Motivation

When I started my career in IT back in 2004, I was a university graduate wanting to learn industry ways of developing software. The first years passed doing exactly this. Most of the methodologies learnt in the university were put to practice and I had a good feeling about this. Those were the times of ‘prime motivation’! Senior colleagues inspired me to work harder, gain knowledge and most of all have fun in developing software. My answer to college mates or fellow colleagues who would switch jobs for a higher salary was, “I’m learning a lot and enjoying what I do. I do not wish to change jobs”. Somehow these aspects always seemed more important to me and something which my fellow-mates did not always get.

Recently I read about the book ‘Motivation 3.0’ and saw one of the Ted talks on motivation. Both references prove that the ‘carrot and stick’ approach doesn’t help in getting job done faster; on the contrary this approach results in a bad performance. This approach results in people having a restricted line of thought. Projects like the Wikipedia are successful today since they bring out the best in people. People, by nature like to contribute, gain knowledge and attain mastery. Just having an environment which sees this and promotes this would suffice. Any other stimulants would not be needed. The best ideas in Google came about in the 20% free time that they have for their employees.

When I read about these, I said to myself, “Duh! I knew that. That’s common sense”. But then “Common sense isn’t that common”, one of the favourite quotes of one of my colleagues. The money-driven system is one of the root causes of the ‘lack of joy’ in one’s work today. We know that some of our needs come with a price, and often that price is our 40 hours in a week. One cannot put a price-tag on motivation. Motivation should be a continuous feeling and something which will take one through a long career. Motivation comes with the thirst to mastery, desire to do better and purpose. I know of an Indian film industry actor who refused receiving any film awards, but still is one of the most motivated fellows out there. Every movie he makes is a work of art. This world would be a different place if everyone steers or steered to making every piece of work they do a ‘work of art’!