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These ways will depend on their personality, time frame, and type of work.
Generally, money is the most liquid motivator, praise is the cheapest, and feedback is the most useful.
Note the difference between praise and feedback. Isn’t praise a type of feedback? It is, but it is a deliberately positive version of it. In essence, praise is grooming a fellow ape. However, you cannot correct and advance an employee's performance with that.
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The project manager must understand the root of the apathy towards work, and these causes might be different in different people. {LACK OF MOTIVATION}
Then, there are specific causes of apathy in permanently employed personnel. {PERMIES}
In academia, motivating people who don’t want to work is hard. The ability to motivate employees with bonuses for high achievement does not exist, and the number of career levels is also limited. Thus, for a person on a stable salary, doing extra might have no value—she must input more for the same personal gain.
Being motivated by the results sounds nice, yet the salary might be the only result people care about, even in academia. {VALUE}
How do academic bosses cope? They utilize temporary contracts where they can. If you produce results, they prolong; if not, then not. {CHECKPOINT}
As a result, people acquire a short-term perspective, which is unlikely to benefit science as it is a long-term endeavor. {ENDPOINT TIERS}
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Some people, even in academia, seem to think so. Yet, there can be no general answer. If somebody tells you there is, he is incompetent, and beating him with a stick would be better than with a carrot.
A better way to motivate for what? For giving you a wallet or picking a cigarette butt? Motivate whom? A meek one who, hopefully, will once inherit the Earth or the one who lives by the sword? Motivate for how long—an hour or a year? There can be many answers to these questions.
What incentive you can use will depend on the endpoints, criteria, and the parameters of the employee’s work. {ECPM}
You can try to force people if you can measure the parameters of their work and have clear criteria for success, failure, effectiveness, etc.
For instance, the employee agreed to tile your bathroom in two work days with the tiles you provided and the quality you defined. If you have criteria, you can attach sticks and carrots to them: did more—take a carrot, did less—get the stick. Yet, when no criteria for work effectiveness exist, sticks and carrots are useless.
Managers who find themselves in such situations experience cognitive dissonance. Their brains have been habitually exposed to the adage, “You cannot manage what you cannot measure,” but what if they have no parameters to measure or criteria?
There are two options. The first is to develop meaningless metrics and attach motivational schticks to them. {MEANINGLESS METRICS}
The second option is to develop the ECPM system that will feed from your objectives.
I recommend the second option and believe any job can benefit from exploring its parameters and finding the potential to motivate there.
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You are right; the implication is that you become demotivated if you cannot achieve what you expect. Yet, the statement is too abstract to have any use. “High expectancy” and “cannot achieve” can only have a meaning related to an endpoint one wants and expects to achieve. Endpoints differ, as do the approaches to reach them and expectations to be successful. {ENDPOINT TIERS}
Suppose someone wants to write the next Great American Novel, develop a Great Software App, or make a great scientific breakthrough. This person is already in big trouble if it is her only "goal," and she expects to achieve it in a year or two.
First, we can never be sure that whatever we do will ever become a gem in the eyes of others. {SUBJECTIVITY}
In most cases, it does not happen at all. Sometimes, even if it ultimately becomes the gem, it happens after our death, as it did with Toole´s “A Confederacy of Dunces” or the works of Franz Kafka. Sometimes it happens very late.
Second, in what sense of the word “gem” do you expect it—in a material or ideal one? These might not always coincide.
To sum up, you can safely assume that your legitimate wish to smack the Universe with your work cannot be a goal—it is anaspiration.
Having an aspiration is admirable, yet it might lead to a situation where you get demotivated because you expect to get “something great” soon but do not get it; thus, your aspiration transforms into a vanity trap.
It should not. To avoid it, you must connect the endpoint tiers—an aspiration to goals and goals to tasks. {MAP YOUR DREAM}
And although you cannot ensure the fulfillment of your aspiration—it is OK, no one can—you can work as diligently as you can to provide a piece of a master. Such an approach requires discipline, as you must work consistently to accomplish one task after another. {SELF-DISCIPLINE}
If you manage to fill every small task with your aspiration, who knows, perhaps you will reach the top long before you die.
If it is teamwork, create small wins for your team, which will mark progress and ultimately lead to a big one.
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You can only develop soft skills through practice.
Observe, communicate, and reflect. Try out the knowledge you gained, and again, observe, communicate, and reflect. {COMMON SENSE}
Never tag people, at least for yourself. Schopenhauer once wrote, “Education perverts the mind since we are directly opposing the natural development of our mind by obtaining ideas first and observations last. This is why so few men of learning have such sound common sense as is quite common among the illiterate.”
