I am worried, not excited

When we first received Daniel Pink's Drive, to be honest I just kept thinking..."Oh no...it's just another motivational book". The reason I thought this was because with motivational speeches or books all they do at first is stir you up and excite you during that time, but afterwards that excitement wears off. We really should not be excited after reading the book, we should be worried about why the motivation we had before didn't last us until we read this book. I mean because one of the reasons we read it is to start fresh and motivated in out senior year. What can we do to keep our motivation alive throughout the whole year? Our creativity? Especially since we started this exciting new senior seminar project, we want our creativity to be flowing out of us.
Reading Drive, I realized that the reward we get affects us. I mean one would think we would feel motivated with a prize to work harder, be more creative, and win that prize, but that is not always the case. I love the Creativity section he talks about on pages 42-46. On page 46 he mentions, "It is those who are least motivated to pursue extrinsic rewards who eventually receive them". I went crazy when I read this line because it is completely true! Last year I had in mind receiving some academic awards for classes I thought I excelled. I tried hard to study and to get the highest grade, but the result was pure disaster. I ended up with no awards and tears on my face. I now realize, with help of Drive, that I was learning to widen my knowledge. So to answer my first question, what can we do to keep our motivation and creativity alive throughout the whole year? Well we should focus on gaining knowledge and joy out of what we are learning. If we work and learn this way, when it comes to our senior seminar project (even if we don't get the results we wanted), I'm pretty sure we will get full satisfaction, and motivation and creativity left over.