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  • (January 12, 2023, 01:18:11 AM)

Author Topic: Motivation for Geeks  (Read 13971 times)

Chris

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Motivation for Geeks
« on: July 09, 2008, 11:37:41 PM »

URL: http://www.gotthegeek.com/content/view/231/1/

Have you ever felt as though you just didn’t want to go into work because there was no use in doing so because every day is the same thing? You’re not alone. In fact, millions of people feel this same way each and everyday that they go into work.

Recently I have noticed myself having a lessened sense of motivation on all fronts of my life – both professionally and personally. I have noticed my enthusiasm towards work dwindling and my devotion to weight lifting almost have no meaning at all. I have taken it upon myself to begin to read up on self-motivation skills and find out just what goes on inside of our minds that lead us to believe that sleeping all day is the right course of action to cope with our lack of motivation.

What lies ahead is a collection of ideas and thoughts that I have gathered while reading countless articles on self-motivation, as well as trying a few different methods over the last several weeks while at work, at home, and generally out and about. Ok, well maybe not countless articles. But a fair amount.

Be honest with yourself
Personally, I think the first step towards effective motivation in the work place is simply being honest with yourself. Ask yourself this string of questions: “Is this really what I want to do? Is this a job or a career? Is my personal life and my professional life congruent with one another?” The answers to these questions should begin to shed light on to whether or not you can truly be motivated to the point where the benefits of the work you produce serve as motivation to you. If you can honestly say that the results of your work motivate you to produce more work of the same caliber, then you have found your calling. Think of this calling like a turbo but instead of utilizing exhaust to produce more power, more motivation leads to more passionate motivation and it feeds on itself.

If however, you only see your job as a job and not a career, and don’t allow your personal and professional lives to be congruent with one another, then it might take some outside motivation to help you realize that the job you are working is indeed a career and should be allowed to intertwine with your personal life. This doesn’t mean that any “job” can be turned into a “career”. Being a police officer isn’t for everyone, just like being a professional football player isn’t for everyone. You have to use your own judgment when it comes time to call it quits and move on to hopefully finding the career that’s meant for you.

Have a positive attitude
Motivation and attitude go hand in hand. If someone has a poor attitude towards whatever it is they are doing, then most likely they lack motivation as well. If someone has an eager “can do” attitude towards what they are doing, then they most likely have the motivation that is needed to be successful in life.

This is something that I suspect almost all workers do from time to time: Complain about their place of work. People tend to complain about customers, co-workers, superiors, and even the environment in which they work.

This is probably one of the worst habits that a person can pick up aside from hard core drugs that create an attachment stronger than a mother has towards her child. Take weight training as an example. In order to be able to lift 300 pounds, you must first work your way up to 100, then 120, then 140 and so on. By doing this you are conditioning your muscles to be able to endure the weight and stress of the object you are trying to lift. With that same thought process, by continuously believing that everyday at work is the worst day of your life you are conditioning your mind and body to believe that it’s true. For those of you familiar with psychology, this idea is very similar to learned helplessness. Learned helplessness is a condition in which the subject has learned to believe that it is helpless in a particular situation when in fact there are solutions to the problem at hand.

How can you expect to be motivated towards something that you have conditioned yourself to dislike and/or hate? If Olympic athletes told themselves every morning when they woke up that they hate the sport that they have so passionately trained for countless hours in order ascertain a feat that only a hand full of individuals in the world can relate to, would they be able to succeed and become world class athletes? Most likely not.

Instead of having a negative demeanor, challenge yourself to do the following: When you are woken up in the morning by your alarm clock, resist the urge to proclaim, “Oh god, another day of work from hell!” Instead make an effort to reinforce in your mind that the day ahead is going to be a good day. Make this a conscience effort for a month; Everyday for one month. By the end of a one month period, you should no longer have to force yourself into thinking that the day ahead of you will not be a day from hell, but instead be the first day of the rest of your life. If you need help accomplishing this goal, keep telling yourself that you will think positive thoughts about the next day upon waking up before you go to sleep. Keep repeating this mental reminder for several minutes while you are trying to go to sleep.

Set Goals
Before I go on about goals, it’s important to note that the way in which you construct your goals determines the outcome in which you will likely derive from that goal. If you make your goal too broad then the chances of you achieving that goal during the allotted amount of time are greatly reduced. If your goal is very specific and you are honest with your own abilities, then the chances of you achieving your goal are greatly increased.

