Feeling Competent?
The psychology of motivation & one fundamental ingredient we often ignore.
Of all the ideas I’ve encountered this year, the construct of competence has been one that has really captured my attention. Competence refers to a felt sense of confidence in one's actions, and a capacity to effectively manage interactions with one's environment. There’s been a wealth of research on the construct and its importance in psychological wellbeing. We want to feel competent, and when we feel competent, we feel much better about ourselves.
Additionally, competence functions as a determinant of motivation. If we invest in something, we want to see or feel progress. There’s a reason proximal (close) goals drive immediate action and persistence more effectively than distal (distant) goals. We want to feel competent, now. How many times have you given something up because you didn’t see improvement (lacked a sense of competence)? In my mid 20s I took dance classes regularly for a year or so. Week after week I failed to remember the steps or maintain much fluidity. I would watch my classmates in awe, gliding and moon dancing around, whilst I felt like an amnesiac tin man, frequently confusing my left and rights and generally struggling to know what was going on. In the end, my competence took a beating. I haven’t taken a dance class in years.
Research has shown a correlation between low perceived competence and activity dropout rates, as well as burn out in elite rugby players, athletes and dancers. These studies illustrate a pattern: many drop out or lose interest because they struggle to sustain motivation when competence wanes. The implications of this are significant. An investment in maintaining a sense of competence is one of the most powerful things we can do when working towards our goals and for our psychological wellbeing. Often, although not always, the two go hand in hand.
A sense of competence is supported by tasks that are optimally challenging. Theoretically, this means a challenge somewhere between what you’re capable of now and what lies just beyond your current capabilities. Optimally challenging, however sexy it may sound, is in practice difficult to define and varies between individuals, depending on past experiences and individual differences. This is why cookie cutter programs produced en mass don’t tend to work - not because the exercises are not ‘good’ exercises but because what is optimally challenging for one person can be very different to another person. Too easy and we get bored and disengage. Too hard and we feel incompetent and disengage. For some, optimal challenge looks like an opera cake; several delicate layers of almond sponge, coffee buttercream and chocolate ganache, each layer baked, set and assembled with total precision. For others, it looks like a microwave mug cake. There is no right or wrong, the key is finding the right recipe for you.
Finding your level of optimal challenge requires practice. It requires failure. It requires a confrontation with feelings of incompetence. How well do you deal with these? Do failure and difficulty motivate you to push harder? Keep the level of challenge high. You don’t deal with failure well and find it deeply demotivating? Bring down the demands significantly and break the process into smaller portions. This requires an honest investigation into oneself. This is, in part why a physical practice and an engagement with the process are so powerful. How well do you really know yourself? A deep dive into the process is a deep dive into the self. However, we’ll sideline that for another day.
The next time you start to feel that motivation begins to wane, ask yourself, how are you experiencing competence? Is what you're doing too easy, or too hard? If the goal is important then these variables can be manipulated appropriately to bring you back to optimal challenge and keep you on track. This appears to be one of the most powerful motivational tools we have at our disposal, and yet we barely talk about it.
PS. the beautiful thing about competence is that it functions as psychological construct across different contexts. I’ve spoken about goal achievement and wellness here, however it's also an important aspect of relationship satisfaction, satisfaction at work and so on. We want to feel interpersonally competent. In relationships, whether they be intimate or familiar, we want to feel like we are able to contribute and effectively manage. Relationships that thrive, are ones in which each participant feels competent in their role. “I am a good [friend/spouse/brother]”. That unfortunate relationship in which one, or both people relentlessly tell the other how useless they are, regardless of the motivation behind it, is likely doomed, either to failure or misery. Why? It’s a fast-track way to destroy someone's sense of competence and lead to feelings of frustration, disconnection and demotivation.
Whether in the gym, at work, or in love our sense of competence shapes whether we show up and how we show up. Nurturing this sense of competence in yourself and those around you, may be one of the best tools you have to maintain motivation and boost wellness.