Motivation

Here it is, three weeks after I was really itching to write a post on motivation. And I'm finally doing it. I don't think I can blame lack of motivation . . . I really have been busy. But motivation is always a topic in the front of my mind, since I seem to lack it so often.

I've been thinking about the evolution of my levels of motivation, and I'm curious to hear any insights you may have. The decades-long trends have been startling, and I'm wondering whether they have physiological, social, spiritual, etc. roots and what priority each of these potential causes may have in the pool of causes.

The history: As a kid, I was an absolute sponge for information, so studying wasn't a big issue for me. At times I had trouble getting motivated to do my homeschool work, but my mom would say something like, "Do you think it's time to do some math?" I would tear off through six or eight lessons of math in a couple of hours, or read three chapters in my science textbook. I did great on the tests, so the pedagogical style didn't seem to matter. My freshman year was challenging, due mostly I think to Mrs. Matlick's English class. I still got an A, but it was a lot of work. My sophomore year, I competed in Bible quiz bowl. I was a top competitor in the country and loved having an even stronger competitor on my team. We took sixth in the nation as a team (out of 300 or so teams). I knew the text of 1 and 2 Kings very well. The next year, we studied six of Paul's letters. I memorized the first six chapters of 1 Corinthians, and we did pretty well at the first tournament. But I think I was disappointed by our performance, and I started wasting time instead of studying the text. I still got great grades in all my classes. In my senior year, I competed in Bible Bowl, but with the same one-third-hearted gusto as the previous year.

My first semester of college, I was very excited to get a 4.0. I got a B+ in Christian Life and Ethics, and I think that took away my motivation for great grades. I enrolled in Dr. Mayer's (aka Mayer the Slayer) Systematic Theology I to prove that I could defeat the beast. However his paragraph-true-false-correct-it-if-it's-wrong questions made me feel like he was trying to trick us more than teach us, so I stopped trying halfway through the semester. Thirty minutes before the final, I was playing Tetris and still hadn't studied. I got a C+ in the class. Also, I would go collect sources for papers a week before they were due, but invariably, I wouldn't start writing them till the night before. I would skip classes the day a paper was due to finish writing it.

Professionally, it seems like approaching deadlines dictate when I will start to work on something. That usually means I'll miss the deadline. While I feel like I do great work, there's something deep within me that longs for it to be more punctual.

With that long history, my curiosity is whether I've always had the same inclinations when it comes to motivation and it's really hard to assess those in a child, or whether I've been on a long slide due to certain formative events or environments. Regardless, I'm hoping that evolution the other way is possible. I would love to be a motivated person who accomplishes great things punctually without being a hard-charger. My current brainstorm is that I probably need to get a part-time job (to help make ends meet/overlap while my wife is in school), and that will provide the pressure I need to get on top of things and get them done. Any insights on motivation would be most welcome.