Intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation

They always say, “Only intrinsic motivation lasts”.

When you read about the science of human motivation, intrinsic motivation is often regarded as the ‘better’ one. Extrinsic motivation is external to you. It doesn’t last, it’s fickle, because it depends on factors outside of yourself and your control. If the thing or person disappears, you fail.

But intrinsic motivation has it’s downsides too.

Truth is, intrinsic motivation often depends on willpower and discipline. And willpower is limited. It’s not infallible. In fact, I dare say, on bad days when you’re tired and lazy, it’s the extrinsic motivators that are more effective than willing yourself to do it off raw mental strength.

To make intrinsic motivation really powerful, we often have to subsume it into our identity, or involve some sort of identity change. Like how I struggled to learn how to code, time after time. But when I started to listen to coding podcasts and immersing into dev culture did I start to feel more attached to it, and motivated me more to learn how to code. That’s powerful but it can also lead to over-identifying with an identity, or your project, versus when better judgement or rational objectivity is needed.

After going all in on intrinsic motivators, I have experienced all the downsides, and can attest – it’s not fundamentally better than its extrinsic counterpart. If anything, we need to acknowledge both and use them together for maximum effect. It’s not one better than the other, not either/or.

Only motivation—intrinsic and extrinsic—lasts.