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Feb 18, 2007
"Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything." --Thomas Merton
Motivation Maintenance
Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at the University of North Carolina, researches something interesting: motivation maintenance. In a recent study, his subjects were a group of paid fund-raisers who solicit money via telephone for a university -- money that supports undergraduate scholarships. A randomly selected subset of the fund-raisers had an opportunity to meet an undergraduate student whose education the donations had funded. That meeting lasted only five minutes, during which time the fund-raiser was free to ask questions to get to know the student. After the student left, the supervisor told the fund-raiser, "Remember this when you’re on the phone. This is someone you’re supporting." Results of this modest intervention were remarkable. One month later, average funds raised by callers who had had an interaction with a scholarship recipient increased almost 300 percent, while control group results remained unchanged.
BE THE CHANGE
Manage your motivation through personal connection: pay special attention to those who you are brought into relationship with today, whether it is at work, school, or a grocery store.