Although we can debate the definitions of “common sense,” “so few,” “men of learning,” and the benefits “the illiterate” might have in the developed world of the 21st century, the “observe, get the data, analyze that data” sequence to obtain ideas is valid for management.
What data do you need to understand what people value? You need empirical data on how people spend their resources—time, money, and effort. Very likely, it will be what they value. {VALUE}
What do people avoid? Likely, it will be something they dislike or fear.
Discuss your observations with a couple of trusted others to be confident in what you have observed.
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It is a frequent question with a frustrating answer because a permanent position often implies an employee gets money, notwithstanding his effort.
His salary is the desired endpoint, and labor laws guarantee its payment. If the endpoint does not depend on his productivity, then the most rational way might be not to work hard but to spend time on something else.
Next, motivating is influencing – changing the behavior of others. Others do not like it.
When you try to change people’s behavior in an environment where they spent 20 years more than you, they will like it even less. They might have acquired enough data to conclude that people achieve nothing by exerting extra effort at that joint. And they might be right.
However, they might be wrong. And the only way to find out is to understand why they are disinterested in their work. Communicate! Ask questions, reflect on the answers, and ask more questions. Ask them for help. Ask them what they would change in the operations if they could.
Moreover, getting to the roots of their demotivation might have existential importance for you: in these fatigued people with lackluster eyes and uneven, dandruffed shoulders, you might be seeing your reflection delayed by 20 years.
Thus, if you are in an organization that hinders achieving your aspirations, pack your bags and look for escape routes.
{PERMIES, INFORMATION ASYMMETRY, LACK OF MOTIVATION, CRAPPY JOINT, ENDPOINT TIERS, DATA, SUSTENANCE}
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As you mention, you “have explained why they need to do certain things.” Now, listen to them.
When they have explained, try to understand how they see the project and the effort needed. Try to look from their perspective and not label it as coming from “people with monotonous jobs and no desire to learn new things,” i.e., lower flock members.
There may be aspects of the project or the organization you don’t understand. Ask questions, reflect on the answers, and ask more questions. Get the data, then screen it to determine the reasons for the lack of motivation. {LACK OF MOTIVATION, DATA}
If this study is of no use and people merely lack the self-discipline to do what they get paid for, then what’s left are “carrots and sticks.”
However, for these to work, you must understand the work parameters and formulate criteria for employees’ effectiveness—i.e., develop the ECPM system—and have positional power to implement the changes.
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The simple answer is to have their output measurable and the output’s minimum—adequate for your project. {ADEQUACY, ECPM}
The “lack of motivation” causes problems when there is no ECPM system, and the worker’s job description and contract only operate with work hours {MEANINGLESS METRICS}
During these hours, they can do whatever they want, and often, the pains of breaking the contract are greater than keeping permies on the payroll for nothing. {PERMIES}
Thus, you cannot do anything if you are not their boss—it is out of your power. If you are, try to clarify their motivation for doing nothing {LACK OF MOTIVATION}, develop ECPM, and match their output with the ECPM. Yet, be prepared that laws and ground rules might limit your freedom to innovate.
In academia, permanent employees who do not do much are a common problem; thus, bosses stick to temporary contracts to keep control whenever possible. This solution is hardly beneficial for research in a long-term perspective.
{DELAY, EXPECTANCY}
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You develop your theory based on the existing ones and validate it with your unique experience.
{MOTIVATION THEORIES, COMMON SENSE, LACK OF MOTIVATION, MAP YOUR DREAM}
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The central concept is to pursue the objectives that have value for you, to consistently check your progress, and to maintain self-discipline on your path.
Any advice that does not consider the hierarchy of the endpoints and the need to measure your progress toward your dream consistently will inevitably be about duping yourself into doing something you will ultimately find useless.
{VALUE, MAP YOUR DREAM, FEEDBACK, ENDPOINT TIERS, ECPM, LACK OF MOTIVATION, MOTIVATION THEORIES, SELF-DISCIPLINE}
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First, double-check that you must do these “tedious tasks”—do they align with your desired endpoints? {ENDPOINT TIERS}
If they do not align, ask yourself what purpose these tedious tasks serve. And if they serve none, ditch them. {TIME MANAGEMENT}
Second, practice self-discipline: force yourself to do what is needed. The more you practice it, the stronger it becomes. {SELF-DISCIPLINE, PROCRASTINATION}
Third, envision the result and let it attract you.
