Ronald Riggio’s “Introduction to Industrial-Organizational Psychology” theorizes motivation as two parts — hygienes and motivators. In situations without hygienes, which are necessary factors for doing work, people fail to self-motivate. You can’t motivate yourself to read a book if the book is five hundred miles away.

Therefore, I propose an old “hygiene” called belief. The theologian Augustine wrote, “If you do not believe something, you will not understand.” Consider if you do not believe in nuclear physics, you would not be able to learn nuclear physics. You would lock yourself out of potential truth.

We see this on campus. If the kid in class next to you does not think the class is worthwhile, she is texting in class. If you were to poke them on the shoulder, they wouldn’t notice. If you ask them what they thought was important about last night’s reading, they could not tell you because they have not done the reading.

It’s not because they can’t think or even that they don’t want to. They probably have very complex thoughts about Tetris, javanoid and what their friends are doing for dinner tonight. For the readings, however, these students can’t comment on what they don’t know. They can’t learn what they don’t think is important enough to learn.

There are relevant, important truths we do not know about — this goes for everyone. If you do not believe it; you will not understand. If you do not think all this school stuff can be relevant; it will not be.

This is why Henry Ford, whose company was the only one of the Big Three to come out alive last year, said, “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you are right.”

This applies to every bit of knowledge that you do not already know.

You might not have all of your values yet. How could you? That’s part of the reason we are at school.

This is how an informed reaction really works. Immanuel Kant wrote, “Concepts without intuitions are empty and intuitions without concepts are blind.” This means if you do not know anything about economics (concepts), you can’t comment on a giant data sheet of economic data from China (intuitions). One can see how a person processes this information — it’s only because they have the concepts to process the information.

What should you expect? On one hand you should expect everything — expect the unexpected. In the way of this method, you should believe everything is potentially important. The understanding part is where you rule it out.

American ingenuity is known for this sort of enthusiasm. Thomas Edison in all of his pictures — to me at least — looks like he’s tired. He must have been working so hard when they took the pictures. It is an American virtue to be enthusiastic about invention and to be realistic about learning. All of the greatest American businessmen and scientists always seem to have this unbridled joy. The joy that without this entry-point they could not even get into their field of knowledge.