Tuesday 27 December 2016

Motivation is a mug's game

I've labelled three previous posts with the label 'motivation'. I'm going to disagree with them here, or at least go off on a different tangent.

It was a post on The Mezzofanti Guild that got me thinking, eventually to to change my mind. Donovan Nagel writes a lot of sense, but I'm going to disagree with him (and with my previous self) on the issue of motivation.

If you feel the need for any form of motivation, whether intrinsic or extrinsic, then I think that you've already lost.

By subscribing to the notion that it is necessary to be motivated to spend time on a language, then what you are saying, essentially, is that language learning is inherently not enjoyable. That it is work that you need to endure for a future pay-off.

I mean, you don't think of needing to motivate yourself to eat out at a restaurant, watch your favorite sport, or watch movie. (Well, not usually.)

Therefore, if motivation raises its head as an issue whenever you consider spending time on language learning then you're doing something wrong, it seems to me. You are going about it the wrong way.