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This is the third in my three-part series of self-assessment inventories, "Do You Know How to Be..."
Part I is Do You Know How to be Resilient?
Part 2 is: Do You Know How to Be Practical?
Here is Part 3: Do You Know How to be Motivated?
This self-assessment may help you identify one or more ways to increase your motivation to accomplish.
1. Motivated people realize that productivity is key to the life well-led. They recognize that they could have a 100% pleasurable life watching comedies, eating great food, having sex, etc. but that life has much more value when quite productive.
2. As a result of believing that productivity is so important, motivated people are consistently willing to choose the less pleasant but more productive option. They work even when they don’t feel like it. They stay with hard but important tasks, perhaps getting help, and only giving up when they'd be wise to redirect their time and effort to a more productive activity.
They rarely let themselves get distracted. A client wanted to write a book and knew that to finish it in a reasonable time, she needed single-minded focus. So she told all her many friends that she’ll be incommunicado until the book is done.
3. Motivated people put themselves in situations in which they’re likely to succeed. Put even a driven person in a boxing ring with a heavyweight champion, after getting beaten up in the first round, he’s unlikely to come out for the second, let alone the tenth.
4. Motivated people don’t talk much about what they can do, might do, should do. They do! Henry Ford said, “You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do.” Thomas Edison added, “Vision without execution is just hallucination.”
5. Many motivated people are driven in part by a sense of guilt. They believe that to be unproductive is to be a slacker, and they don't respect slackers.
6. Many motivated people are driven by a sense of inferiority. They believe that unless they work hard, they will too often produce inadequate work.
Of course, too low self-esteem can be paralytic. I’ve known many highly motivated people in my professional and personal life.I’d guess that most of them would score between 3 and 6 on a 10-scale of global self-esteem. A review of the literature in Psychological Science in the Public Interest concluded, “Our findings do not support continued widespread efforts to boost self-esteem in the hope that it will by itself foster improved outcomes. In view of the heterogeneity of high self-esteem, indiscriminate praise might just as easily promote narcissism.” Socialist Nobel Prize winner, Bertrand Russell was more blunt, “The fundamental cause of trouble in the world is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
7. Some motivated people are driven by a desire to serve others: support their family, their friends, improve the world.
8. Some motivated people are driven by wanting to achieve numerical goals, perhaps money but sometimes just beating a number, whether a sales quota, personal-best running time, whatever.
9. Some motivated people are driven by seeing how much they can accomplish, moment by moment. They feel great about getting lots done and crossing items off their to-do list.
10. Some motivated people are driven to prove their detractors wrong. In contrast, denigration makes less motivated people more likely to fold.
11. Most motivated people realize that--per the most authoritative research--pot is demotivating, not to mention damaging to their memory and possibly their mental stability.
12. Motivated people have the energy to be motivated: They get enough sleep, exercise moderately, and, okay, they may, like me, drink a daily cup or two of coffee.
The takeaway
Does this self-assessment make you want to change one or more things to improve your motivation? If so, what?
I think I'm going to get myself a cup of coffee.
Marty Nemko’s bio is in Wikipedia. His new book, his 8th, is The Best of Marty Nemko.
