The money being right doesn't mean the motivation is

There's a category of work I take on because it makes financial sense.

The brief is clear, the client is reasonable, the fee is fair. On paper it's a good project. In practice, getting started feels like trying to push a very large, very reluctant object. The resistance isn't logical. The work isn't hard. It's just... not alive in the same way.

For a long time I put this down to laziness, or bad habits, or not being disciplined enough. Then a coach I work with introduced me to self-determination theory, a framework for understanding human motivation developed by psychologists Deci and Ryan. And it explained a lot.

The theory says that genuine motivation - the kind that sustains effort and feels satisfying - requires three things.

Autonomy: feeling in control of your actions and decisions.

Competence: feeling capable and seeing your skills applied meaningfully.

Relatedness: feeling connected to something bigger, to other people, or to your own values.

When all three are firing, work feels easy. Not because it is easy, but because it's alive. I can think of specific projects where this is true - where I had design freedom, where the challenge was stretching me in good ways, where I could see the impact clearly and feel genuinely proud of it. On those projects, I don't need external deadlines. The work pulls me forward.

When one of them is missing, the work becomes effortful in a different way. And the one that most often goes missing, I've noticed, is relatedness.

The revenue is there. The competence is there. But the connection to values, to impact, to something that matters - it's thin. The project doesn't connect to anything I care about beyond the invoice. And that gap, it turns out, costs a lot of energy to bridge.

Knowing this hasn't made the less exciting projects disappear. But it's changed how I think about them. When motivation is low and I can't work out why, I now ask: which of the three is missing? And sometimes there's something I can do about it. Connect the project to a bigger picture goal. Find the piece of it that does require real skill. Involve someone else so the relatedness piece is at least interpersonal, if not values-driven.

It doesn't always work. But it's a better question than "why am I being so lazy about this."

Cheat sheet

How to diagnose low motivation using self-determination theory

Ask which ingredient is missing.

Autonomy, competence, or relatedness. Be specific. "I'm not motivated" is too broad. "I have no autonomy in how this gets delivered" is something you can work with.

Don't assume the money fixes it.

A well-paid project with no relatedness is still a project you'll avoid starting. Name that honestly. Then decide whether to take the work, change the terms, or find a way to connect it to something you care about.

Engineer the missing piece where you can.

No autonomy in the deliverable? Find it in the process. No competence stretch? Find the part of the brief that genuinely requires your thinking. No relatedness? Bring someone in whose company makes the work feel connected.

Recognise which projects have all three.

Know what good feels like. Notice which projects pull you forward without effort. That's your benchmark. That's what you're trying to build more of.

Use it as a filter, not just a diagnosis.

Before saying yes to new work, run it through the three questions. Not as a veto - sometimes you take the project anyway - but as information. At least you'll know what you're signing up for.