Imagine you are playing badminton with a world champion. Soon, you will find that you are motivated enough to continue playing because you are losing most of the time (or all of the time)
On the other hand, if you are playing with a small kid, you will not enjoy much because it’s too easy.
But what if you are playing with someone having almost equal experience as you?
You will enjoy and feel motivated enough to play.
Human beings love challenges, but only if they are within the optimal zone of difficulty.
Working on a task that you like, and if that task is of moderate difficulty, then you enter a state known as “flow”.
In his book, Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has mentioned that the “The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times… The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”
You might have experienced this once in a while when you are doing an activity you love. You feel completely present and focused on a task, and you lose track of time. When you looked at the clock, 4 hours had passed, but it felt like 4 minutes to you.
Often times we consider free time or rewards as a source of satisfaction, but the flow state is what gives the deepest level of satisfaction in work, and it is more fulfilling than any reward or leisure time.
Whichever task you are trying to complete, try to add some moderate difficulty to it, not too easy, not too hard. This way you will feel motivated to do the task as well as enjoy it, and that’s how you find some satisfaction in work.