Motivation

How to remain Motivated

Stop waiting for motivation or inspiration to strike you and set a
schedule for your habits. This is the difference between professionals
and amateurs. Professionals set a schedule and stick to it. Amateurs
wait until they feel inspired or motivated.
Many other famous creative writers have rituals too…
• Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon writes five nights per week
from 10 PM to 3 AM.
• Haruki Murakami wakes up at 4 AM, writes for five hours, and then
goes for a run
Routine-Habit-Motivation
 Case Study
I begin each day of my life with a ritual; I wake up at 5:30 A.M., put on
my workout clothes, my leg warmers, my sweatshirts, and my hat. I
walk outside my Manhattan home, hail a taxi, and tell the driver to
take me to the Pumping Iron gym at 91st street and First Avenue,
where I workout for two hours. The ritual is not the stretching and
weight training I put my body through each morning at the gym; the
ritual is the cab. The moment I tell the driver where to go I have
completed the ritual.

It’s a simple act, but doing it the same way each morning habitualizes
it — makes it repeatable, easy to do. It reduces the chance that I
would skip it or do it differently. It is one more item in my arsenal of
routines, and one less thing to think about.
The Goldilocks Rule
 Definitions of
Goldilocks Rule
Psychologist Gilbert Brim put it, “One of the important
sources of human happiness is working on tasks at a suitable
level of difficulty, neither too hard nor too easy

In order to reach this state of peak performance, however,

you not only need to work on challenges at the right degree
of difficulty, but also measure your immediate progress. As
psychologist Jonathan Haidt explains, one of the keys to
reaching a flow state is that “you get immediate feedback
about how you are doing at each step.”
 When Motivation Fades
• Consider every thought you have as a suggestion, not an order. Right
now, as I'm writing this, my mind is suggesting that I feel tired. It is
suggesting that I give up. It is suggesting that I take an easier path.

• If I pause for a moment, however, I can discover new suggestions.

My mind is also suggesting that I will feel very good about
accomplishing this work once it is done. It is suggesting that I will
respect the identity I am building when I stick to the schedule. It is
suggesting that I have the ability to finish this task, even when I
don’t feel like.

• Remember, none of these suggestions are orders. They are merely

options. I have the power to choose which option I follow .
 Motivation - Meaning
Internal and external factors that stimulate desire and energy in people to be
continually interested and committed to a job/ role or subject, or to make an
effort to attain a specific goal.

Motivation results from the interaction of both conscious and unconscious factors
such as the
(1) intensity of desire or need
(2) incentive or reward value of the goal
(3) expectations of the individual and of his or her peers
These factors are the reasons one has for behaving in a certain way. For example:
a student spends extra time studying for a test because he or she wants a better
grade in the class. (Better Grade-Motivation Factor)
 Process
Need- Behaviour-- Satisfaction

Abraham Maslow proposed that motivation is the result of a person's

attempt at fulfilling five basic needs: physiological, safety, social,
esteem and self-actualization.
He has also referred to hierarchy of needs…
 Hierarchy of Needs

Need Home Job

education, religion, hobbies, training, advancement, growth,

self-actualization personal growth creativity

approval of family, friends, recognition, high status,

esteem community responsibilities

teams, depts, co-workers, clients,

belongingness family, friends, clubs supervisors, subordinates

work safety, job security, health

safety Freedom & domestic violence insurance

physiological Food, water & biological needs Heat, air, salary / money
Diagram-1943 Model
Physiological Need includes:
Metabolic Requirement

Safety and Security need include:

• Personal security
• Financial security
• Health and well-being
• Safety net against accidents/illness and their adverse impacts

Love/ Belonging includes

• Friendship
• Intimacy
• Family
• Esteem includes
Self Esteem and self-respect (Love for Self/ No inferiority or Superiority
Complex)

• Self-Actualization includes
Realization of One’s Potential/ Self Transcendence
 Maslow’s Remarks
Lower needs to be fulfilled before we opt for fulfilling the higher needs.

Alderfer's ERG theory

Alderfer classifies needs into three categories, also ordered hierarchically:

•Growth needs (development of competence and realization of potential)

•Relatedness needs (satisfactory relations with others)
•Existence needs (physical well-being)
 Cognitive Evaluation Theory

• This theory suggests that there are actually two motivation systems:
intrinsic and extrinsic that correspond to two kinds of motivators:
• Intrinsic motivators: Achievement, responsibility and competence.
motivators that come from the actual performance of the task or job
-- the intrinsic interest of the work.
• Extrinsic: pay, promotion, feedback, working conditions -- things that
come from a person's environment, controlled by others.
 Equity Theory

• Suppose employee A gets a 20% raise and employee B gets a 10%

raise. Will both be motivated as a result? Will A be twice as
motivated? Will be B be negatively motivated?
• Equity theory says that it is not the actual reward that motivates, but
the perception, and the perception is based not on the reward in
isolation, but in comparison with the efforts that went into getting it,
and the rewards and efforts of others. If everyone got a 5% raise, B is
likely to feel quite pleased with her raise, even if she worked harder
than everyone else. But if A got an even higher raise, B perceives that
she worked just as hard as A, she will be unhappy.
 Role of Perception in
Equity Theory
• In other words, people's motivation results from a ratio of ratios: a
person compares the ratio of reward to effort with the comparable
ratio of reward to effort that they think others are getting.
• Of course, in terms of actually predicting how a person will react to a
given motivator, this will get pretty complicated:
• People do not have complete information about how others are
rewarded. So they are going on perceptions, rumors, inferences.
• Some people are more sensitive to equity issues than others
• Some people are willing to ignore short-term inequities as long as
they expect things to work out in the long-term.
 Expectancy Theory

This theory is meant to bring together many of the elements of previous theories.
It combines the perceptual aspects of equity theory with the behavioral aspects of the other theories.
Basically, it comes down to this "equation":

M = E *I *V
or
motivation = expectancy > instrumentality > valence

M (motivation) is the amount a person will be motivated by the situation they find themselves in.

