade, earn a diploma, and find a good job. Rather, it is to understand what is happening around one, to develop a personally meaningful sense of what one's experience is all about.

Stern endorses Pascal's maxim "To understand is to forgive." In fact, one of the most exciting opportunities in being a writer, he feels, is to take a villain or criminal character and make him human by showing what caused him to be so.

it is never a waste to write for intrinsic reasons. First of all, writing gives the mind a disciplined means of expression.

it is difficult to ignore challenges once one is aware that they exist.

All too often those who extol most loudly the virtues of selflessness turn out to be motivated by greed and ambition.

unless a person learns to set goals and to recognize and gauge feedback in such activities, she will not enjoy them.

the apathy of many of the people around us is not due to their being physically or mentally exhausted. The problem seems to lie more in the modern worker's relation to his job, with the way he perceives his goals in relation to it.

We often call the manifestation of intentionality by other names, such as instinct, need, drive, or desire.

When we choose a goal and invest ourselves in it to the limits of our concentration, whatever we do will be enjoyable. And once we have tasted this joy, we will redouble our efforts to taste it again. This is the way the self grows.

Repeatedly we question the necessity of our actions, and evaluate critically the reasons for carrying them out.

Almost any kind of feedback can be enjoyable, provided it is logically related to a goal in which one has invested psychic energy. If

It is usual to explain the motivation of those who enjoy dangerous activities as some sort of pathological need: they are trying to exorcise a deep-seated fear, they are compensating, they are compulsively reenacting an Oedipal fixation, they are "sensation seekers." While such motives may be occasionally involved, what is most striking, when one actually speaks to specialists in risk, is how their enjoyment derives not from the danger itself, but from their ability to minimize it.

creative," "concentrated," and "motivated." What was unexpected, however, is how frequently people reported flow situations at work, and how rarely in leisure.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Children who grow up in family situations that facilitate clarity of goals, feedback, feeling of control, concentration on the task at hand, intrinsic motivation, and challenge will generally have a better chance to order their lives so as to make flow possible.

if workers really enjoyed their jobs they would not only benefit personally, but sooner or later they would almost certainly produce more efficiently and reach all the other goals that now take precedence.

Few things are sadder than encountering a person who knows exactly what he should do, yet cannot muster enough energy to do it. "He who desires but acts not," wrote Blake with his accustomed vigor, "breeds pestilence.

In normal life, we keep interrupting what we do with doubts and questions. "Why am I doing this? Should I perhaps be doing something else?" Repeatedly we question the necessity of our actions, and evaluate critically the reasons for carrying them out. But in flow there is no need to reflect, because the action carries us forward as if by magic.

Many people give up on learning after they leave school because thirteen or twenty years of extrinsically motivated education is still a source of unpleasant memories.

THE AUTOTELIC SELF: A SUMMARY

The reason it is possible to achieve such complete involvement in a flow experience is that goals are usually clear, and feedback immediate.

Ideally, the end of extrinsically applied education should be the start of an education that is motivated intrinsically.