Buying Motivation
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I’ve spent my (double) holiday working on a new book which will be very exciting to share more about soon! It’s a leadership book about how to unlock team’s motivations.
So motivation has been on my mind recently… a lot! Especially: how do I keep MYSELF motivated to write this book about motivation?
The Sad News
My favorite part of the work day used to be cycling to work. I’ve always lived near enough work to bike there. At most I was doing around 20k on a workday.
But now I take the bullet train to one job, car to another, and work from home for the rest. It makes me sad, but at the same time I’m thankful for the extra time with my family.
Here’s what I didn’t realize: one of my primary work “motivators” is:
cycling to work
This is so key: I do love cycling around in general, but there is a special place in my heart for “cycling to work.” Just cycling doesn’t feel the same.
Why is that?
Hard to say. I think I like the feeling of superiority of zipping past people stuck in traffic on their way to work. I also love the accomplishment of having “achieved something” (gotten some good exercise) before the work day technically started. There’s probably more. I don’t pretend to understand all about my motivations!
The point is: there is something deep inside me that is charged up when I get to cycle to work. Doesn’t matter what the work is. Cycling there puts me in a great mood for the rest of the day, and I can’t wait to cycle home afterwards! This isn’t on any of the lists of “how to motivate employees to get stuff done.” It’s my own “secret list” (of 1 thing) that no one knew but me… until now.
Sadly, my career has “advanced” me right out of the chance to do something that fires me up.
Working from Home Guilt
At the same time, I’m very grateful I can work from home and spend so much time with my children…
…that is, when I’m not annoyed, worried, or distracted by my children.
It turns out working from home has one major downside for me: I feel guilty that I’m “home” but not with the other people.
This is on my own secret list of “demotivators.” My work gets objectively worse when I’m at home. (I could address the guilt as an adaptive challenge to overcome, and I shall, but there’s another solution in the meantime.)
You can already see where this is going…
Expensive Coffee
Back when I had a very young (always crying) child and a deadline to prepare for my TedX talk, I went to a local coffee shop to get away from the noise and pound out the script. It worked that one day and then I never did it again.
This holiday, I decided to try the same thing but without the reason of running away from a crying child. I was running away from the guilt of working from home and all that.
And an amazing thing happened: I started looking for farther and father coffee shops. I was cycling a few minutes to the closest one and realizing: “Hey! I wish I were cycling more.”
So today, I just got home from one that takes about 17 minutes to cycle to. Just far enough to get the cardio going, but not so far that I can’t zip back and meet everyone at home for lunch.
The only downside: paying for expensive coffee (almost $5 for a cup).
And here’s the lesson: what else am I going to use that money for?
What I’ve purchased is a huge piled of motivation that I can tap into to write a whole book. I have written several other books but they were written at what looks like a snail’s pace compared to what I’m cranking out now. Yes the coffee must help with that! But I don’t really drink it! I take a sip and then get back to work.
What I’ve purchased is unlimited daily use of an office space (with it’s own bathroom) and very few other people to distract me. I don’t mind the background music they play. I don’t mind the occasional coffee grinding noise. And I’m free from my demotivator of feeling guilty working from home.
What I’ve purchased is a massive productivity boost.
I’d pay $5 / day for that! What’s that you say? It even comes with a free coffee! I’ll take it!
Mindset Shift
The previous sentence is an example of a reframing or a mindset shift.
I grew up helping my mom cut out coupons and search for the best deals to feed our family of six. My economic situation (while nothing to brag about) is much better now. But my mindset is still stuck in the 1980s.
Why didn’t I do this bike-ride-to-coffee-shop thing earlier? Why didn’t I repeat the TedX coffee shop experiment?
I didn’t want to spend the money on “overpriced coffee.”
But now that I see what I’m really buying, I’d pay much more per day (don’t tell the coffee shop).
Buying motivation is one of the best investments I can get, especially when it comes to doing work that might even have a literal “pay off.”
Here are some of the assumptions I had to overcome to unlock this motivation boost:
Cycling to work was an indulgence for the younger version of me, but there is no place for it in my current life.
If I can avoid leaving the house for work, I should stay home.
If I spend money on coffee, I’d better really like that coffee.
The closer the coffee shop, the better.
Now I’m paying money to ride far away, take one sip of a coffee I don’t want, and work from my cell phone hotspot instead of my fancy home internet. And I love it!
What other ways could I just pay cold hard cash and get more motivation?
Upcoming Book
If you want more info about the upcoming book, send me a note and I’ll put you on the list!
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