Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Motivation”
The whammy has come. The boss gave you the pink slip. Your spouse says, “I’m in love with someone else.” Your doctor tells you, “You have cancer” – or, so much, much worse, says “Your child has cancer.” The cop asks you to turn around and put your hands behind your back. You answer the doorbell and there’s the military …
What does a great workplace look like? Walter Ulmer took a stab at defining it over 25 years ago. He saw that there was a big difference between regular teams and high performance teams, one where everyone took it to the next level. And what is the essence of a “supportive” climate that promotes esprit and gives birth to “high …
[updated 2013 August 29] Did you ever think that the reason why you didn’t get a mentor was that it was almost impossible to mentor you? A good mentoring relationship requires you to share a growth trajectory in how you handle complexity. Most people’s capacity for handling complex work issues increases over time along predictable paths once in their 20s. …
Happy workers are better workers, right? Nope. At least not all the time. And maybe not even most of the time. Find out why. [Full Post]
One of the remarkable things that Carol Dweck showed is that students who thought that they succeeded because they were smart did more poorly in new tasks. They wouldn’t ask for help because they were supposed to be able to figure it out themselves, or perhaps because they thought that if they asked for help they would be shown as not being smart.
Of course, this can be mixed with a DIY attitude, to make it even worse. I’ll chime in here with a personal story: when I was in college, I wouldn’t go to the math profs’ office hours because I somehow believed that I shouldn’t ask for help. It could have been a result of believing I succeeded because I was smart. It was at least also a part of “don’t ask for help” that was a cultural thing with my family. Compound the latter with the former and you get someone who could have done much better in differential equations than he did. (It didn’t help that I really don’t have a strong aptitude for mathematical thinking, arriving at most of my conclusions through intuition and guesswork.)
So internally you need to think that you succeed because of effort.
Lots of people ignore this advice. This leaves them open to being manipulated by you to your advantage, as long as you are willing to not be the smartest person in the room.
Alicia recommended this NPR show in a comment on “Unhappy? Stop Trying to be Happier!“. It wasn’t podcasted yet, but is now. If you missed it, like I did, here it is, with no added commentary from me. (Maybe later: I need to get through it.) But feel free to comment if you learn something important.
Remember things as being happier by contemplating something positive before you write your resume / CV. You can use this to help you feel happier at interviews and other situations.
Dan Ariely reports that pursuing happiness can backfire. Trying to be happy doesn’t work.
New research shows that bonuses backfire on companies, even blocking common sense. A summary.
GE’s practice of firing the bottom 10% would have seen as evil leadership by the Romans, who practiced “decimation” only on cowardly or mutinous troops, and even then rarely.
