Self-motivation is one of the biggest fears people have about working from home. ‘How do I know I won’t spend the whole day watching television in my dressing gown?’ is a common question. I think most people find the need to pay the mortgage and satisfy their boss or customers fairly pressing, but it’s a good question.
This article will help you to understand what motivates you on a fundamental level, not just the pressure of paying the bills and with luck having some spending money left over. Once you understand this, the issue of getting work done while working on your own at home should be less of a worry. It will also help you to understand why some people do things differently from you, which might mean you can avoid conflict in the future over these different habits. Read the questions below and think about which kind of person you generally tend to be, bearing in mind we are all complex characters and do not fit neatly into boxes. You might like to write your answers down so you can analyse them thoroughly.
Let’s use working from home as an example. Have a think about why you already work from home, or the reasons you are thinking about doing so.What do you want to achieve and what is important to you? For example, do you want to get away from the drudge of the daily commute?Maybe you can do without the politics and interruptions at work. Perhaps you resent spending so much of your hard-earned salary on travel.
Do you think you can have a better quality of life working at home? Or do you want to have more time with your partner or children? Maybe you believe you can live a more healthy lifestyle if you can prepare all your own meals. When you’ve written down your own reasons for working from home, have another look at the first paragraph of suggested reasons above. This is a list of things you dislike and want to get ‘away from’. The second paragraph lists the things you like and want to move ‘toward’.
Look at what you’ve written down. Are they things you want to move away from, things you don’t want? Or are they things you do want, the things you want to move toward? If you’re not sure which predominate in this context, try thinking about other aspects of your life, like your choice of house, holiday and friends. Do you tend to make choices to get away from what you don’t like, or to move toward the things you do? Just knowing which approach you naturally opt for helps you to choose goals which inspire you.
If we think in terms of the old ‘carrot and stick’ scenario, the generally ‘away from’ person responds better to being given something they dislike and want to move away from – the stick in other words. They will be motivated by the need to perform well enough not to be fired or to avoid situations and tasks they don’t enjoy.
The generally ‘toward’ person responds better to the ‘carrot’ so promises of a pay rise or promotion will bemoremotivating to them. A threat of something unpleasant will not motivate a ‘toward’ person, just make them very cross.
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Note: This article was sent to us by: Sam J. Fraser at 05242010
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