Internal & External Motivation

My bout of persistent low-level ill health continued throughout March.  It was a good excuse for not posting - in that I am not making it up, I wasn't in a bar drinking.  So, poor me.  Let's move on.

I find it interesting that I am able to meet "real" deadlines (ie. external focus) because once I promise to do something for someone I hate to disappoint. Which I guess means that I fear the consequences. Yet a deadline that involves and impacts only me (ie. internal focus) is more-or-less optional.  There are no consequences, other than a mildly corrosive sense of shame.

I don't think I'm alone in this, either.

We're a lot more externally motivated than we are internally motivated, certainly more than we think we are.

And it is odd, if you think about it.  It's ok to lie to, and cheat myself but not other people? It's "only" me that is being disappointed, so that's ok?

It also begs the existential question of my cyber-readers.  Does this mean I have failed to truly perceive you as "real"? In the nature of the blogosphere, the consequences of failure to post are invisible, and often minimal.  No-one wrote to say, "where's the post you promised us, loser?" For which I am, on the whole, grateful.

Perhaps you need to comment more...  Or send chocolate...