People who are intrinsically motivated and view life as a journey with milestones along the way end up being healthier and happy than those who set extrinsic goals with a destination in mind. They are doing to learn rather than acting to achieve external success.

This excerpt about motivation is from the book “The End of Procrastination” by Petr Ludwig. The book is a delight to read – and you can read the full chapter about motivation here.

Petr Ludwig explains that the more motivated you are, the less you will procrastinate. Not all types of motivation have the same effect on happiness. The stick of extrinsic motivation creates pressure on people to do things they ordinarily would have no desire to do. The result is unhappiness, which causes the brain to release less dopamine. This leads to worsened brain function, lower creativity, and poor memory and learning capacity.

When you are motivated by intrinsic goal-based motivation, due to hedonic adaptation, achieving goals only produces a temporary state of happiness: the emotion of joy. This emotion can cause addiction.

Intrinsic journey-based motivation, instead of focusing on goals, concentrates on the activities that you would like to do. Thanks to this, hedonic adaptation is overcome, allowing you to experience happiness now more often.

When you do the things you want to do and which incorporate your strengths, you will achieve a state of flow. Your brain will constantly release more dopamine, resulting in higher levels of creativity and more effective learning abilities, which will help you reach mastery. Incorporating selfless ego-2.0 activities in your vision will result in the emotion of meaning. Meaning improves the effectiveness of intrinsic motivation and helps you experience living your life to the fullest more intensely.

A Personal vision is the main tool that will kick-start intrinsic journey-based motivation. It will help you determine priorities, reduce decision paralysis, and lead you to doing things that are truly meaningful.

If you team up with people who share similar values and personal visions, a powerful group vision may arise. This results in a very intense form of group motivation.