E (expectancy) = The person's perception that effort will result in performance.

In other words, the person's assessment of the degree to which effort actually correlates with performance.

I (instrumentality) = The person's perception that performance will be rewarded / punished.

I.e., the person's assessment of how well the amount of reward correlates with the quality of performance.
(Note here that the model is phrased in terms of extrinsic motivation, in that it asks 'what are the chances
I'm going to get rewarded if I do good job?'.
But for intrinsic situations, we can think of this as asking 'how good will I feel if I can pull this off?').
V(valence) = The perceived strength of the reward or punishment that will result from the performance.
If the reward is small, the motivation will be small, even if expectancy and instrumentality are both perfect (high
 Case Study
Matthew James was the manager at Health-Time, a small but popular
fitness club in a mid-sized college town. Health-Time had found a niche
in the local market, providing high-quality aerobics classes and lots of
them. The instructors at Health-Time were superior to those at other
facilities around town, and Health-Time offered high-impact, low-
impact and step aerobics and body-sculpting classes.
By offering more than 80 classes per week, Health-Time attracted
members who wanted a variety of classes at all times of the day. The
Health-Time facility also included exercise bikes, stair climbers,
treadmills and a small weight room, but its “bread and butter” was
clearly the aerobics program.
• Matt James had recently taken over as manager after working at
Health-Time for five years as an aerobics instructor. Matt’s classes
were popular, and he was justifiably proud of the aerobics program
and his part in making it a success. When he took the job as manager,
however, Health-Time was not in good shape financially. Membership
was dropping slightly, and personnel costs were way too high. In his
first month as manager, Matt worked to streamline the staff by
eliminating the positions of assistant manager and weight room
supervisor and cutting the membership coordinator position to half-
time. Though there was unavoidable unhappiness surrounding these
changes, Matt was pleased that he had reduced the management
staff to himself, Clarissa (a half-time bookkeeper), and Mei-Chen (a
half-time membership coordinator).
• After a short month as manager, Matt felt that he had the “office side”
of the club in order, and he turned his attention to the receptionists
and aerobics instructors. He had noticed that many receptionists and
aerobics instructors did not take their jobs as seriously as he would
like. The receptionists spent more time chatting with members than on
job tasks (i.e., checking people in, writing receipts, answering phones,
and cleaning up during downtime). The aerobics instructors often ran
into their classes with little time to spare and had to rush to get their
cassette tapes ready for class. Instructors and receptionists were also
accustomed to informally swapping shifts and classes when the posted
schedule conflicted with other plans. Almost all of the reception staff
and aerobics instructors were students at the local university.
Receptionists were paid the minimum wage and aerobics instructors
were paid about $15.00 per class taught.
• Matt decided to hold a general meeting to let the aerobics and
reception staff know what he expected now that he was manager.
Though he had been their “buddy” when he taught aerobics, he knew
that his loyalty now had to be with the financial success of Health-
Time. He truly cared about the club and wanted to see it thrive for
both professional and personal reasons. At the meeting, Matt told the
instructors and receptionists that they all had to pull together for the
good of Health-Time. To promote a family feeling, he provide them all
with sweatshirts displaying the Health-Time logo. He then explained
why he thought they should shape up and change their behaviors on
the job. As his employees slumped in their chairs, he laid down the
law:
• “I know things have been lax around here,” he said, “but the
success of Health-Time depends on everyone pulling together to
make this place work. I know you’re all used to the way things used to
be around here, but we have to change. There’ll be no more idle
chatter on the job, and every instructor will be prepared for class at
least 15 minutes ahead of time. All changes in the schedule will go
through me. When we do change and when this club is as successful
as it can be, you’ll feel proud to be a part of this place and what we’ve
accomplished together!”
• Three weeks later, Matt was perplexed. Three of his receptionists
had quit, telling him that they could earn minimum wage elsewhere. Two
aerobics instructors had decided to start teaching at the University Athletic
Club rather than at Health-Time. Although the remaining staff members
were now following his rules regarding job behavior and scheduling, morale
seemed to be at an all-time low.
• “You know, I just can’t understand these people,” Matt complained
to a friend. “We’ve got a great thing going with Health-Time. We’re the best
aerobics program in town, and they should feel proud to be a part of it. I
know I get a real bang out of making that place the best it can be – I always
have, even when I was just an instructor. But these people just don’t seem
to care. And when I talk to them about the problem, it only gets worse. I
even gave them sweatshirts to get them motivated, but they still quit on
me! Is it me, or is it them? And what should I do now?”
Thank you