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Recalibration III.

Apr 27, ’10 1:33 AM

In my past post, I started to explore the concept of motivation and called attention to why being motivated isn’t always a good thing.

In thinking about my personal and professional lives over the past decade – particularly as it relates to the concept of motivation – I’ve learned the concept of motivation cannot, and perhaps should not, be discussed without a keen focus on the “goal” or objective.  In my opinion, you cannot be motivated to do something if you aren’t sure what you’re motivated for, and goals don’t become real unless someone is actively doing something to make sure they are realized.

Of course, this sounds obvious, right?  In my opinion, it becomes less obvious when there is misalignment between the two.  The purpose of this post is to further explain this connection, highlight the risks when there is misalignment, and illustrate what it means to have “ideal” alignment.

I think achievement of a goal or objective comes down to five things:

1. Understanding what it is that you want and why.
2. Understanding the pathways to bring you towards that goal.
3. Introducing appropriate motivators to push you towards your goal.
4. Periodically ensuring the motivators are working appropriately or need to be replaced.
5. Advance towards a place where supplemental motivators are not required.

Let’s use an example to walk through this process.

Let’s say that you are trying to lose weight.  In order to keep you moving in the right direction, you share your goal with your family and friends.  After all, you may need them to help you stay on track.  And of course, there are many other “motivators” including rewards that you give yourself for reaching milestones in your weight loss journey.  Collectively, this is what I call a motivation framework or motivation support system.  In most cases, having a support system is a good idea.

If your goal is aligned with your values and mission, you’ll find that your motivation level and your ability to reach your goal feeds upon its own successes.  Because your mind is not bound within a self-justification cycle (“I want to lose weight because …”) the energy pathways between mind and body are in alignment and you can ultimately achieve a state of “flow”.  By achieving this state of being, your need for supplemental motivators decreases rapidly and you become further empowered to take on greater challenges (i.e. “I lost ten pounds, but I feel good enough to lose another ten!”).

If however, your wish to lose weight is indirectly connected to your values and purpose, a number of things can start to happen.  First, your support structure may start to “overrun” your initial desire – i.e. your motivation support group may end up being more motivated than you are!  When and if this occurs, you may find that your own motivation starts to plummet and you end up doing less than before.  This downward spiral can proceed even further when your support system begins to run out of energy (i.e. they are no longer providing any motivational support) and/or begins to show its disappointment that you are not reaching your goal (showing evidence that perhaps your support structure wasn’t the right choice to begin with).

As you can start to imagine, this single disconnect between goal identification and values/mission has the potential to negatively influence other aspects of your life – i.e. “If I can’t lose ten pounds with support, how can I do anything?”

In order to have true alignment between goal and motivation, I think one needs to pay close attention to the following:

  • Understand what it is that you want. Keep in mind that this can be a moving target – that’s okay.  If your desires change, ensure that your motivation and motivation support structure changes as well.  If your goals are changing frequently, it might be appropriate to revisit your values and mission.
  • Make sure that your motivation does not require constant support. If it does, it’s possible that don’t want to achieve the goal in the first place.  Along similar lines, if you are tackling the right goal and have the right motivation framework in place, you’ll find that your pursuit of the goal will be natural and the need for motivational support will be much less.
  • You are human. Waning feelings of motivation are normal and may not require significant changes to your goal or support structure.  Instead, you may need to look elsewhere to understand these feelings.

In my opinion, the ideal state is having a goal that is directly linked to your core being and ultimately drives you. It’s the catalyst and energy source for all action.  Without this source, your source for motivation will always need “supplemental power sources” (at least to some extent).  I think that achievement of the farthest end of this motivation maturity scale is the identification and pursuit of a goal that is ultimately self-powered.

In my next post within this series, I’ll spend more time focusing on the human aspect of motivation and goal attainment – this is ultimately where I’ll introduce the next area of “recalibration” which is persistence.

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Recalibration II.

Apr 13, ’10 2:21 AM

“Motivation: … the psychological feature that arouses an organism to action toward a desired goal; the reason for the action; that which gives purpose and direction to behavior.” (Source unknown)

In my last post, I highlighted three main areas where I would like to improve – self-motivation, perseverance and connection.  In this post I’ll continue my exploration of motivation.

All too often, the word “motivation” has a positive connotation.  After all, how often do you hear public speakers or other leadership types exclaim “Be Motivated!”  Because of this, how can one not assume that being motivated is always the right thing to do?

In contrast to public opinion, I believe that being motivated to do something isn’t always the right decision.  Why?  Because you could be motivated to do the wrong thing – i.e. something that is misaligned with your core values and/or for the wrong reasons.  In the above definition, it’s easy to assume that the goal or “reason for the action” is clearly known, but in many cases it may not be.

In thinking about this concept, my belief is that truly understanding what motivates one to do something can ultimately help one achieve a particular goal faster than if that level of awareness is left unchecked. Along a similar path, gaining this understanding early on can also highlight whether the goal should be abandoned entirely – i.e. is being motivated truly the right path in a given situation?  In short, I think one needs to have a clear understanding of the goal (and the reasons why achievement of that goal is worth the pursuit) before being motivated to act.

Let me share a personal example to illustrate this concept in more depth.

I grew up in a family where education and success went together.  Over time, I started to believe that my success (the goal) was primarily dependent upon my education.  Not withstanding my desire to learn, even after my master’s degree I continued to take classes in the hope that I would eventually acquire enough knowledge to be “successful”.

