The governance problem how to make people want to do what they ought to do has mainly been conceived as a problem of motivation. Motivation is a key factor in contemporary welfare societies, where people are expected to learn, work, and adapt voluntarily and through self-management rather than through submission. As a result, motivation has become target as well as outcome of intensified Motivational Work (MW) at the intersection of pedagogy and managment. We examine and compare the formation, differentiations and affective economies of motivation in three key historical and current sites of intervention: Education, work organizations, and social work. Approaching motivational work as an assemblage of social technologies, everyday practices and knowledge production, we ask: Given that human self-dependence and freedom is not only taken for granted, but is a field of intervention, how is motivation mobilized and modulated in and across MW targeting students, employees, and clients? And how may we make an affirmative critique and re-articulate the motivational work conducted through concepts like affects, liminality and aesthtics?