What Is Motivation? Driver, Drive, and Why Passion Fades

The Short Answer

What Is Motivation?

Motivation is the driving force behind why you want to do what you are about to do. It is personal. It is chosen. It keeps you moving after the excitement fades. Passion starts the day. Motivation finishes it.

This is the first rung of the ladder in Become Your Version of Rich by Dr. Paul Borosky, DBA, MBA, and the rung that holds the weight of the other four. It is also about your motivation. If you are trying to motivate a team, read how to motivate employees instead. Want to find your own reason now? Go straight to how to find your why. Everything here fits inside the Become Your Version of Rich guide.

Four Words People Mix Up

Driver, Motivation, Drive, and Passion

Most people use these four words as if they mean the same thing. They do not. Keep them apart and you will see why so many people stall.

Here is how Become Your Version of Rich puts it in Chapter 1.

Why Passion Fades

Passion Is a Flare. Motivation Is the Fuel Line.

Dr. Paul loves business. He will tell you that himself. But that love does not sit down and write a business plan for him on a Tuesday morning. It does not push him out the door to a client he would rather not drive to see. Then he walks into the room, the talk turns to their company, and the passion flares. The meeting is great. That is a flare, not a fuel line.

Passion is the fun part of the work. Motivation is what gets the rest of it done. Most advice says to find your passion. Dr. Paul says passion alone is not to be trusted, and the owners who rely on it are the ones who stall when the work gets dull.

The good news: your motivation does not have to be a reward. It can be built from pain. Missing your kid’s game tonight is an evening you never get back, and that ache can move you off the couch faster than any bonus. It can be aimed at your health, at a job that is only a bridge to the next one, or at the enough line you are drawing for your money. Choose it on purpose and life stops running you. You start running it.

What the Research Says

What Psychologists Say Keeps People Going

Psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan built Self-Determination Theory around three basic needs. Autonomy is feeling that you choose your own path. Competence is feeling that you are getting good at something. Relatedness is feeling that your work connects you to people you care about. Money is not on the list. It matters, and financial security is a fair reason to work. On its own, though, it rarely builds the kind of motivation that carries a person through the hard years.

They also split motivation in two. Autonomous motivation is doing something because you value it and it feels like yours. Controlled motivation is doing it for an outside reward or to avoid a punishment. In a 2023 study of 651 STEM faculty at 10 U.S. universities, each step up in autonomous motivation went with roughly 12 percent more publications and 23 percent more citations over three years. Controlled motivation had limited effects. It is one study in one setting, so treat it as a signal, not a promise. It lines up with what Dr. Paul has seen across 1,000+ clients: the owner driven from the inside tends to outlast the one chasing only the money.

Sources: Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000), Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being, American Psychologist. Stupnisky, R. H., Larivière, V., Hall, N. C., & Omojiba, O. (2023), Predicting research productivity in STEM faculty: the role of self-determined motivation, Research in Higher Education.

How This Helps a Business Student

Use the Four Words on the Exam and in Your Own Plan

Textbooks use “motivation” loosely. Once you can separate the four words, you can use them in three places that count.

One Honest Caution

When It Is Not a Motivation Problem

Do This Tomorrow

Three Steps to Start Building Your Driver

1. Before you get out of bed, take sixty seconds and picture your version of rich. Not the money. The life.
2. Today, spend twenty minutes writing that vision out in full. Do not edit it. Get it on paper.
3. Read it back and name the one reason it matters most. That reason is your driver.

You do not need to feel motivated to do this. You need a pen and twenty minutes. Starting is what builds motivation. For the full five-step method, including the three driver statements and the 30-day check, read how to find your why. Then see motivation at work in Madam C.J. Walker’s story.

The Book

Chapter 1 Goes Much Further

This page is one slice of Chapter 1 in Become Your Version of Rich. The chapter gives you the full method and the people who prove it works.

• The five-step method to build your driver, with three driver statements and a 30-day check
• Madam C.J. Walker and Benjamin Franklin, two people who built motivation on purpose
• Napoleon, and what happens when a driver has no finish line
• The WeWork cautionary tale
• Daily Actions you can start tomorrow, and a single page that grows into your whole version of rich

Get the Book on Amazon →

Keep Going

More From Chapter 1 and the Next Rung

FAQ

Common Questions About Motivation