Fourth, identify critical parameters of your work, find a way to measure them, and develop criteria to inform about the progress. {ECPM}
Fifth, compete with yourself: how many items can you cover today? Tomorrow? Treat yourself to a prize.
Sixth, use public commitment: tell your meaningful others you “will finish it by …”
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Although it is tempting to say that life is a marathon, it will only be partially true. There is a place for any activity in work life, including end spurts and sprints. Also, jumps, dodges, dives, and other elements.
What might be wrong, though, is living a work life as if you smoke roll-ups near petrol ponds—smoking and daydreaming, then throwing a butt, setting a fire, and then rushing to extinguish it. Then, repeating the routine over and over.
Let´s explore the increased efficiency when the deadline is approaching.
In the case of our lecture example, we have the midterm change—the efficiency of group work increases in the second half. Why?
Because there are no measurements whatsoever. There is the term—from an hour to months; thus, there can be a midterm of twice less. When we have not agreed to measure anything, the only measure is the midpoint. Why?
Because it splits the term into two equal parts. When we are through the first half, we can see how much we have achieved, and by multiplying by two, we can quickly estimate the total amount of work if we continue with the same speed.
So, the observation of “people becoming more active in the second half of any term” is less about their miraculous change in the sight of the approaching deadline and more about them using whatever tools they can to measure their output to adjust their work behavior.
They did not know how much they could achieve in the first half of the term and had to arrive at a midpoint to get some data and understand that they lag.
Be proactive: split the term into subterms with measurable outputs. Call these subterms checkpoints, milestones, landmarks, whatever. Just have them and plan specific values of important parameters to be achieved by these checkpoints. {ECPM, SAMPLING PERIOD, CHECKPOINT}
If you need to finalize an essay that must be 5000 words in 10 days, do not wait for five days to find out that the only thing you have written is 16 words of a title.
The most straightforward plan will look like this: write the essay in seven days, revise on the eighth, and leave two days as a buffer. {BUFFER, JUST IN CASE} Divide 5000 by seven and get a daily quota of 700 words.
Next, planning and working on a new thing are distant relatives. As this fundamental fact is absent in almost all texts on project management, people get frustrated when their plan meets reality, and their actual performance differs from the planned one. You cannot know how much you can achieve unless you have already achieved it.
Thus, it would help if you supplemented your planning (i.e., your wish to complete it in time) by estimating your productivity, starting with Day 1.
Yet, count at smaller frames—either every hour (i.e., 14:10 – 0 words, 15:10 – 86 words, 16:10 – 150, 17:10 – 234, etc.) or mark a time at every 100 words. The former might be easier and more valuable, giving you an hourly output—approximately 80 per hour—and you need only to control time.
Next, you will see how long you can write during the day. Try to do your maximum and see how much you have written. If you made 500 during Day 1, you understand that at this speed, you cannot safely finish the essay; thus, start competing with yourself. And set a 700-800 quota for Day 2. Yet, do not set unrealistic numbers—it can demotivate you. If you did 500 on Day 1, you are unlikely to make 2000 on Day 2: your productivity cannot jump that high.
As a reference, you can see that different writers had different daily quotas, yet the absolute majority is between 1000 and 2000 words. And they rarely wrote for eight hours—four to six.
For instance, Mark Twain wrote, “Fourteen hundred words per sitting of four or five hours.” {TRACK PERFORMANCE}
As to the bursts of “stress and anxiety,” sometimes, these will happen. And, sometimes, they are the only way to use the kairos—the opportune time. {KAIROS}
However, these nonlinear episodes rarely belong to planning, which has a linear development assumption. {LINEARITY ASSUMPTION, MAP YOUR DREAM}
Too much and too often of “stress and anxiety” are not beneficial: the midnight oil burned at the age of 20-30 can soot your brain and heart at 40-50. I would recommend sustained effort with enough rest and fun.
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Procrastination is self-preservation, and there is nothing harmful in self-preservation: it exists to protect you.
The actual question might be: why are you unwilling to work on something? This question demands an honest analysis and an answer.
{PROCRASTINATION, LACK OF MOTIVATION, MOTIVATION THEORIES, WHO AM I?}
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Understand why you don’t want to work. {PROCRASTINATION, LACK OF MOTIVATION}
Start every day with what you planned to do, not with TikTok, FB, Instagram, news, etc.
Split tasks into subtasks with measurable outputs, and use public commitment to motivate yourself. {ECPM, CHECKPOINT, SAMPLING PERIOD, SELF-DISCIPLINE}
Stress helps. If you have a lot going on, the ultimate stress will not let you procrastinate. However, it might not be a healthy life then.
