Create in the Curve
Create in the Curve: Staying motivated in the intrinsic and extrinsic fashions.
By Lauren Campbell
There’s a 5-minute TEDed video entitled “How to get motivated even when you don’t feel like it” (You should look it up). I discovered it on my ‘recommended for you’ page if that tells you anything. It’s pretty self-explanatory, but it helped me uncover that being intrinsically and extrinsically motivated is not a case of opposites attracting but rather a mess of anxious ambition and deadpan necessity that renders its counterpart useless, so you are left with no motivation. Peachy.
The video opens with a cartoon of awkward body proportions seated before a blank canvas. This, the narrator promises, should be a moment of intrinsic motivation. Your mind should say, “I want to paint because I enjoy the act of painting.” Notice the present verb tense? All artistic pursuits and activities are meant to come from this place of grounded and centeredness because, as mentioned in Dead Poets Society, art isn’t necessary to sustain life; it is “what we stay alive for.” To make art is to exist simultaneously in the past, present, and future. These artistic actions are eternally present—imagination folds time in half. Create in the curve.
Extrinsic motivators, when applied to artistic projects, muddy the canvas. Your mind says, “I want to make this now so I can be awarded later.” Hey, now. Easy there. This mindset is great when I promise myself I can watch another YouTube video after completing all my emails. Maintaining a clean room or brushing my teeth are tasks that have great results but are not always fun and fulfilling processes; therefore, the source motivation is of extrinsic variety. If you apply this method, Jack doesn’t have to be a dull boy. However, writing, painting, whistling, whittling, potter-ing…those tasks are about the process. Don’t think about the glory or the slush pile—simply enjoy the moment while it’s still happening to you.
Creating art with both an intrinsic desire to participate in the process and a desire for extrinsic reward creates ego art, which is occasionally soulless and/or just sucks. It is a trading piece without polish or risk—especially for mediums like writing and painting. When you mix heart with survival, you get papercuts all over your prettiest organs. Sometimes, for instance, I have to complete a writing assignment. I don’t enjoy the things I have to write about, but I tell myself I can drink my favorite latte or something like that while I work through it (it’s iced lavender with vanilla cold foam, btw). I must detach from the work for a bit; otherwise, I won’t make any money or have anything in my portfolio. Not everything I write has to bear my soul or make people cry or win an award or get published or accomplish whatever the heck my dreams are that day. What I’m saying is that passion projects are about process, and work is about work.
But today, after I got my writing done for work, I clicked open a new document. It felt like biting into a Honeycrisp apple. I wrote because the process sounded nice. To pay attention to the interface of my keyboard as social media distraction and social pressure sonically fade out like a Radiohead song. I focused enough to write my little monologue about what I believe today about motivation. It was enough for me. Life has been speeding by on rollerblades lately. Watching words form is like untying the laces, kicking back, and folding time in half.
