This is in response to Sadie Thompson’s post
It is very interesting to me that how she feels about her high school and university education is similar to my thoughts. I clearly was an externally motivated student until recently. Reading her post made me wonder if I knew back then that whatever I was learning would be applicable later in some form or the other, I might have accepted it differently .
I do find a certain contradiction in Knowles’ last 2 principles- ‘adults are mostly driven by internal motivation, rather than external motivators’ and ‘adults need to know the reason for learning something’. If all we as adults need to learn is the internal motivation, then why does there even have to be a reason for us to learn something new? I have tried to find the answer to this in my personal choice of reading- I have noticed that any reading I have to do for work ( journal articles etc.) , is externally motivated. I read them because I need to know the latest advances in my filed. This is similar to Sadie’s example of learning more about to teach a child with Down’s syndrome once she knew she would have the opportunity to teach such a child. Would she have been motivated to read if there wasn’t this external motivator ? On the other hand my non medicine related reading is not externally motivated. I recently picked up a book titled ‘Red Notice’, by Bill Browder. This book is about an American-British investor and his experiences in Russia. This was an internally motivated choice, as there was no reason for me to read this book. I was intrigued by the synopsis and wanted to learn about a foreigner’s experience in Russia. This phenomenon to me is quite interesting , I hope to hear from some of my other co-learners what they think.
Simarjit,
This is a really interesting analysis of Knowle’s discussion of internal/external motivation. I agree with you that, as adults, we do certain things because of internal motivation and others because of external motivation. It’s a challenging idea to grapple with.
In fact, Gretchen Rubin recently wrote “The Four Tendencies,”which describes a model she developed to understand the motivations we have for upholding expectations (either internal or internal). You may be interested in her book and/or other resources. She argues that some of us are more inclined to achieve because of our own inner expectations, while others are more motivated by external expectations.
I’d love to hear what you think!
— Leadership Prof
https://gretchenrubin.com/books/the-four-tendencies/intro/
Rubin, G. (2017). The four tendencies: The indispensable personality profiles that reveal how to make your life better ( and other people’s lives better, too) Random House: New York.