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Let’s approach the situation in three steps.
First, answer the question, “What does it mean that they do not deliver?” Can you specify all the instances with numbers?
Second, answer, “What exactly does this “should” mean?” Do you have a system of endpoints, criteria, and parameters to measure? {ECPM} If not, do you measure the output of these “others” anyhow?
Third, if you do measure, are they aware of this? Do they have a clear job description with numbers reflecting their output?
If they have none, this problem is your omission. This omission can lead to a lack of motivation in your employees. {LACK OF MOTIVATION}
Low performance is frequent; however, performance is a two-way street, and managers are as responsible for low performance as workers. It is the managers’ job to design the work processes.
The typical situation is when a worker does not understand what is expected and does not deliver, and a manager responds by squeezing and wrenching the worker.
However, any pressure will only be sound if you have developed the entire ECPM system. Otherwise, your “squeezing and wrenching” will boil down to sucking the blood of employees and ultimately becoming a crappy boss. {CRAPPY BOSSES}
If the problem exists with functional ECPM, it would be helpful to have shorter sampling periods. {SAMPLING PERIOD}
If it exists still, there is another situation to consider: if a person habitually does not deliver, the person-organization fit may be inadequate. {ADEQUACY}
This inadequacy cannot be easily changed. You can boost a person’s interest for some time with motivational schticks, but if the job is not fitting, your options are limited to carrots and sticks.
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The information about early and late start and finish times we obtain in the network analysis is for you—a manager.
It helps you better plan the project and prepare tasks for your team members. The team members need to know their unambiguous deadlines.
{PROCRASTINATION, COMMON SENSE, INFORMATION ASYMMETRY, NEED-TO-KNOW}
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Frankly, I would recommend concentrating on not burning out yourself.
Dealing with others' overwork might be more complicated than with their “underwork.” People are free to spend more time and deliver more than is agreed upon between you or written in their contract.
If you have unrestricted resources, you can plan many retreats in beautiful places, throw generously paid sabbaticals at people, give them enormous bonuses for hard work, etc.
If you cannot do all that, you can talk to someone you think can be at risk of burnout and explain your point of view. That´s mostly all you can do.People do weird things for weird reasons, so if they are not receptive to help, the behavior might have deep roots, and messing with them might be wrong.
Still, you might find helpful Jeffry Pfeffer’s book “Dying for a Paycheck.”
{BLACK-BOX APPROACH, SUBJECTIVITY, WHO AM I?, MOTIVATION THEORIES}
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The question suggests two options: either support them by removing the burden or reconsider the number of tasks. I presume the latter is better.
Possibly, some of those “too many tasks” need not be done in the first place; they do not do them, and you all see what happens. While observing, you focus on the essential ones.
A Pareto rule, or 80/20 rule, or 64/4, states that a minority of things is responsible for most phenomena.
Your task during prioritization is to find that critical minority. Focusing on these will save you much time while dismissing the unimportant ones will most likely not compromise the product's quality.
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Learning to relax and switch is critical to being productive. Burnout is an unfortunate companion of many careers nowadays. See “Dying for a Paycheck: How Modern Management Harms Employee Health and Company Performance―and What We Can Do About It.”
It would help if you probed a bit deeper into your anxiety.
Is it your natural state—to be anxious about something? Today, you are anxious about a project; tomorrow—about your looks; the other day—about something else. If it is you, then the “specific work” is just the trigger of your natural inclination.
A paradoxical approach might help if anxiety is your close companion: get more workload. Get involved in more projects, so you must switch between them. When you switch from the first project to the second, you might experience relief, understanding that the first project is no longer haunting you.
However, if the anxiety is unbearable, see a specialist—an occupational psychologist or therapist. People have a right to get a mental condition, and specialists are there to help.
However, if the particular project triggers you, usually a calm person, understand what makes you anxious. Is it the people who are involved? Or is it the number of tasks? Or is it the uncertainty of what you should do and what you should achieve? Then, you can focus and analyze further. Understand what you hate most, and then scrutinize the object of hatred.
{GAUGING EMOTIONS, RED FLAGS, BLACK-BOX APPROACH, WHO AM I?}
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Inborn traits are stubborn.
Thus, I recommend not “fighting” them but learning to be happy and productive with them. Maybe these are your features, not bugs. Don’t struggle with an urge; switch to another thing. Experiment with different options.
Do the opposite of your previous actions and reflect on the experiences. Try things you have not experienced and reflect on them.
