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Saturday, April 16, 2011

Motivation

I haven't written much about motivation itsef here, on Stupid Motivational Tricks, but it is the single most significant factor. Without motivation, there is no reason to even get out of bed in the morning. With strong enough motivation, people can do amazing things that you wouldn't think possible.

Many confuse motivation with the temporary feeling of enthusiasm that you might derive from an occasional stimulus. Suppose you had just seen a motivational speaker and were very excited about what you could do. Believe in yourself! That would be nice, but what happens a week later when the speaker is somewhere else giving the same speech to another audience? A week after that? How do you keep that motivation going?

No. Motivation needs to be something different.

It must be goal oriented. Very specific, narrow goals must fit into finite, definite windows of time. (Write 1000 words this week.) These narrow goals must be tied to more grandiose ones. For example, one of my early professional goals was to be the top expert in 20th century Spanish poetry in the US. This sort of grandiose goal is meaningless without the intermediate steps, the extreme short time (the day, the week), and the medium-term (the article, the semester, the year).

Motivation must also be realistic. Realistic doesn't mean easy, but within possible reach. For example, one of my goals was to publish in the PMLA. This was very difficult, and I have been rejected by the PMLA more times than I care to confess, but I did publish one article there.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Once again, very interesting. I was taught goals should be survival oriented: pass the test, get the degree, make tenure. Higher goals were arrogant.

And this attitude is still around - just last week I said I was going to send a prospectus to Press X and someone raised an eyebrow, I'm aiming too high. Ho hum.

Jonathan said...

I think most people's goals are survival-oriented. I think this is a mistake. I never worried about tenure because I had a much higher goal set for myself.

You will be called arrogant, however, if you make your grandiose goals known to others. I get called that all the time. I just don't give a fuck if anyone thinks I'm arrogant.

Anonymous said...

I guess there are some people who are arrogant f***s but most of the people I know who get called "arrogant," aren't ... they're just competent. And I guess it's true, having high goals gets you called arrogant. I say, somebody has to have vision, otherwise nothing gets done.

I agree that mere survival as a goal is a mistake!!! But I guess everyone should think about actual goals. I remember that in graduate school, I had this boyfriend who couldn't focus on his dissertation until he figured out what kind of non academic job he wanted ... his demotivation wasn't about his project, it turned out, or time and task management, or self confidence, but about career.

Anonymous said...

And hmmm, this blog makes me think. I wonder, along the lines of Clarissa's question as to whether self sabotage really exists, does demotivation?

I remember my culture shock at my first job, discovering that the motivation of many was stability, whereas mine was still exploration and discovery. I remember thinking, literally, "But I am too young to die!"

So I guess one recommendation I'd have would be for people to figure out what their actual desires are beyond survival, and to honor them.

Anonymous said...

And hmmm, now having graded a few more essays ...

Demotivation is:

- if it seems Quixotic *and* is not your passion, *especially* if you have another passion, and

- if it is very difficult and it does not come from you.

Ergo:

- whatever it is, really has to come from you.

Over and out.

Anonymous said...

Coda, the next day: the diagnosis of survival oriented goals as a problem is very astute.

I actually published a creative piece about this in relation to academic writing and forgot. The idea was: the goal of survival creates block. The focus has to be the project, and you have to give yourself authority in it.

The idea that your work could be important as work is actually not something I learned in well enough in graduate school. And that people should.