Ok, so I am counteracting the immaturity displayed in the previous post with some intellectual discourse regarding a motivational theory I learned in my Behavior Organization class today. Actually, I’m surprised I learned anything at all because I felt like such a zombie this morning. I had only gotten (did u know gotten is not actually a word?) 4 hours of sleep writing an article review that I obliterated with procrastination. How I stayed awake this morning is a shock to me.

While I was dozing off I thought about snails and the stretch of time. I was commiserating with myself on how time seemed to drag on into infinite seconds and how my eyelids felt SO heavy. I imagined a snail inching across my eyelids leaving behind a gross trail of snail juice; he’s pulling down the blinds and forcing my eyes to close, so that I could finally go into a deep sleep. And then I started to do the cross-eyed head-bobbing jiggle, and was tremendously saved by a 10 minute break to get free iced coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts!!!! That’s when I learned about this theory.

The Herzberg “Two-Factor” Theory is basically explained in the following equation:

Satisfied Not Dissatisfied

This may seem confusing at first, but it simply means that there is a significant difference between the factors involved with not being unhappy, and being happy. There’s a lot more meat to this theory, with specific applications intended for the workplace (you can read about it here)–however, I find myself applying this concept to my life outside the career frame of mind.

There’s a difference between your extrinsic and intrinsic values that need to be identified. What are your basic primitive needs? Food, water, good health, and family. These are your extrinsic needs. Having these basic essentials around doesn’t really make you giddily happy. However, without them, you probably wouldn’t be so happy. Thus, following Herzberg’s theory, having these basic needs would not make you unhappy.

On the flip side, the things that motivate and drive us to succeed are the fuels of our ambition. This is derived from our human nature to get what we WANT, rather than need. If you want that fancy BMW, that probably means you want recognition–a type of intrinsic need. Achievement, self-actualization, responsibility, true love–these are all types of intrinsic needs, or rather, wants. We don’t need these things to survive in life, but we definitely want them so that we could feel important.

Anyway, I just wanted to throw that out into cyberspace because I feel that it is important to differentiate wants vs. needs.

I need food to survive.
I want double-fried curly fries soaked in ranch dressing and sprinkled with bacon bits.

I need money, and thus a job to have security in life.
I want TONS of money, so that I can buy all the Gucci bags, diamond jewelry, and weekend trips to Europe just for the hell of it.

Those are just very basic examples. This concept is easy, isn’t it? And yet so hard to deal with at the same time….

All I know is that I am damned by this theory because I now realize that I am neither happy, nor am I not unhappy. I am just floating in limbo. Or the line that goes through the equal sign.