Finding internal motivation through failing at university

Indeed, my negative emotional reaction got me thinking beyond just passing the damn assignment.

What does university mean to me?

What do the grades mean?

Do they matter to me?

Why?

And what can I learn from this failure? (beyond how to do the module again and pass)

This train of thought, and a hemp tea on a Saturday evening, led me here.

I draw heavily here on the business writer, Mr Simon Sinek, who has written an interesting (though slightly repetitive) book: Start With Why.

Sinek himself uses the concepts of internal and external motivation writing about companies in the world of business, their values, and how they operate.

Companies and people are often externally motivated: more money, more offers, better products etc. Sinek's basic point is that companies should start with why: offer the world their purpose, values, and reason for existing - their internal motivation - and then the external things will follow*, like more clients, money, better products etc.

Tesla is creating a world that runs on sustainable energy, it's not just making electric cars. Uber is redefining work, not just another employer. Unravel empowers young people to understand their emotions, not just another wellbeing service. You get the idea.

*external things will follow if companies can then implement a vision - the how and the what.

Great companies start with why, and tend to have alignment between their internal and external motivations. Bad companies tend to be overly focused on their business, the clients, and neglect important things like upholding meaningful values, like supporting their employees, or focusing on fostering a positive workplace culture.

Here I apply these concepts to university and myself.

Universities offer their students many external motivations: the promise of knowledge, employment, an experience, and so on. It is standard procedure in the world of work for university graduates to be filtered into various workplaces, and this is motivation enough for many students.

Membership into my area, psychology, essentially requires a university degree. And I've certainly met students on my course who are externally motivated towards this end: get degree, filter into work, goals achieved.

This is certainly part of my motivation; I recently started a job that requires me to have a psychology degree. The failure is worrying in this regard - it could seriously alter my external motivations for me. No degree, no job.

Being externally motivated to find work in a meaningful job that also happens to be challenging and well paid is, I think, an admirable goal. That's certainly how I feel as I start something new: lucky, grateful, and excited. And that alone is reason enough to do my best to re-take and pass the module.

But my experience studying psychology has been far more about what internally motivates me.

To me, what failing feels like is someone holding my external motivations to the light and saying: you need to sort this out, or else you won't meet the criteria for externally interesting stuff, like getting access to a master's degree or the British Psychological Society.

A master's degree is pretty cool. And so is the BPS. But the idea that these are why I put effort into my university work is a bit silly. At least, this how I frame it to myself.

I am internally motivated on my psychology course and I'm not sure exactly why. Perhaps it's because the parts of my brain responsible for feeling - broadly the limbic system - does not have access to language - broadly the neocortex.

Aren't artists are often driven by something? What about entrepreneurs and scientists? External motivations like more recognition, views, sales are great things. But it's not why most of these people do these things.

Why am I spending my time writing away on this strange corner of the internet when I should probably be correcting my failed assignment that I have a lot of external reasons to sort out?

Obviously, it's that internal motivation. As Bliss n Eso put it: "creation is what feeds my soul". Although, my psychological education has me very sceptical of this fuzzy soul business - where, exactly, is this soully soul?

I guess university to me is much less about the external things it can offer me: grades, work, recognition, and more about what I build into myself, like an internal knowledge structure that I take with me wherever I go.

Being internally motivated feels liberating.

What I take from failing my module at university is: sure, I need to improve my work, to re-do it, to take a different approach etc. In fact, if I want to pursue a certain job (which I certainly do want to do), then it's really important that I find a way to fix this (which thankfully I can).

But what I really take from failing is:

I'm motivated to keep on writing regardless of the external praise, feedback, or criticism that people give me.

This sounds like narcissism, being so convinced of your own self-importance that you ignore important feedback from others, and maybe it is! Writing in a profound book, Thinking Fast and Slow, the eminent psychologist Daniel Kahneman makes the point that the engine of innovation is largely driven by people hardwired for optimism!

Man, if people all took risks as equally risky... No-one would write books, start businesses, or create new things. I think there is a place for steely determination!

It's a unique feeling to be doing something for the thing itself, rather than as a means to an end, or as a means to another thing.

I really enjoyed doing that module that I failed. I put hours of work into that failure. I read a couple of books end to end in preparation. And, despite failing, I was proud of the work that I produced.

Staying up late listening to music, thinking, and writing is - for whatever reason - where I want to be. Am I brilliant at this? No, that's why I failed in those writing tasks.

But there is an internal comfort knowing that I'm doing something that I enjoy doing regardless of what others think. I guess not giving a fuck really is a Subtle Art (readers of that worthwhile book will remember that the book is much more about deciding what is important and what isn't, rather than saying "fuck everyone's opinion, I'm doing it anyway!" - though I think this must have been what was going through Trump's mind when he recommended injecting bleach. Yeah, not so subtle).

Another way to think about external and internal motivations is through 18th century Scottish philosopher Hume's analysis, which I learned about from Pinker's book on Rationality.

Hume thought that reason (or perhaps our external motivations) could only be a slave to the passions (our internal motivations). This was simply because our reasons for doing things are not why we do things; our reasons are not the source of our interests.

But Hume also said that reason (our external motivations) ought to act as a judge or arbiter to our passions (internal motivations). What this means is that many things might be interesting to us, or internally appealing, but we should sort these things out in some rational manner.

I'm motivated to write things no matter what people say. Alright, cool. That's the passion. The passion is great, but it doesn't put food on the table. Or maybe writing a load of shit that no one is interested in also isn't such a good idea. Or, as the rapper Skizzy Mars put it: "I just wanna smoke weed and write music everyday".

Reason, Mr. Mars, when done right, should guide those passions.

The sensible thing to do would, according to Hume, yes, keep on passionately writing about things that interest you. Do it whether people criticise, demonise, or praise you; do it whether no-ones watching, reading, or interested. It's your internal motivation; you do it for you, not for other people.

But be rational about things: pay attention to the external things like work because they matter. Do not throw everything away to wildly pursue something you happen to be internally motivated to keep doing. Listen to important feedback, implement it, do your job, and do it well.

And for God's sake, don't write a load of shit no-one's interested in.

Nobody - not even David Hume - wants that.

Ah, now I've got that off my chest I've got some assignments to rewrite!