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What are the factors behind your motivation?
What drives you to create or do something new? Even seemingly straightforward motivations can have a pretty complex interaction of history and emotion behind the scenes.
What are the rates at which your motivation waxes and wanes? Does it come and go in a matter of days, weeks, or months? Or does it stay fairly consistent?
What steps would you take with the factors in an effort to increase your motivation?
I think the thing that motivates me most is seeing how much I've improved. Looking back at old writing and art and even the first few things I've crocheted and knitted makes me want to push further and pursue more complex and interesting subjects (ie looking to improve my writing through restrictions or finding complex patterns to make or even painting and pastel). I think because I've been a creator for so long, now when I start something new, I know it's not likely to be good but persistence, even slow and steady, is integral to improving. So now I'm less afraid to start and try new things out. For me, it can be very fulfilling and relaxing.
Recently, my motivation hasn't waxed and waned as much as it used to. Part of that is I now have an appreciation for the time I DO have. I used to be a postal carrier and towards the end I was working 60 hours or more a week, sometimes 7 days a week and that was a whole new set of misery for me. Now that I have a job in my field that's only 40 hours and I have holidays and weekends off, it's been incredibly liberating and refreshing.
My motivations are all very personal and just something I've cultivated over my life. It's more about me personally wanting to improve as a person and an artist and knowing that time and effort will ultimately reap those rewards. I'm not like super good at a lot of stuff but I do enjoy it immensely.
I can't say I fully understand my motivation. Probably not at all, really. But I have noticed a really unexpected factor:
When I am really busy with other things - life, work, family, friends - my drive to do something creative is huge, despite my having (or perceiving I have) very little time to throw at it. I'll carve out time somewhere just to fit it in, and I'll tend to do ok with whatever it is.
However, when I find myself with loads of free time and few distractions my drive and ability to pursue an abstract goal becomes muffled and I achieve very little. When I have the time, procrastination takes it.
My internal-monologue worst-take on that is that I'm not as creative, smart, interesting, interested as I like to think I am.
A more tempered view might be that the perceived scarcity of time is a key ingredient in getting the attention of my muse.
I saw this post yesterday that's kind of related to this feeling: Create more than you consume - Boredom is your superpower
I'm plagued by the same effect I think. My guess is that it has something to do with momentum. I build up a lot of momentum to get stuff done, but it all gets focused on work-related-stuff or adulting-tasks. I have trouble building up the same kind of momentum for self-project type stuff because I don't feel the same external pressure to accomplish anything. I think it's probably a bit more complicated than that, but that's just my working theory so far.
I've been trying to better understand the cyclical nature of my own creative endeavors in order to better cultivate the factors that drive me forward, but they are more and more elusive the deeper I go. So I'm hoping that it might help to hear from others.
One thing I've noticed is that sharing my ambitions seems to dissolve the motivation to achieve them. So perhaps my drive is based around surprising people with something new. Or it could also be that perceived expectation is a significant demotivator for me.
I think my cycle is largely seasonal. Winter seems to be a typical low point for me creatively, somewhat of a gestation period where I can consume a lot of creative work from others and just quietly stew on themes. Spring is typically a major work season for me, and even though my creativity builds significantly, I can rarely find the time to put forth the effort until work calms down a bit. Summer is the big one for me. I hide from work (heat exhaustion/heat stroke is a nemesis of mine, and I try to spend as much of the summer indoors as possible) and consequently have a good deal of both free time and motivation built up. This past summer's creative spurt managed to bleed all the way up through November, and I had a pretty good run of both creating a lot and learning a lot.
That cycle isn't always the same though. Timing and intensity various significantly. Sometimes, there's no real creativity. Depressive episodes can wreak havoc anywhere along the timeline and throw a wrench in the works. But I seem to have largely gotten a handle on the worst of that. Hopefully. At this point, I'd like to see if I can at least get a repeat of last year, and maybe exert a little more control over the output and see if I can string myself along a little longer.
When I create — especially literature (which includes screenplays) — my main motivation is a desire for others to appreciate my work. I believe most artists are driven by that desire, with money sometimes working as a transitional currency. Every actor wants applause, and every writer wants sales. And you can easily adapt this line of reasoning to any endeavor. It's simple.
Motivation is a function of the nature and achievability of the goal. A worthy goal that is too hard or unachievable can be just as demotivating as an unworthy goal that is easy or merely achievable.
The best way to be motivated is to set worthy goals that are achievable, but not easy. And the scope of what is either easy or achievable is extremely personal.
There's absolutely nothing behind my motivations. But then again, I'm not actually motivated to do anything.
But seriously, there is a great deal of different motivations that are caused by many fairly disparate things. But if I were to be completely honest with myself, I would have to say that the most common source of motivation is my fear of change. I like my life, and while I can see ways it could be better, I'm very happy with the way things are now. I could work hard and change things for the better but I have made a concious effort to be happy with things as they are since they're much better now than they have historically been.
Of course, that's not my only motivation; I'm taking college classes right now because I actually do want to improve things, even if it's only a personal improvement. But I think it's much more honest to admit that the majority of the work I do is because of the fear of change. For instance, I work much more than I would prefer to, and that's simply because if I were to stop I would have a completely different kind of life and the transition would be painful.