Day 6: Starting with Why

Today we begin creating our learning plan by stating with why we want to learn. We will cover internal vs external motivation, why motivation is important for you learning, and how you can use both internal and external motivation to supercharge your learning.

Resources for this lesson:

• Transcripts
• Worksheet
• List of Scientific Resources

Summary

What is Motivation?

When we begin any learning endeavor we must first establish WHY we are learning in order to stay motivated when the eventual challenges come, using intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation.

• Giving students a meaningful rationale for why they should do something that they don't inherently find interesting, actually helps to facilitate motivation for learning.
• Motivation isn't about how much you want to do something. It's about how much effort your willing to exert to get the thing that you want.

According to self-determination theory, intrinsic motivation leads one to do something because it is inherently interesting and satisfying for that person.

Intrinsic motivation has 3 drivers:

• A need to be competent: experience mastery of knowledge and skills.
• A need to be autonomous: control over our life. where consequences are derived from our choices.
• A need to relate to other people: feeling connected within a group of people.

In contrast, extrinsic motivation leads one to do something because of motivators outside of the person like money, status, grades, achievement and so forth.

• Sometimes there's going to be skills in life that we need that we're just not very inherently drawn to want to learn.
• So setting up different systems with external motivators can help us to give the motivation to start to push through that first little hump of learning.
• However, once we start engaging with the learning, we may actually find that we enjoy it, and we start to tap into the internal motivation because we want to go down that path of mastery.
• One way to provide yourself with extrinsic motivation is to build incentives and consequences into your tasks.
• When you're setting up motivators, realize that humans are more sensitive [3] to the prospect of losing something that we have, then we are to failing to actually gain something additional.
• Be careful of the overjustification effect, [4] which occurs when an external incentive actually decreases a person's intrinsic motivation to perform a behavior or activity.
• Whenever possible, focus on the intrinsic motivation.

Why it matters: Without motivation, you will never learn the skills you need to accomplish the goals you have in your life.

Why is Motivation Important?

In the science of adult learning, [5] Dr. Malcolm knows described six needs of adult learners that need fulfilled to engage in learning.

1. Foundation: actively leverage your prior knowledge and experience when learning.
2. Need to know: you need to know the reason you are being asked to learn, understanding what is in it for you.
3. Readiness: understanding how this knowledge will apply to your life right now
4. Orientation: anchoring learning around solving problems, learning the skills along the way in order to reach that solution.
5. Self-concept: we need to be self directed learners, involved in the planning of our own learning.
6. Motivation: relying on internal rather than external motivation

The most powerful motivator a person can possess is having a purpose in their life.

• Dr. Bill Damon at Stanford University states that purpose is something that's meaningful to the self and consequential to the world.
• That means when we engage in our purpose, we're doing something that's going to better us. And also the world at large, we're helping to solve our own problems and the worlds.

Only after establishing the why should you move on to how you're learning, the method, and what you're learning, the subject matter.

How to Use Motivation?

To use internal motivation:

• Ask yourself why: why am I learning this information and how, and when will I actually use it?
• Find the value: how will this learning enrich your life? What benefits will you receive?
• Remember mastery: your study should fall in the doable, but with effort range, so the task is not too hard or too easy and you lose motivation to continue.
• Set goals: how does the things that you're going to learn fit with those goals? How are they going to help you reach those goals?

To use external motivators:

• Set stakes for yourself: how can I use psychology or social pressure to condense my timelines and push myself to learn faster?
• Gamify your learning: use point scoring, competing with others and rewards to make your learning more engaging.
• Reward at random intervals: when rewards are predictable, They start to lose their motivational impact quickly. Instead give rewards on some occasions and not on others.

Use the expert interview method: talk to people who have already achieved what you want to achieve and break down their learning process

• If your goal is career related, just look for the people that have the career that you want and send them an email or message on Twitter or LinkedIn
• If your goal is related to some other type of skill, search online forums or other communities that have people that have learned the thing that you want to learn.
• Most experts are more than willing to offer advice and are flattered by the thought that someone wants to learn from their experience.
• The key is to write a simple to the point email explaining why you're reaching out to them and asking if they could spare 10 or 15 minutes to answer some simple questions.

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Activity

Determine why you want to learn. You can start even with this course.

• Why did you start taking this course?
• What was it that drew you to want to learn?

Then start looking at the other skills or knowledge sets that you want to learn.

• Why is it that you want to learn these skills?

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Skill Lesson Mastered

Demonstrate mastery of the knowledge and skills presented in this lesson by applying it to the above activity. If, and only if, you have a full understanding and have mastered the knowledge and skills presented in this lesson, select the next lesson in the navigation.