However, for such learning, I would recommend experiments in low-stakes environments, where failure would not be life- or health-threatening.
{BUILD YOUR LAB, FEEDBACK, COMMON SENSE, EXPLORE AND EXPLOIT, TRIAL AND ERROR, FEEDBACK}
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In general, I would not bet money on everybody being able to spot much in a job interview. The quality of the estimate will significantly depend on both the object and subject of evaluation.
In an abstract job interview, we assume that an interviewer can correctly judge an applicant because she already belongs to the group the applicant aspires to belong to or has particular expertise. Yet, it is an assumption, and the job interview is often the 3J situation. {JANE JUDGES JILL, INFORMATION ASYMMETRY}
The best predictor of future performance is not an interview but the subject's past performance—how well did the person perform in the past, and what are her achievements? {COMMON SENSE}
Regarding impulsiveness, red flags might be the interviewee skipping from one topic to another, not finishing a thought, interrupting during the conversation, or rushing through tasks.
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Let’s separate “over-optimism about skills” from “overestimating time” or underestimating it—these are different things.
The wrong estimation comes from ignorance about your productivity and is only treated with estimating your output—measuring how much of what you can do and how fast. {TRACK PERFORMANCE}
It is simple, yet many people do not do it, taking externally imposed deadlines as a warrant of their abilities. Thus, any project looks unfamiliar, bringing uncertainty and stress.
How long does it take to read an abstract? How long does it take to retrieve info from it? How long does it take to read a paper? How many minutes per page? How long does it take to prepare a 10-minute presentation? How long does it take to do one analysis of whatever you do? How long does it take to write a hundred words?
Find out for yourself, and it will bring more certainty into your work life and significantly reduce stress.
Do not make a separate project out of it, though—do your regular work and spend an extra minute tracing your time.
No, you do not download any app or start any new notebook—nothing of the kind. You already have everything to do it—a clock or watch, some scraps of paper, and a pen or a pencil. It is enough.
You start doing something (writing, reading, analyzing, painting, drawing, etc.)—you mark, you end—you mark. Another one—repeat the same. And after several cycles, you have the stats.
You can and likely should track your routines as well. How much time do you spend on the news or social networks? How long do you eat in the morning? Seven, ten, or twenty minutes? How long does it take in a restaurant? Thirty, fifty, seventy? Depends? On what?
Knowing how long your routines take will make you more in control, hurry less, and become less stressed.
You track it in a relaxed way, so if chaos breaks out, you will be the one who knows how long and how much you need for what.
As for the other part of the question—your “over-optimism about your skills,” it is always a compromise. If you are overly realistic about your skills—i.e., limit your aspirations with your current abilities, you do not risk. Thus, you neither fail nor succeed because you do not start new things.
If you do not start new things, you cannot grow—you will repeat the same routine for many years. Life sucks, and then you die.
One brilliant person said that self-deception is absolutely necessary to begin any creative effort. Another notable person suggested that your biggest treasure is in the cave you fear most.
As for the team, having a blighter who always has the most pessimistic outlook might be good for maintaining a balance between realism and optimism.
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In projects, we always work with a person.
The person will likely have cultural stigmas affecting how he sees reality and ultimately performs (he might call them a set of values or principles), but we always work with the person.
We must see an individual in that person; otherwise, we are categorizing based on somebody else’s, possibly wrong, system.
(If interested in differences, check Geert Hofstede’s "Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind…”)
We did not hover much over these cross-cultural differences. Indeed, they are fun to learn, yet I am not certain if these bits of information truly reduce uncertainty or simply put a filter on your perception.
Thus, I would not recommend priming yourself with knowledge like “Karlakians punish their children and like order, and Koolakinns talk a lot and are easygoing.” Both ethnicities likely have very different people, and the only Koolakinn you will happen to work with might be the opposite to a stereotype. Observe and communicate.
{COMMON SENSE, CALIBRATE YOUR PERCEPTION, DATA, VALUE, SUBJECTIVITY}
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Many things may impede mutual understanding.
These will be gender biases (“women cannot lead”), age-based biases (“I am older means I am smarter;” the reverse, by the way, is “Ok, boomer”), socio-economic (“you come from a third world country, a not-so-prestigious university, underprivileged group of the society, speak with an accent, or a particular dialect…” means you are inferior).
Observe them in others and yourself.
{COMMON SENSE, COMMUNICATION PRINCIPLES, INFORMATION ASYMMETRY, CALIBRATE YOUR PERCEPTION}