Team Work and Motivation

Sometimes motivation to complete tasks either alone or in teams is lacking. Some of the explanations might include the following: 

-       ‘This is boring’

-       I’ve seen this before

-       I don’t understand why we are doing this.

-       I feel sleepy/hungry… or angry about something 

-       I don’t like this

-       Etc

Of course, there may be advantages in doing the minimum. Now is the time for you to participate.  

Name some of them:

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But there can be consequences as well:

-       If you are an employee, you may end up with a poor performance appraisal – who wants a mediocre worker?

-       If you are an entrepreneur, you may disgust your customers/clients and go bankrupt. 

-       If you are in a project in higher education, you may get an average result and not learn anything new. So you waste your time. You may also have the effect of demotivating others. 

And of course, doing the minimum increases your chances of failure as you may underestimate the difficulties involved in the task.

So do you have any choice in the matter? 

Here is an extract from the magazine, Psychology Today:

You are putting something off because you don’t “feel” like doing it.

Solution: Make like Spock and ignore your feelings. They’re getting in your way.

In his excellent book, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking, Oliver Burkeman points out that much of the time, when we say things like, “I just can’t get out of bed early in the morning,“ or, “I just can’t get myself to exercise,” what we really mean is that we can’t get ourselves to feel like doing these things. After all, no one is tying you to your bed every morning. Intimidating bouncers aren’t blocking the entrance to your gym. Physically, nothing is stopping you: You just don’t feel like it. But as Burkeman asks, “Who says you need to wait until you ‘feel like’ doing something in order to start doing it?”

Think about that for a minute, because it’s really important. Somewhere along the way, we’ve all bought into the idea — without consciously realizing it — that to be motivated and effective we need to feel like we want to take action. We need to be eager to do so. I really don’t know why we believe this, because it is 100 percent nonsense. Yes, on some level you need to be committed to what you are doing — you need to want to see the project finished, or get healthier, or get an earlier start to your day. But you don’t need to feel like doing it.

In fact, as Burkeman points out, many of the most prolific artists, writers, and innovators have become so in part because of their reliance on work routines that forced them to put in a certain number of hours a day, no matter how uninspired (or, in many instances, hungover) they might have felt. Burkeman reminds us of renowned artist Chuck Close’s observation that “Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.”

So if you are sitting there, putting something off because you don’t feel like it, remember that you don’t actually need to feel like it. There is nothing stopping you.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-science-success/201402/how-make-yourself-do-it-when-you-just-dont-want

Here is a very clear explanation on how motivation works in reality

Action leads to motivation.