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Intrinsic motivation and time management: creativity is important
// By Simone Janson
In the course of your life, you will be confronted with problems that require new, innovative and individual solutions. Your ideas are in demand here. Because: Creativity is not only important in so-called creative professions, but affects all areas of your daily work.
Our inner drive motor
Motivation is certainly the most emotional part of work organization. But since you are human and not a machine, it is all the more important. Motivation comes from the Latin āmovereā and means: move something. Motivation is the driving force for movements and actions. But this force, like an engine, constantly needs fuel to keep moving.
Everyone finds this fuel both in itself and in its environment. Out of an inner drive, the wishes to do something arise. Scientists speak of intrinsic motivation in this context.
That's how motivation works
But nobody acts in a vacuum, other people and experiences influence one's attitude and behavior. The intrinsic motivation is thus also influenced by external factors - the so-called extrinsic, ie external motivation. These factors include, among many others, financial recognition and praise.
For example, if you enjoy the work, it is wonderful, but if the pay or recognition leaves something to be desired, you will probably wonder if the effort is worthwhile and why you are doing it. This form of motivation is referred to as extrinsic, as coming from outside.
Outer and inner drive
If all goes well, you succeed and you are satisfied, the engine will run by itself without your noticing it. Because then the reserves are refueled again and again by the satisfaction of their own needs and the confirmation from outside, so the success itself acts as a driving force. Unfortunately, many things can go wrong during the day.
These can be minor issues, such as individual customers complaining about your performance or a broken computer that costs money. But it can also be weightier, existence-threatening problems its, such as that permanent customers stay away or the tax office requires a larger tax arrears, because your tax consultant was wrong.
Failures are demotivating
In any case, your action did not lead to the desired success, but to a failure. This is not nice, but it happens more often than most entrepreneurs want to admit. How you also benefit from such failures, you will learn in a later chapter yet: First, but it's about time that you can not be demotivated.
Of course, especially with serious problems, there is often a temptation to simply give up your project. In some cases, that may also make sense. But many problems can be solved with a good planning and implementation or avoided entirely from the outset. However, in order to be able to tackle this without hesitation, it is important that you become familiar with some motivational mechanisms that you can call upon when stress factors threaten to demotivate you.
Money as a motivational factor
Let's face it: The most important motivation factor to work. Well, that's a good thing, just imagine if you were not forced to make your money: what would you do if your daily routine were not pre-structured by the work? The question to ask is much more about how you make your money. As a self-employed person, you have an indisputable advantage: it is up to you to make your money as comfortable as possible. And that should be your goal - at least in the long term!
Although money is an important motivational factor, if you work only out of existential fear, you soon have the impression that you have to accept all orders unconditionally. This will lose your self-determination.
Visualize goals
Unfortunately, money as a motivator seduces all other goals to subordinate the money - for example, in the self-employed in the start-up phase, because in the beginning, the start-up business is still on shaky legs. It can take three to five years to get it right. As a result, you may be investing a lot of work during this time and seeing results only gradually. As a result, your privacy may suffer or you may have less time for the finer things in life, and you may be worried that everything will work out. That may not be nice, but it does belong to you if you have the long-term goal of being successful as a self-employed person. Have some patience: When the initial phase is over, your earnings and efforts should be commensurate.
Visualize Your Financial Goals: Write the amount of money you want to earn a year on a piece of white paper. Drag horizontal and vertical lines behind it to create boxes - one box for each 1.000 Euro of your target total. If you have made 20.000 Euro, you will need 20 boxes. Every time you take 1.000 Euro, paint a box colorfully with cheerful colors. This is fun and unconsciously motivates you to reach the goal because you can practically watch the carpet grow.
Efficient and profitable work
Of course, a lot can go wrong. And unfortunately, many external factors can not influence you: you do not know how the market is developing, how tax laws are changing, or whether your competitors are coming up with better ideas than you. There's a bit of luck involved, and unfortunately that's unpredictable. But you still have a few things in your own hands:
Improving your work organization will help you work more efficiently and profitably and accept more jobs. And the basis of your motivation through money should be your calculation: Expect to calculate what expenses you have and what you have to earn with your independence to live from it as you want. From this you calculate the prices for your service.
