Rev Up with Design Factory Melbourne #13

Rev Up with DFM is a series of short posts to get your day started. Delivered in bite-sized chunks, this series gives you a taste of a wide range of activities, that you can try out to enhance your own workflow or share them with your team. Each week, we will share an activity varying in four different themes; Gain Focus, Boost Energy, Find Inspiration and Make Connections.

Many of us might say that we have struggled with motivation lately. Working from home can be lonely, chaotic, disrupt boundaries or feel disconnected. This might have manifested itself through struggling to focus, having an internal pressure and feeling to be more productive or opting in to tick off simple tasks and having difficulties to start chewing more complex or ambiguous challenges. We might miss those daily interactions with our colleagues, the unplanned corridor conversations and encounters, where we learned something or gained information we were not seeking at that time but that helped us to untangle something complex or to advance a topic. 

Something we have noticed in relation to motivation towards work is that we miss the fun. Fun connects with joy and happiness, and these moments are supercharged with connection, empathy, endorphins and excitement. 

In this post, we want to briefly discuss the power of motivation, and especially encourage you to find the connection with what motivates you and what are the barriers for your motivation. We will share a few small actions, prompts and thoughts that we at Design Factory have been practicing when working from home, which have helped us to have a bit of fun and find motivation.

What gets you going and boosts your enthusiasm? 

Motivation is the “enthusiasm for doing something” (Cambridge dictionary). It is our willingness to get things done and keeps us moving. 

There is a wealth of research about our motivation, but there are no clear answers or golden tickets how to be more motivated. Often our motivation is a sum of many parts, context and situation dependent and fluctuating. We know that inspiration has an enduring impact on motivation and focus and that we all have different things that drive us and make us tick. 

Make connections with what motivates you and what is stopping you. 

What is actually motivation? What contributes towards motivation? 

According to Fowler (2014), there are three psychological needs that are ingredients for our motivation; autonomy, relatedness and competence. Autonomy relates to the perception that we have choices and opportunities to guide our actions. Relatedness connects with our purpose, feeling of connectedness and sense of contributing towards something meaningful. Competence is our opportunity to grow and learn, and use our capabilities to full potential. (Fowler, 2014) Recognising these psychological needs and what might be missing, can be a source for reconnecting with our motivation. 

Furthermore, we are all driven by different values which impact what drives and motivates us. We might be driven by the intellectual qualities of a task (interest value), the strong connection to our perception of ourself and our capabilities (identity value), the urgency and importance of a task (importance value), or the future benefit and impact we foresee when completing a task (utility value) (Clark & Saxberg, 2019).

“We come alive when we consider that we are creating something that is worthwhile. If creatives drive on with the projects that matter to them, if they feel they’re working on something of significance they devote all their energy and time to it. Doing what matters, is what matters." - Rod Judkins, The Art of Creative Thinking

Making connections with our psychological needs, what drives you and what you care about, reveals you opportunities to use them as your advantage when looking to boost motivation. Taking time to connect with your purpose and to clarify priorities is an invaluable source for motivation and this source of energy often gets neglected amongst the hectic day-to-day pressures.

In addition to understanding the pillars for your motivation, it is important to make connections with why you might struggle with motivation. These motivation traps might reveal the underlying reason behind the missing motivation and help you to think of the right course of action (Clark & Saxberg, 2019). You might realise that there is a mismatch with your values, you might believe you are not capable of doing what you need to do, you might be consumed with negative emotions or perhaps you can’t really identify the reason for struggling (Clark & Saxberg, 2019). It all starts by recognising why you are avoiding a certain task or what might be stopping you to achieve something. Then, try thinking about what is actually something you can influence and you have agency to change, and finally find small courses of action to change the course.

“You cannot change the wind, but you can adjust the sails.” - Elizabeth Edwards, Resilience: The New Afterword

How to find motivation?

In addition to reflecting your motivation boosters and traps, we encourage you to think of small actions you could experiment with and do on a daily basis to increase your motivation. If you can’t immediately change a complex topic, area or a task at hand, can you alter your perception of it or your environment even momentarily? 

Here is a menu of small activities and prompts you could try out:

1. What makes you tick and what is hindering you? 

• Take a moment to reflect activities, tasks and moments when you have felt motivated. Can you identify what contributed towards that? Try to be explicit.
• Make a list of your strengths and how you could utilise them in the tasks you are currently facing and problems you are solving? 
• Think of a challenging task you are struggling with. What is the benefit of accomplishing and completing the task? What is the impact if it will not get resolved?
• Can you connect tasks you are struggling with with a larger goal or mission you or your team are trying to achieve?
• Have a think why you want to do what you have to do? There is always a silver lining even in the darkest clouds. 

2. Make it fun: Breaking up your routines and finding inspiration

• Have a look at your wardrobe and your accessories. Is there something you haven't worn for a while? Choose a piece of clothing, accessory, lipstick or a dress up party prop that you could wear for the day, that could make you smile a bit and perhaps also make others smile at the other end of a video call. It’s all about successorizing, a term we love and learned from Love on the Spectrum. 
• Can you do this together with your colleagues, and perhaps choose a colour for a day and see what are all the orange, purple, blue or sparkling things you and your team can bring to the next video call?
• Come up with different themes for each week and think of all the ways you can incorporate the theme into your day to day. Think of food to prepare, movies to watch, clothes to wear and activities to do. You can draw the themes from your passions - our team has been experimenting with nautical, magic, animals and outer space themes during the lockdown. Play is a wonderful way to strengthen your imagination and curiosity, which is the roots and the soil for our creativity.

3. Find an accountability partner and create a buddy system

• For many of us we are more likely to get something done when we have shared our intention with someone else. Can you find a buddy amongst your team, your organisation or outside, to help to boost each other when motivation is running low?
• You can make this as light touch or intensive as you like, sharing daily goals, learning intentions or activities. 
• Try out a Pomodoro productivity session together with a colleague to tackle challenging tasks and dissecting complex or difficult things into bite sized bursts of action. 

Most importantly, try to focus on things that you have influence and agency over. There is no point of putting all your energy into fighting battles that you can’t impact or influence. Find motivation from within yourself, and use your value-base as your fuel.

“Happiness fuels ones self-esteem and gives people hope for a better tomorrow. We are all victims of taking our work too seriously. Step back and enjoy the journey. Your motivation to achieve is ultimately based on earning a living that brings you tremendous joy and satisfaction.”

Glenn Llopis, Forbes 2012

We also encourage you to open this topic with your colleagues or your team, to crowdsource what motivates them, what they have done to keep up the motivation and what they might have struggled with. Perhaps you will find new perspectives or insights from others, which you could incorporate into your day. And remember to have fun with it!

Stay tuned for the Rev up with DFM next week.

References

Clark, R. E., & Saxberg, B. (2019). 4 Reasons Good Employees Lose Their Motivation. Harvard Business Review.

Fowler, S. (2014). What Maslow’s hierarchy won’t tell you about motivation. Harvard Business Review, 92(11).