List Ten Motivations

Here is an exercises. I want you to list ten years why you should write. I don't mean the big reasons, not the end game, but ten things that can push you to write today. See what you come up with.

Motivation: Use of structure

Too often, when scholars and writers think of motivation they neglect to consider the importance of structure, ritual, and consistency. The advantage of a structural/environmental approach to motivation is that it accounts for the ebbs in flows of our internal motivation. That is, our desire to engage in behaviors we wish will often shift and change. When we have structures in place that ritualize our behavior, our cognitive and emotional energies can lag somewhat behind.

Consider developing a plan that integrates the following areas of writing/scholarly productivity. Develop these structures and inoculate yourself against motivational lulls. Click on each issue to see a previous post I have written.

Ritual
Calendar use/time
A process approach
Accountability

Motivation: Lessons for Business Applied to Us

Ok. First post on motivation, as promised. Except, I am not going to do the work for you today (I am tired!). Watch this Ted Talk video by Dan Pink. He explores issues of motivation as they apply to business. I am asking you to think of the implications for higher education, and for yourself as a scholar/writer.  If you are willing, do a five minute freewrite reflecting upon the video.

What does this mean for your writing? How can you implement one insight you gleaned?

Motivation Self Reflection

Over the next few posts, I am going to explore various conceptions of motivation and how they inform academic (and other) writers. To start, consider the following questions for yourself.

1) What currently motivates you to write?

2) What feelings, behaviors and context are demotivating?

3) Think of a time when you were particularly motivated to write? What event/feeling/belief/behavior(s) lead to this motivation?

4) What might be your blindspots regarding your motivation? In other words, carefully reflect upon what you wrote and see if all of them ring true, or if perhaps you may be perpetuating some internalized myths or beliefs that do not serve you well. This is hard to do, but developing this type of insight is an important step toward "self coaching".

Challenge: One Action, Today

Your challenge for the day is simple. Think of one action you can take to improve your writing processes and practices. Make it a small change. See if you can practice it, even if for only a couple of minutes.

Living in The Important, But Not Urgent

The book, 7 Habits for Highly Effective People was one of the most influential self help/leadership books of all time. Like many good books of its type, many of the lessons are not revolutionary, but are well-packaged distillations of truths that have been known for a long time (this is not meant as a dig, FYI) They also successfully demonstrate how to apply these lessons to important contexts and domains. That is, perhaps, one of the key functions of therapy and coaching as well, as an aside.

The most important lesson (IMHO) from that book lies in Covey's Time Management Quadrants. The US Government's Geological Survey Office of Office of Employee and Organizational Development, of all places, presents a great discussion of the tool and a couple of good ways of using it, should you like a more in-depth exploration.

For now, this simple depiction is enough to help me make my point.

Covey explored how our sense of urgency about tasks, regardless of their level of importance, tends to get our attention, unless we are intentional about doing otherwise. This becomes especially true as people are constantly connected to emails and texts; the immediacy of these medium pull people toward responding.

To keep it simple, I am proposing this: start every day with writing that is not urgent, but important. (and this really is not my idea, as it has been explored by many, but I, as I suggested, am repackaging and recontextualizing good ideas!)

In other words, do the writing for which there is no time crunch first. The things that are urgent will get done, or at least we are more likely to do them. However, by focusing on that which is important but not urgent first, we make movement on long-term writing projects and goals, thereby helping us feel less anxious and stressed.

Live as much as you can in the important and not urgent. See what that does to your productivity, and your long term sense of accomplishment.

6th Calendar Year of My Blog, Write, Publish, Thrive!

Happy New Year! With the start of 2017, Write, Publish, Thrive is now in its 6th calendar year. As someone who values showing up each day,  year after year, and trusting that such actions will lead to good things, I am feeling really grateful.  How lucky that writing is such a central part of my life. How fortunate to be engaged with amazing scholars on their journeys toward thriving.

I want to wish my readers a healthy, productive 2017.

Cheers.