{"id":1068,"date":"2023-05-24T13:52:22","date_gmt":"2023-05-24T13:52:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/?p=1068"},"modified":"2023-12-06T14:14:38","modified_gmt":"2023-12-06T14:14:38","slug":"motivation-an-introduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/motivation-an-introduction\/","title":{"rendered":"Motivation – an introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Let me share a little mystery with you.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This is a Draper 90107 Wet and Dry Vacuum Cleaner.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"A
If you push a button it goes “vroom” and makes the floor clean<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Very nice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It can be yours for only \u00a336.95#up.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
#down. All price on this page from Amazon.co.uk, at the time of writing<\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n
This is a Dyson DC19T2 Multi Floor Vacuum Cleaner.<\/p>\n\n\n
\n
\"A
If you push a button it goes “vroom” and makes the floor clean<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
Also very nice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
You can buy this one for only \u00a3349.95.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We have learned a very important lesson here: people will pay 10 times as much money for a thing if you make its lid yellow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In all seriousness, this is one of marketing’s most common problems: How do you sell roughly the same product, but for more money?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This happens constantly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Go to your local supermarket and look at the breakfast cereals. Near the brand-name ones, you will find nearly identical “white label” (sometimes called “store brand”) versions that cost much less. Many of the medicines that you can buy at the pharmacy have brand name versions, and also “generic” versions that have literally exact same active ingredient, but cost far less. And people do indeed often buy those more expensive versions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wait, generic medicines are the same thing?<\/h5>
\n
\"Structural
isobutylphenylpropionic acid<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
Pharmaceutical firms make a lot of this molecule because It turns out to be pretty good at reducing pain, inflammation, and fever when you swallow it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To sell it they put a few doses in a box, then write a name on the outside. Sometimes the name they write is ‘Brufen’, sometimes it is ‘Advil’, sometimes ‘Motrin’, or ‘Nurofen’, or ‘Dolgit’ (or other names<\/a> elsewhere in the world). Or sometimes they just write ‘ibuprofen’, but then they sell it for less money because that is its generic name instead of a brand name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It’s the same molecule either way though, manufactured to the same standards. You use it the same way and it has the same effect on your body. The big key difference is the arrangement of ink on its box. Really<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As we say, this happens all the time.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n
\n
But how? How do you pull that off? Do you just... write a different name on the side of your product and jack up the price?<\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n
If so, then Draper Vacuums are doing it wrong (they wrote their name on the side fine, they just forgot to quadruple their price, right?). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it can’t be that simple… Can it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Are you up for yet another mystery?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
I live in the UK these days, a little way from my parents in Canada (a bit over five thousand km, or three thousand miles, depending on how you like your distances measured). Every so often they come over to visit#up.<\/p>\n\n\n
\n
Random life lesson: Parents seem to visit far more often after you have kids. Draw your own conclusions from this about their priorities in life.\n(that's a joke, people!)<\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n
A few years ago, on one such visit, I happened to have been thinking about marketing a lot, so I started asking my dad what products he likes to buy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now at the time I had a folder on my computer, just like everyone else who teaches CB, stuffed with images of the types of products that people tend to find exciting. It’s full of expensive cars, fancy shoes, interesting drinks, and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But he didn’t name any of the things in my folder. Not one.<\/p>\n\n\n
\n
\"A
An image he didn’t pick<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
Do you know what he said?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dyson vacuums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In deference to (what I’m told are) the tastes of today’s young people, I will spare you the .gif image of some doing a “whaaaaat?” spit-take, but I did my own real-life version of one of those (quietly inside my head, which is the proper British and Canadian way). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then I asked him why: Why Dyson vacuums?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Ah,” he said. “It’s because they work well”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the one hand, this is fair. They do work well. On the other hand, I own many things that work well: socks, bottles of milk, potted plants, computer mice… But it would be hard to describe me as excited <\/strong>about any of those things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So here is my mystery to you: Why was my dad excited about these vacuums?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Do you know?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let’s come back to this at the end of this chapter, and see if you have any (better?) answers then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But first:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Motivation: A definition<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
You will find numerous definitions of motivation if you search through enough CB textbooks and scholarly articles. Most of them describe it as a driving force to reduce states of tension, and\/or as a proximal cause for action or movement, and\/or as goal-directed behaviour or arousal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those are all very fine definitions, but mine is simpler. It’s only 9 words long, and a 9-year-old could understand it. But it makes even more sense when it is introduced with a short story (don’t worry, it’s very<\/strong> short): <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Think about yourself lying in bed this morning. Let’s start right after you woke up, and were (we hope!) perfectly content to rest in a pleasant morning fog. But at some point you stopped doing that, got up, probably ate something, put on some (different) clothes, left your house maybe, and then you started reading a CB textbook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every part of that story involved you having motivation, other than (maybe) the pleasant morning fog. Because motivation is, very simply, this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
\n
Motivation<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
The mental impulse that we want to do something.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Humans not only experience motivation all the time, but we think about it too, probably more than anything else: Why do my friends want to do what they do? Why do those other people do what they do? Why do I<\/strong> do what I do? And that oldest and trickiest question of all: what do I want to do next?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The interesting thing isn’t that <\/strong>people are motivated, though. It’s how <\/strong>they are motivated. To understand that better, this chapter is going to unpack two key organizing principles: Goals and (what we will call) “basic needs”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A quick introduction and definition<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":178,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"chapter":[4],"exclude_from_index":[15],"class_list":["post-1068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","chapter-2-motivation","exclude_from_index-exclude-from-index"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1068"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2059,"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1068\/revisions\/2059"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1068"},{"taxonomy":"chapter","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/chapter?post=1068"},{"taxonomy":"exclude_from_index","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/illuminated-text.com\/cb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exclude_from_index?post=1068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}