@jp582 In my personal opinion competition can motivate or overwhelms sometimes. For example, at my job, we have daily tasks/experiments that we run in our labs, and when the task is completed, there is a software that analyzes your results and shows how great/poor your data is. I personally compare my data to everyone in my team and was always competing to have one the best data I can get... however trying to compete all the time can lead to being burnt out which leads to more errors in some cases. I believe balanced competition can drive the person to be the best professional worker they can be.
Motivator: A person who shares his words of motivation with others. anyone who motivates or stimulates others to take action or to realize a dream. Meeting deadlines, targets, or goals. mentoring and coaching others. learning new things. coming up with creative ideas to improve something, or make something new. Motivation is a skill that people can learn to apply anywhere, at any time. people can mater their motivation by learning to create the choice, connection and competence required to experience optimal motivation for achieving their goals.
A lot of people may say that they are motivated to do work because of their family or wanting to help their community. I on the other hand have always been driven to push my own boundaries. I always have my own ambitions, confidence and passion to drive myself to go beyond my limits. Of course, my family is a big driving force to keep me on the right path. If I loose my motivation I tend to take a break from whatever I am doing in life and I take a minute to recollect where I want to be. Not everything is meant to come easy but thats what I enjoy the most. The challenge and hardship make success worth it.
Historically, what has motivated me is often the expansion of my creative abilities, and gaining more insight into the relation of different aspects of solution and product development.
For example last semester when I took BME 684 I had the role of marketing in the final project.
I was pushed to think about a product from the aspect of assessing its profitability and market share capacity. It was very interesting so it motivate me to understand what is the process by which a product is assessed during feasibility stage to evaluates its possible profitability. This expanded my understanding and it felt very satisfying.
Having worked in a fast pace industry the demands are high. Something that has always motivated me is my desired for knowledge. I always seek to learn everything I can in all my projects in order support my team as best as possible. I am more open minded to learning from books and others. Coffee helps as well,
What motivates me the most is to see people believe in me. I know that this is not as good as self-motivation, but still, that is what has worked for me so far. I sometimes find it hard to work in an environment where nobody actually believes that you will be able to reach your target. In contrast, if my team leader is to set a deadline and expresses his/her confidence in me it tends to motivate me and I almost never have failed to achieve such a target.
On the other hand, in some individuals living up to others' expectations can result in high stress as well. I have seen some people fail due to stress caused by high expectations.
Competition and deadlines motivate me to do the job perfectly and finish it on time. I think for a project manager it is very important to run everything and schedule any program on a deadline and make sure all tasks get done before the deadline (at least a day), these two motivators almost all the time have helped me to achieve anything I expected to do in my education and work area. On the other hand satisfaction of getting a goal that I have been working on it and challenging through the process helps my motivation.
My biggest motivators in my career are centered in both the challenges at work (that are exciting to work on) as well as the development of my career my manager is able to provide. I love the challenges at work that are exciting, but also great learning experiences. In my company, we use the clifton strengths test to understand where are strengths are and where we have areas to improve. I personally found that I work towards solutions and keep learning as I go. That being said, I didn't realize how much development should be focused until my current manager. He provides feedback and creates goals for my team that allow us to focus on becoming better engineers and to go on the path we want, even if it means that he would lose one of his team where we would move onto our next career step. Both the constant challenges and development of my career allow me to stay motivated to keep working hard and moving forward.
We all have what motivates us as humans and if we tie our goals to what actually motivates us, we excel and accomplish our goals. Also, motivation can be intrinsic (from within) or extrinsic (from outside yourself). Several factors can contribute to our motivation levels, and they can affect our productivity, dedication and commitment to work and success.
That being said, What motivates me to get things done and accomplish my goals are Challenges and Achievement, the more the challenges the more drive I have to complete the task and see it to the very end. Difficult goals that demand intense effort and that challenge me to grow in new ways. As I begin my day, I pen down my goals which start as a mental trigger to get all goals I listed done for that day. This fires up an adrenaline in me to make sure I get all done and as I tick goals I have completed, it motivates me more to keep going.
Also, I feel motivated by leading a team and helping each member grow. Competition is something I can not handle. Am more of a team player than being competitive. In my opinion I find it not healthy when working in a competitive environment as some people are ready to go the extreme just to outdo the other person or be recognized by all means. Is in all humans to get some form of recognition for work done which is ok but sometimes people desire to be recognized that they disregard every ethic needed to achieve that. Having a balanced view of self is something I have developed.
Finally, the desire to learn new things, gain more knowledge and to get things done and get it done the right way no matter any obstacle. Sometimes I tend to become more of a perfectionist when I get that adrenaline in me to finish the tasks I set aside for that day.
