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In one of our recent Connected Club Support Group sessions, our special community members brought up the topic of MOTIVATION. It sparked such a fabulous discussion, that we thought we would share excerpts from our amazing psychologist and facilitator Dr Soracha Cashman’s session reflection and resource notes here. These notes help us to unpack all things motivation, drive, energy and how these can come up against procrastination.

So what exactly is DRIVE, and how is it connected to motivation?

Drive is the force that pushes us to perform at our best.

It helps us get on track and stay on track through challenges. Drive can come from both internal and external motivation. Neurodivergent people can find it hard to access their internal drivers, and often use external drivers – called external motivational factors – to push themselves to get things done.

How do external motivational forces drive us?

External motivational forces are factors outside of our own control that drive us to perform.

These external forces are often divided into two categories: duty and urgency.

Duty is an obligation to someone or something outside of ourselves. This could be anything from agreeing to meet someone for a coffee, to a performance expectation from work.

Neurodivergent people often find that the external driver of duty can help them get things done, but they risk building habits that normalise helping others over themselves. 

Urgency is an obligation to a hard deadline, or deadline that can’t be missed, because they carry serious consequences. A sense of hard urgency often kickstarts the neurodivergent brain.

So what about internal motivational forces?

Internal motivational forces are the feelings, values, and goals that drive us.

They require dopamine to create the feeling of satisfaction when you’ve accomplished a goal, and the feeling of frustration when you sense you’re underperforming. The deficiency of dopamine that typifies neurodivergence can make it challenging to motivate internally.

Internal drivers can be divided into identity and obsession. 

Identity is the desire to hold yourself to a high standard of excellence. High performers often tie their identity to their performance, constantly self-monitoring and looking for opportunities to improve their work, which gives them a dopamine hit.

Many neurodivergent people get caught in a negative self-talk loop thinking they have a lack of will-power or are failing, and don’t realise that it is the lack of a dopamine hit that makes so-called “will-power” impaired.

Obsession refers to the need to understand and master a topic or a task.

Neurotypical high performers obsess over their field of choice, pouring hours of research, practice, and discussion into their craft. They don’t need an incentive or reward to commit to their work. Instead, they feel an intrinsic need to learn as much as they can and put their understanding into practice.

For neurodivergent people, this form of internal motivation can easily slip into hyperfocus. The brain starts releasing dopamine and sending off signals of pleasure and reward that compensate for deficient reward system. The more they are engrossed in such activities, the greater the dopamine boost — and the easier it becomes to stay on such tasks – but it can also mean getting stuck in the topic to the exclusion of other tasks because the dopamine release makes this task engaging/satisfying/enjoyable.

For neurodivergent people, this form of internal motivation can easily slip into hyperfocus. The brain starts releasing dopamine and sending off signals of pleasure and reward that compensate for deficient reward system. The more they are engrossed in such activities, the greater the dopamine boost — and the easier it becomes to stay on such tasks – but it can also mean getting stuck in the topic to the exclusion of other tasks because the dopamine release makes this task engaging/satisfying/enjoyable.

Internal motivation becomes much easier when we create and maintain a habit or neural pathway for particular behaviours or goals. If a task is low-dopamine, anchoring it to a reward can help motivate (internally!) to get it done. 

Dr Soracha Cashman is a cognitive neuropsychologist, EF coach with Connections in Mind, and experienced group facilitator regularly working with FTSE 100 companies.

She facilitates the Connected Club Support Group sessions, which run every Thursday evening at 6pm GMT for Connected Club members.

Find out more about membership here.