I have often struggled with motivation throughout my life. As an elementary school student many of my parent teacher conferences and assessment notes were filled with, “if he would apply himself” comments. One teacher asked my parents what motivates me, and they responded, “If you figure it our let us know.” Of course what they were focusing on was my motivation as a child to do schoolwork and household chores, and I had no motivation for either. I had a hard time with school work because I was easily bored with it and would rather concentrate on what I was going to do after school. I would create stories that I would later act out with toys. I would draw ideas for new levels in video games or characters from my favorite comics and cartoons. Unfortunately for me, the things I was motivated to do, what I was interested in doing, was not going to be recognized as important to my schoolwork, and certainly was not helping keep my room clean or feed my dogs in a timely manner. If you add the distraction of TV nothing was ever going to get done. As an adult this still holds true, but I have a better developed executive function to do the things I need to do, eventually.

My motivation was and still is driven largely by my interests. If we look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the first three levels of physiological needs, safety needs, and love and belonging needs were being met; I was seeking the higher level needs of self esteem and need for self actualization. (Ormrod, 2020 Pg. 409) My self esteem was not particularly high, in fact in academic areas it was quite low, but if I was pursuing what I was interested in it didn’t matter if I had lower self esteem in my ability to do math or read in front of the class. When my interests and schoolwork would overlap I would excel much to the frustration of my teachers because of my inconsistent success. If I was interested in what we were reading in class, I would read ahead, if a writing assignment was creative rather than informative, I would exceed the word count.

If I try to look at my motivation through Vroom’s expectancy theory that effort will lead to desired outcomes, I was never concerned with the outcome of my efforts if I was doing something I enjoyed when I was a younger student. (Sutton, 2024) In my current employment it holds somewhat true that I desire the outcome of having a paycheck, so I will put in the effort they require. That does not mean I feel motivated to do my job, in fact I am very much motivated to change careers because what I am doing for employment is so outside of my interest.

My motivations have always been interest driven because my brain works differently due to Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD); instead of looking at my needs or what the desired results from my efforts are, my motivation is based on novelty, challenge, urgency and interest. (Neff, n. d.) In much of my education and even in my professional career, much of my work is done under urgency and pressure of a deadline. The work that has no deadline and that does not hold my interest, does not get done; if I’m lucky I can delegate it to someone else. I did not really begin to succeed academically until I started college, and could turn my interest and passion for art into a major. Professionally the few times that I have been truly motivated to show up to my job and give my best performance was when I was able to find positions teaching art either as an adjunct professor or working with community education programs with students of all ages.

Since learning that my brain works differently because of ADHD, I have been able to develop more successful strategies to keep myself motivated for longer durations by integrating my interests into my work when I can. When I cannot align my interests with my work, at least know why I am not motivated until the urgency of a deadline is looming.

References:

Neff, Dr. M. A. (n. d.). How the interest-based nervous system drives ADHD motivation. Neurodivergent Insights. https://neurodivergentinsights.com/adhd-motivation/

Ormrod, J. E., Anderman, E. M., & Anderman, L. H. (2020). Educational psychology: Developing learners. Pearson.

Sutton, J. (2024). Victor Vroom’s expectancy theory of motivation. https://positivepsychology.com/expectancy-theory/