Setting goals is a good idea because it gives direction. If you go into work everyday and you don’t know what you are working towards, then you have no purpose, and without a purpose, you most likely don’t have any motivation to get the work done. Setting goals solves that problem of not having a clear direction in which to work towards.

Think of goals having a structure that is shaped just like a triangle. At the pinnacle is your definitive goal which is impossible to reach without the goals that are below them – This concept is very similar to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in which in order for self-actualization to take place (Which is located at the tip of the triangle) the needs below it must be fulfilled. What you decide as your definitive goal is up to you, and the height of the triangle depends on that very same goal. The more outrageous the goal is, the higher the triangle will have to be in order to accommodate such goals. If you find that you have a somewhat difficult goal at the pinnacle of the triangle, yet the height of the triangle is very short, your lower level goals may be too broad and you might be setting yourself up for failure before even starting.

Remember goals are like pennies: A penny is a penny, 100 pennies make up a dollar, and so on and so forth. Each large goal is broken down into many other smaller goals that can be reached on an almost daily basis. Wouldn’t it be nice to score a goal everyday rather than once every several months? Winning is a good way to boost motivation, so do yourself a favour and set some goals that you can score.

Learn from your mistakes and failures
If there’s one thing I’m good at while at work, it’s learning from my mistakes. Each and everyday on my way home from work I think to myself what I could have done differently in order for things to gone better. I make a mental note of that and the next day that I work I make it a point to work out that issue before it becomes a problem. This doesn’t mean I just focus on the negative things that have happened during the day – I take time to reflect upon the positive things during the day. Though it almost goes without saying that in order to improve on something I must be able to honestly identify points of weakness.

Don’t be afraid to admit to yourself and to others that you have done something wrong. You’re better off owning up to your mistakes when your boss inquires as to what went wrong rather than trying to lie or place the blame on someone else. Make sure that you learn from your mistakes though. Don’t let them haunt you for they are likely to be the first thing that you think about the next day when that alarm clock goes off and it’s time to get ready for work again.

Switch things up
Vito Whitlach has said this before in his weight loss blog: “The only thing that shouldn’t change is change itself”. Avoid becoming burnt out by doing different things at different times of the day in a totally different order than the previous day if at all possible. This will keep your mind on its toes trying to guess what’s going to be the next thing around the corner.

The idea behind this is to make the idea of working more appealing if you find yourself having a hard time staying motivated and focused on the task at hand. This idea of constantly changing the order in which you do things works great when weight training. If you’ve ever tried lifting weights for several weeks straight you’ll know what I’m talking about. After several weeks of conditioning your body to lift a certain amount of weight after doing a certain sequence of exercises, it’s no longer breaking down muscle in order to endure the strain of such lifts. In this case your muscles have effectively become numb to the daily grind of the same work out routine that you have been following for the last several weeks. In order to overcome this, simply switch the order in which you do things along with changing the amount of resistance, and you should start to see improvements once again.
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Demosthenes

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Re: Motivation for Geeks
« Reply #1 on: July 10, 2008, 10:50:52 AM »

I complain about work because if I did not, I would explode.
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MISTER MASSACRE

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Re: Motivation for Geeks
« Reply #2 on: July 11, 2008, 07:48:27 AM »

I would be less entertained on a daily basis, too (if Demosthenes stopped compaining).
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MaRkNemesis

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Re: Motivation for Geeks
« Reply #3 on: January 04, 2010, 01:48:49 PM »

Great topic!
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Demosthenes

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Re: Motivation for Geeks
« Reply #4 on: January 04, 2010, 02:00:28 PM »

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rogue_77

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Re: Motivation for Geeks
« Reply #5 on: February 10, 2010, 06:33:55 PM »

"Ask yourself this string of questions: “Is this really what I want to do? Is this a job or a career? Is my personal life and my professional life congruent with one another?”

You know, people should ask themselves that more but most of the time the answer will be 'this is a job, this isn't what I want to do with my life.' Then the question is what do you want to do and how do you get there?

Me?  I want to be a physicist or a deep sea biologist or a travel writer.

People just want to be things they can't be without about 4-8 years + all the time lost for failed classes.

Then you have to just ask yourself is this job something I can handle doing for the rest of my life?

I think thats the boat most people are in....  =\

I know I would be so much better in certain careers but I have no shot because I have no experience in those fields.
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