Do you remember how much you used to enjoy doing things, especially something new, in childhood, or have you seen a child doing simple activities like playing, running, or drawing with so much enthusiasm and excitement?
When I was in school, I was fascinated with PowerPoint and was amazed by looking at the animation that felt like text coming from the sky and images coming out from the void. I used to explore so many things in PowerPoint and never got bored, and the best part is that it never felt like work; it felt amazing, and I was always curious to try something new.
But now when I think of editing a video before posting, many times it gives me a feeling of boredom. That mere thought of editing makes me feel anxious.
Yesterday, I was thinking about why this happens, so I searched about it, and I found a study with 40+ years of research. People with intrinsic motivation are curious and interested naturally from inside, and even if the task is challenging, this intrinsic motivation makes it easy to navigate through solutions and help them achieve their goals.
Another study stated that children were informed that they would be rewarded for drawing, and then those children made less creative drawings. That means just expecting some external reward reduced the intrinsic interest, and that affected their creativity.
Not only this, a meta-analysis of 96 studies found that expecting rewards for any creative activity reduced the intrinsic interest, but unexpected rewards given after the activity is done did not reduce the intrinsic interest.
When you are performing any task irrespective of the external reward, your brain is in “play mode”, similar to the state when you are playing games with your friends. You don’t play to win or achieve something; you play because it feels good and relaxing and it keeps your inner child alive, and even if you lose, you don’t take it seriously; in fact, you laugh at it, just like a child. Children play just for the sake of playing, and that’s where the real fun is.
On the other hand, when you are doing something with the expectation of an outer reward, then your brain is in “performance mode”, and you have that pressure of what others think and how I will look. You judge your own work, and all of that takes the fun out of the process, and now you are
For people with the extrinsic (external) motivation, their focus is more on the reward and less on the process.
For people with intrinsic motivation, their focus is more on the process and less on the reward because the process is the reward for them, so they enjoy the process and perform much better than those with extrinsic motivation.
Daily, or at least once a week, do something that genuinely interests you. It can be anything, like drawing on paper, painting on glass, creating something with your hands or whatever you loved doing when you were a child. Just do it because you love doing it, not for any reward, and see how your child becomes alive again. Your inner child was already there; it’s the societal pressure that suppressed the child.