When your days become filled with humdrum but necessary duties, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture. You get up, go to work or school and/or tend to family, and then rinse and repeat the next day. Some of these duties you enjoy, but many leave you frustrated and feeling empty. You wonder how your life evolved to this particular point, and whether you could tweak it so that the pleasure outweighs the pain.

Even the humblest and most boring of tasks can have their little joys. Kitchen chores don’t particularly turn you on, but maybe you can glean some rewards from shining your countertop to glowing perfection. If these little moments are few and far between, what could you do to stretch them further?

A new paper on motivation and personality by Australian Catholic University’s Richard Ryan (2025) offers some useful suggestions. Ryan is the coauthor of one of the most well-known motivation theories in psychology known as “Self Determination Theory,” or SDT. This theory proposes that people are most motivated when they can feel internally, or autonomously, driven. However, getting through those humdrum days that most people experience is often a matter of answering to the bidding of others. A boss gives you deadlines, a family expects food on the table, and even your friends expect you to show up when they need you. SDT’s answer to this dilemma is........

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