Here’s another story. One of the things that prompted me to start this blog was the Montessori course that I was taking in preparation for handling my son’s pandemic-induced home-based Montessori program. As I listened to the instructor, I thought how great it would be if I could share what I was learning — because it truly was fascinating — to other people who might also find it interesting and helpful. So I created this blog and wrote and wrote and wrote posts about the things I was learning. I wrote a post after almost every session of the Montessori course. But then my son’s school asked us parents to write down and submit all the insights we learned from each session, along with answers to questions like, how did it shift our paradigms, or something like that. It wasn’t really too different from what I was already doing in the blog. But you know what I did? I stopped writing. Because, you know, this blog was my thing. I had psychological ownership of it, it was something I was intrinsically motivated to do, and I actually really liked doing it. But turning it into something that I had to do and then imposing external parameters on it? Nah. Not my thing.
(I love my son’s school, for the record. And I’m glad they’re the type of school that accepts feedback like “Is this really necessary?” from occasionally rebellious parents like me.)
(Also for the record, it’s not because I’m just lazy. I have a degree in psychology and medicine so I like to think it wouldn’t be totally accurate to say I’m just slumming through life. Writing blog posts actually took more effort than answering the questionnaires; it was just more satisfying and meaningful and the motivation came from me.)
In both stories, whether it’s something one shouldn’t be doing, like smoking, or something that one should be encouraged to be doing, like writing about something interesting, once it becomes required, the motivation to do it just drops, sometimes to the point of making a person want to not do it.