Does motivation come from inside  or outside ourselves? We’re not all the same when it comes to this.

Intrinsic motivation, or the motivation from inside, refers to the impetus to do something from an interest in and/or enjoyment of the task. It’s something that lives inside us. When we work from intrinsic motivation, we believe that we can be effective in reaching our desired goals (i.e. the results are not determined by luck).

Extrinsic motivation, on the other hand, comes from outside the individual. Rewards like money and grades, coercion and threat of punishment are thought to be extrinsic motivators, so is a crowd cheering on athletes.

Researchers have found that too much reliance on outside rewards can lead to reduced intrinsic motivation. In one study children who were rewarded with a ribbon and a gold star for drawing pictures spent less time playing creatively than the children who were assigned an unexpected reward or no reward.

Daniel Pink, a one-time speech writer for Al Gore, explains this in his book, Drive; he says that while we need a baseline of extrinsic motivation on the job, a threshold amount, such as a salary, after that we fare best when our work allows us to self-motivate,...