MOTIVATION journal entry

The motivation theory I chose from business class that personally motivates me the most is Daniel Pinks. 

When I care about something and think it matters/is relevant(purpose factor from theory) I will be a total perfectionist and work on it until I’m satisfied with myself. But especially as I’ve grown older and have a clearer understanding of my priorities, when I view something as pointless or it doesn’t interest me I dread doing it and a lot of the time will do work that just meets requirements rather than go above and beyond which is when innovation/creativity happens. 

I also believe this idea of mastery plays a key role in my motivation, in school for example if I’m interested in a subject or assignment it will be easier to start because the topic actually engages me, and I will usually spend lots of time researching out of genuine curiosity. 

Additionally I think I’ve always been a very independent person and enjoy having autonomy over my work which Pink proposes as one of the main aspects a company should give their employees for motivation. Ultimately I think I produce better work when I’m given the freedom to do things the way I would do it, because personally many times when I’m given exact guidelines if it doesn’t make sense to me, to do it in this certain specific way I’ll struggle much more to gain motivation to get it done. Some of it because of annoyance but also because ultimately I know I’ll never fully be satisfied with the result. 

This autonomy that we get in CAS establishes all the responsibility for our project on us which personally makes me more motivated to build the best project I can. It gives me much more of a feeling of accomplishment, since I feel more accomplished and deserving of credit for something when it was fully created by me rather than when I do something following specific instructions. I also think as part of autonomy being able to choose who you work with is extremely important for my motivation. When you have a team you can’t rely on and that doesn’t build on each other’s ideas it can be frustrating. Having hard working people with similar mindsets to you is really motivating to me and pushes me to try harder. Additionally, having control over the time you get to complete things ultimately lets me produce better work. If I’m under stress and have a deadline, quality will be lost as ill prioritize getting it done over doing it as best as I can. 

In my CAS project this idea of purpose has truly been the main motivator throughout. I feel a lot of empathy for animals and knowing there’s so many pets suffering in our area has always concerned me. I started this because I wanted to be able to take dogs who are in bad conditions and give them a new worthy life. Currently, although sometimes I’m overwhelmed with other work and don’t want to do tasks for my project which often means a few hours of driving and waiting at the vet. I remind myself that it’s worth taking just a few hours of my day for these animals who deserve a better life. For example the other day I went to get this stray cat that now sort of lives at a restaurant but is very sick and clearly needs to be taken care of. But when I got there after some malfunctioning with the cage the cat ran away and hid under a deck where we couldn’t reach her. This was pretty frustrating as I had a lot of stuff to do that day and had just lost basically an hour, killing my motivation to go back another day, since arranging driving is usually a struggle. However the idea of getting her treated keeps me motivated to go back and get her. 

Teachers can use this theory by giving us more autonomy on what we do with our time at school. Personally I am much more productive when I’m able to decide what I need to work on and when as well as giving us opportunities to research and dive into topics that genuinely interest us(which I think you already get a lot of with IB) .

To maintain motivation in CAS using this theory I will continue to focus and remind myself of the purpose of my project. As well as try and find more people to work with that I feel inspired and motivated by.