Motivation is for me is mostly words of appreciation. Lately at work I have been overwhelmed with many projects that have a very tight timeline, and studying next to my full time job has not been giving me any time for myself to relax and take my breath. Sometimes it gets to a point where my brain just freezes and does not want to do anything due to the constant tasks, whether related to work or school. Of course most of us work on devices or drugs that help advancing the world of health and our efforts are all valuable whether to patients, doctors, or hospitals; that is enough to give us motivation for sure, however, it is tiring at some point. I discovered that words of appreciation are always needed from my project team or manager at least to show that they recognize that I am trying my best to get things done the right way under a tight timeline and that my efforts are not just overlooked by everyone. Those words of appreciation keep me going on track to show excellence. Another motivation would be picking up new projects. Most of the time projects drag for a long time for many reasons including failures, budget constraints, or project complications and then the project keeps going for a long time. Other daily tasks get boring since they are the same thing every day or even week with absolutely nothing new, which makes me feel like I am not learning anything new at all. Picking new projects would make me more excited to learn new things that would increase my knowledge and experience in the field.
I think the biggest and the greatest motivator anyone can have in. this field is they themselves. No one will be a better competitor than we ourselves. We should strive to move forward every single day with one pure goal in mind which should be to improve ourselves. Healthy competition is also very necessary for looking into the other aspects of the field which might not be known to us. Looking into the work which is being put into a product and finally whenever a consumer feels good about it is the greatest satisfaction and should motivate us to go forward. Finally family and friends should not be forgotten as they motivate us everyday to move forward.
My biggest motivator is working with good coworkers and managers. A good project team would create a strong work environment and allow for productivity and efficiency within projects. To me, a good environment to work in would be a great motivator to perform to the best of my abilities and remain at the company.
Additionally, I am strongly motivated by potential for career development. I would be strongly motivated to work in a position and company that allows me to continue to grow professionally and develop my technical skills.
For individual work and projects, my motivator is a desire to get better and make progress each day. It is easier to be motivated when you are working towards something that you are passionate about, but it takes inner determination and discipline to stay the course. Others can provide you with the steps to reach your goals, but it is up to you and you only to reach them.
For group projects, motivation is even more important as other people are relying on you to not only do your job, but to do your job well. In addition to inner motivation and determination, there is added pressure in group settings as you do not want to let your group members down. This pressure definitely helps me stay on track when working in groups and arguably makes me more motivated to take initiative in situations when group work is involved.
My motivator has changed quite a bit over the years. Before college, I would say that my biggest motivator was competition. I enjoyed competing against my friends to see who could do better and it worked well. Once I had entered college, the idea of competition went away when I realized how the department itself was communal. Students helped each other, because at the end of the day, we were all struggling together. At that point, my motivation had shifted to wanting to help others. I would try a little harder to understand the material so that I can help other students and friends better understand the material as well. However, as my undergraduate degree came to an end, I realized my motivator had shifted once again. I started my master’s degree in the middle of the pandemic and there were many times in which I was not being challenged nearly as much as I had been before. At this point, although I still enjoyed helping others, I noticed that my motivator had shifted to being challenged more. I liked taking on more difficult tasks and assignments as it allowed me to apply myself mentally and learn new things. Currently, I believe my biggest motivator is the desire to challenge myself.
It's funny but I am very rarely motivated by competition, personally I find it stressful and somewhat demotivating. I have ADHD so motivation and executive functioning can be difficult for me. I think my main motivator is knowing that my work is going well and that my efforts are appreciated. I can get pretty anxious if I receive no feedback on my work since I have a tendency to assume that no feedback=failure, which can cause me to shut down/become less motivated. I am the most motivated when my research plan is working and when my boss agrees that this plan is working as well. I am also the most motivated when I have a specific task and plan (even if I am the one who designed this task and plan).
It's tricky though because it is very easy for me to fall into a pattern of repetition with this mindset. If I am working on a project I have a tendency to keep changing little things in the project in hopes that the project will improve far before I actually have evidence that these changes did anything. This can be wasteful both in materials and my own time; two things that I really do not have the luxury of wasting.
If I do not have a specific plan it is also very easy for me to get lost once I finish a specific part of a project. I might be motivated while the project is going on, but once it's time to start a new project I often stumble and become demotivated during this transition.
This can be mitigated with proper planning and scheduling though.
The type of work if I am interested at or if it is challenging me works as the key motivating factor for me.
In my first job, I was hired as an analytical chemist. I started by testing the active ingredients of certain reagents and raw materials. Then after working a year my supervisor gave me more challenging tasks such as method development and validation studies besides the regular testings. He thought I can handle it. It was getting a lot for me. But I was so interested to do each task that no matter how much I had, I would finish daily task including some extra task for validation studies and would be ahead each day. I always enjoyed seeing different types of data everyday and would look forward to see how different they would seem with a different method. I would come to work early and go home late, my time would fly at work. In general, I felt driven and motivated everyday and looked forward to see some interesting data and creative ideas my supervisor threw at me. Definitely, the supervisors moods and actions influenced me to be productive at work.
