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.

{MOTIVATION THEORIES, FEEDBACK, LACK OF MOTIVATION}

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}

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.

{MOTIVATION THEORIES, LACK OF MOTIVATION}

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.

{SMALL WINS, FEEDBACK, MOTIVATION THEORIES, EXPECTANCY}

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.

{CALIBRATE YOUR PERCEPTION}

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}

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.

{ECPM, SELF-DISCIPLINE, POSITIONAL POWER}

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}

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}

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}

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 …”

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.