Category: motivation

What Motivates You?

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

Our professional lives are increasingly defined by how much we dare to care.

Whatever filled us with energy and motivation at the outset must be constantly refilled. The “wow” of the first 100 days doesn’t replenish itself, and waiting for someone or something else is not the answer—we could be waiting forever, and that denies our agency.

So, here’s a starter list that I wrote without AI, because the value to me was the thinking—about what’s motivated me in the past, how I get through ups and downs, and what I’ve seen work for others.

I’m sure you could make the list much longer, as an interesting intellectual exercise.

But it would be even more valuable if find the 3-5 reasons that resonate with you, the things that, honestly, are what make you care about your work.

Then share that list with your boss, your colleagues, with other people that matter in your personal and professional life.

  • I believe that our work helps clients succeed in creating meaningful change
  • I believe that my work is the difference between something being unclear and it being clear
  • I believe that when I do my best work I serve as a model to others within the team
  • I love teaching people
  • I love learning new things
  • I love solving problems
  • I love checking things off my list
  • I am motivated to keep my promises
  • I am professionally ambitious, and I want to impress my boss
  • If I get this work done well, it will get noticed, and I’ll get to broaden my suite of work to encompass more things that I find interesting
  • I am working towards a raise / promotion / bigger paycheck
  • I am a person who keeps my commitments—that’s just who I am
  • I take a lot of pride in a job well done
  • I really like my client, and I want to make them happy
  • I really like the company we’re working for, and I want to make them happy
  • I find it fun to work with numbers / words / analysis / etc. and I get to do that in my job
  • I’m curious what it takes to really wow someone, and I’m going to keep at it until I can hit that bar
  • My boss believes in me, and I want to justify that belief
  • My team believes in me, and I want to justify that belief
  • My client believes in me, and I want to justify that belief
  • I want to make my mom/dad/brother/sister/kids/dog/cat proud

We can’t tap into our motivation if we don’t know where it comes from.

Eradicating the two-handed forehand

~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

Last weekend I was playing tennis with my son.

To get a little more oomph on the ball, he has been hitting his forehand with two hands.  He’s definitely big enough now to hit it one-handed, so I decided to try to change the habit.

Me:                        Try hitting with one hand!

(thwack!!)             (two handed forehand)

Me:                        That’s great!  Remember, one handed!

(thwack!!!)            (two handed)

Me:                        Good job!

(thwack!!)            (two handed)

Me:                       Excellent.  Let’s try it with one hand now…

(thwack!!)            (yes, two handed again).

 

So, I tried another tactic.

Me:                        Let’s play a game.  You get one point for connecting with the ball, two points for hitting it over the net with two hands, and four points for hitting it over the net with one hand.

(thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack)           (ALL with one hand).

 

Kids are just kids, right?  That’s why this works, because they love simple, arbitrary games like this….  Something like “getting more points” for doing something would never motivate an adult.

Maybe, maybe not.

Too often we attack a problem or a behavior that we want to change (in ourselves, in someone else) by taking it head on.  This gets us there intellectually but not emotionally, which is why we so often fall short on making the changes we want to make.  We overestimate the capacity of our logical, deductive mind to influence behavior, based on a belief system that says that our logical, deductive mind is in charge – when it really isn’t.

One other observation.  While playing with my son, I started giving out “bonus” points for all sorts of things – long rallies, backhands, great gets, you name it.  But even with this good intention in mind, I would occasionally hold myself back in giving out these points – based on a vague notion of being “fair” and playing by the established rules.

Talk about crazy: being stingy in giving out made-up points in a made-up game, because I wanted to be fair.

It’s almost never the wrong time to be more liberal in giving out praise, rewards, acknowledgments that people value.  Yet somehow we hold back, keeping great words of encouragement to ourselves.

And so the two-handed forehands – the crutches people rely upon because they don’t know how good, strong, and capable they really are – persist.