My business coach challenged this long-standing belief late last year when I started formulating the basis for Big Generator.  Up until that time, I never thought that I was truly ready to move forward.  Did I know enough?  Did I have enough experience? The answer is that I’ll never know enough.  Thus, I consciously decided to accept this fact and the rest would need to come with more experience.

This example is relevant because being motivated to continue with my education vs. moving forward with my business could have been the wrong decision over the long-term.  Thus, being motivated to carry out the wrong goal for the wrong reasons doesn’t make the activity right.  Instead, being motivated to advance the business while continuing to gain knowledge is the right decision for me at this time in my life.

Formal education, while deemed worthy in nearly all contexts, is actually the direct opposite in this example.  In essence, formal education was employed as a “motivator” to help me meet a goal that I call “success”.  However, “success” takes more than being well-educated.  Thus, taking inventory of what I wanted to do and identifying the right motivators allowed me to break out of this cycle and make alternative decisions.

This isn’t to say that there will not be times when the mantra of “get motivated” doesn’t have value – particularly in situations where you aren’t excited about the path you’re on, but there really isn’t any choice but to use an alternative (positive) perspective and go ahead with the task at hand.  However, in the grand scheme of things, it’s important to understand what it is that you want and build a motivation framework to help you achieve that which you are seeking.

In my next post in this series, I’ll go into more depth about this framework and show some guidelines to make sure that you are motivated for the right reasons.

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“True” and “False” Advancement Experience

Dec 11, ’08 10:59 PM

Ten years ago (yes, I think all the time), I wrote the following article about two concepts that I labeled “true” and “false” advancement (learning) experience:

True advancement experience (TAE) is experience that is pro-active and “real”.  Information is obtained on the way to a clear goal.  The more information and experience that is turned up along the way strengthens the overall advancement experience.  A goal must exist in order for true advancement to occur.

False advancement experience (FAE) is experience that is wasteful and potentially meaningless.  FAE occurs when there is no key goal in place.  Information that enters the system becomes quickly assimilated, but due to the increased flow, the retrieval and retention rate is decreases dramatically.  Information overload will always occur in this type of learning environment.  An example of a FAE is spending an increased amount of time configuring a windowing system when the command-line interface is already sufficient.  Experience gained from system-specific configuration is mostly FAE since most of the time spent is due to lack of planning and documentation more than anything else.

Knowing the differences between TAE and FAE is very important to overall advancement.  Time is always a commodity; therefore it must be used wisely.  Know exactly what you are attempting to learn and what you need to accomplish, and your advancement and success rate will increase.

Ten years later, has my perspective changed about TAE and FAE?  Yes and no.  Let me explain.

Let’s say that you are interested in computer graphics, and you have an interest in animation.  One potential starting point is to acquire a 3D animation program and start learning the basics.  After installing and launching the application, you are overwhelmed with the number of features.  This is where things become interesting.

If you start investigating other aspects of the program that have nothing (or little) to do with animation, you could label this “false” advancement experience since what you are learning is not essential to your end goal.  In contrast, if you stay true to your goal of becoming an animator (or at least learning how) and just focus on aspects of the program that involve “animation”, you will gain the experience that you were originally interested in and thus have gained “true” advancement experience.

One possibility of course is that you could choose to learn about other aspects of the program first and then eventually get back to the core “animation” functionality.  In this way, you are just taking a slight “detour” from your destination to gain broader context.  Is this really “false” advancement experience?

Another possibility is that you choose the second path – i.e. “true” advancement experience – and find out that you have to learn other aspects of the program to be able to start animating.  More specifically, you may need to learn how to create a 3D model that you can eventually animate!  Is this really “true” advancement experience?

As you can see here, labeling one’s learning (or advancement) experience as “true” or “false is perhaps too restrictive.

Given my pursuits of numerous goals, I think learning effectively comes down to awareness (“what do I want to learn?”) and focus (“how do I want to learn the material?”).

For example, in order to gain the most from your learning experience, you need to know what you want to accomplish.  The answer could very well be “I don’t know”.  This is a perfectly acceptable answer as it provides you with a lot of freedom to explore different areas.  In contrast, if you know that you want to be an animator (using the example above), this at least gives you a “learning beacon” towards which you can navigate.

Once you have awareness, you now need to focus.  Assuming you know you want to learn animation, you can still explore other areas of the software application without feeling that you are veering off-course.  The trick here is that the degree of your focus will determine how much time and effort you spend in a different area, and whether you ultimately return to your original “path”.

For example, let’s say that you need a 3D model to animate.  Instead of taking a separate path to learn how to model, you could instead focus your efforts on using an existing 3D model.  This would save you time and get you back on track.  But here again, there is some risk in being “too” focused on your end goal.  At some point you will eventually need to learn how to model new objects to further broaden your experience.  Should you do that now or later?

At this point, you can start to understand some of the challenges I’ve personally faced in learning new things.  My personality is one that loves to learn and build connections between unrelated topics.  Because I understand the benefits, I allow myself considerable freedom to explore new areas and concepts to formulate new ones.  However, as I learn new material, I take time to continuously refine where I am going (i.e. “awareness”).

In summary, when taking on a new challenge, take the time to gain awareness of what you want to learn and try to map out a strategy on how to accomplish your goal.  Once you get into the learning process, you will find new “pathways” that you need to consider taking.  Don’t be afraid to take these paths but keep your destination in mind, and don’t be afraid to change the destination.

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