PREMIUM: Motivation Part 1

Do we need enjoyment or inspiration to be motivated?

A blogger struggling to blog (AI generated)

An apology

I would like to apologise for the lack of blog posts lately. I slowed down when I was:

a) exhausted towards the end of term,¹

and

b) busy over Christmas.

Once I broke my blogging routine, I struggled to get restarted. This is not a new experience for me. I’ve had unplanned breaks from blogging before, for example, I barely blogged in the last five months of 2021. However, since setting up my Substack, my only previous breaks had been due to illness. For obvious reasons, my main priority is to ensure that I don’t short-change my paid subscribers.² However, I am also looking at what I can do to avoid ever falling behind again, and thinking about how to stay motivated and on track.

Reflections on motivation

Obviously, I enjoy blogging. If I saw it as a chore, I wouldn’t have blogged for 17 years before I had paid subscribers. But, of course, there’s a difference between wanting to do something and being disciplined enough to get it done. It’s even harder to motivate yourself to do things you don’t enjoy doing, even if you really want to get them done. As a blogger, the process of editing and proofreading is the part I enjoy least, and the part I am most likely to put off.³ As a teacher, it is marking that I always seem to leave for far too long. When talking about motivation, it’s important to distinguish between several things:

1. What we enjoy doing;

2. What we want to do (but may not enjoy);

3. What we think we should do.

4. What we do.

These are all related to motivation but, they are different, and when we talk about “motivating” our pupils⁴, it’s surprising how frequently we confuse them.

Motivation and enjoyment

One of teaching’s deadly sins⁵ is to believe that a good lesson has to be fun. It’s not that lessons should be deathly dull or a hard slog. However, attempts to make a lesson enjoyable or entertaining can often undermine the extent to which they are effective for their actual purpose, i.e. learning. These days, I don’t think it’s controversial to say that not every lesson can be fun. In the past, it has been contentious to acknowledge that. It may seem unbelievable now, but in 2009, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector, Christine Gilbert⁶, declared a crackdown on boring teachers. The Guardian reported:

Ofsted's new mission - to get rid of boring teachers

'Dull' teaching blamed for bad behaviour

Ofsted⁷ is to launch a crackdown on "boring" teaching in response to concerns that children's behaviour is deteriorating because they are not being stimulated enough in class.