Realistic
If you realize that you can not earn less than a certain amount, you will not be dissuaded from your price expectations even in difficult negotiations. Here, money acts as a real motivating factor to enforce one's own wishes against others.
Be realistic: do not calculate an imaginative amount that you can not achieve with your knowledge. Do not let others persuade or frustrate you: If someone says he's making 100.000 Euros a year, leave them (maybe he's really less than them!). In some industries you deserve better than in others and everyone has their own ideas of how much money he needs. But be honest with yourself: there is no point in correcting your calculation down because you can not achieve the desired sum. It has to be so much that your living expenses are covered. If not, something goes wrong.
Good ideas make you more efficient
Good ideas that solve problems, optimize your product or service and bring you forward yourself are important prerequisites for your success. And such a sense of achievement is again the best motivator. Example: Mr. M. is looking for a good idea to improve his customer service. He ponders for a long time. Finally, he tries out some creativity techniques and gets so many new ideas.
What if you can not come up with a solution to a problem spontaneously if you just do not have a new idea? Then you can systematically help your creativity by simply trying out new perspectives or using other techniques to increase your creativity.
Just do something different
Sometimes it's enough if you just change the perspective on something to come up with a new idea. For example, you can change the question. What is your previous initial question? Which aspect of the topic was previously in the foreground? If you find another initial question, put a whole new aspect of the topic in the foreground. You can even reverse the question. Now you may think of many things you should not do - and this will give you lots of ideas on how to do it.
Example: So far, Mr. M. has focused on the aspect of āimproving customer serviceā. Instead of pondering it further, he simply asks "How can I worsen customer service?" And suddenly things like lack of accessibility, unfriendliness and much more come to mind. In the end, he reverses that and knows how to improve his customer service.
Change the entire perspective
Mr. M. could change not only the question but the entire perspective. In order to do that, you have to take yourself completely out of the question and mentally put another person in your place: how would it think, decide and act? This method is especially useful if you are very emotionally involved in a cause, for example because you have been annoyed by a customer complaint. In this way you gain distance.
Example: So far, Mr. M. has assumed how he can improve the service. However, he has been angry with some customer complaints lately. Now he asks āWhat would the customer do better?ā and gain emotional distance with this question. He actually manages to put his anger behind and comes up with some good ideas.
Keep Emotional Distance
Mr. M. realizes that he has been particularly annoyed with a customer. When it comes to certain people, or the conflict between certain people, you can use another technique to defuse conflicts, for example: simply replace the characters with grotesque shapes. Brainstorm various role relationships. This is not only very amusing, but also brings you through the humor to completely new ideas to solve the problems.
Example: Mr. M. mentally makes himself an evil magician, the customer becomes a child. This role-playing game makes it clear to Mr. M. how he can significantly improve the customer relationship in the future with a few, but good ideas.
Further creativity techniques at a glance
But there are many other creativity techniques that are presented clearly below. Not every one is suitable for everyone. Just give it a try and decide which one is your favorite: What mind-boggling game will bring you new ideas? And which one does not help you at all? It's fine if you find one thing or another just stupid. Which technique you decide in the end, is a matter of taste.
With a mind map Mr. M. gets a lot of ideas, but he does not seem to be structured enough yet. Now he uses the 6 hat thinking: As a green hat he has a spontaneous, very good idea. As a white hat, he decides to test them by survey among his customers, as a black hat, he finally finds that more customer service would also mean more cost and effort.
| creativity technology | How to proceed: |
| Mind Map Goal: You get a structured overview of your thoughts. | Write the topic in the middle of a large sheet of paper in capital letters; circle it. Form multi-colored branches - each branch a new keyword that comes to mind. From each keyword you form further branches (associations) |
| Brainstorming Goal: Write down ideas, feelings and associations and think beyond the usual solutions. It's not about implementing ideas. | Timeframe: 15-30 minutes. Name your problem. Write down on a large piece of paper what you think about the subject, without judging or criticizing. Once you have found a term, write down the next, and so on until you have approx. 20 to 50 words. Allow some time to elapse before finding a solution to each word. |
| Brainwriting Goal: The achievement of many proposed solutions (in the group technology are about 108) presented systematically and clearly, and then thought out, or can be discussed. | Create a table with three columns and three rows, write your basic ideas in the first row. In the next row you write a possible modification of the basic idea,... |
