Fact: The days of carrots and sticks are behind us.
Money, praise, and free pizza doesn't work to motivate a person.
Here are the top 5 areas of intrinsic motivators:
- Curiosity
- Purpose
- Mastery
- Autotelcity
- Autonomy
Let's break them down:
Curiosity#
This is all about learning and consumption.
→ Provide Opportunities for Exploration
→ Encourage Curiosity and Creativity.
For my experience, with curiosity I can dive into really focus flow just for understanding everything I have met and anything once I am curious about. In this process, the key point to note down the list of important points of the subject, then just checkout them one by one.
Sometimes my attention could be drawn away when unfamiliar concepts appears and never come back to the origin place. That's funny cuz I lose the anchor location but maybe not a bad thing. I am totally driven by my curiosity compass at all and feeling time flies. (I mean it's good when one is in this brainstorming period but not a good habbit when falling into the pithole of entertainment when just working on hard problems)
Purpose#
Align employer's vision, mission values to employees cause, mission and values.
→ Link Work to Personal Growth (write it out)
Not very clear with the word "purpose" here but can completly understand the explanation above.
For example, I can be really motivated to do things on building AI applications instead of building ROS on Euler system, simply because the latter job does not align with my personal growth. I wish to have more expericen on AI, Network or advanced robot tech such as tech under Nvidia's leading.
Mastery#
Maximize drive and continuous improvement
→ Support Competence Development (tailored training)
→ Provide Opportunities for Mastery (clear upskilling for career development)
Have you evertried to make your code perfect? I tried to make things look awesome like adding great logging module, CICD, Async, README.md, dockerfile, etc that things I found which other awesome developer always use. So I imitate them and use all the tech I considered cool. This is a phase of chasing perfect and also called mastery I believe.
One thing to note is that the process can be very time-consuming because I have to learn how to use them, then try them on the playground or just use in my projects. So it can feel terrible when I have a deadline of a mission and having literally no time to make my work good. The consiquence is simple: I don't want to maintain that piece of shit later and never.
Autotelicity#
Create a love for daily work for their individual's sake.
→ Highlight the inherent rewards of the job itself. e.g. let a programmer who loves to program, program!
→ Avoid Overuse of External Rewards
For my understanding, this concept is a bit like RPG gaming, that is when you are developing your own character by grinding golds or exploring dungueons. The reason why I am so obsessed with RPG-like games is that I own the character, they are another parts of me and all the effort I paid for is worthy. I can get inherent rewards from raising them up.
Another point worthy to note is that the feeling of self-promotion, as well as feeling closer and closer to the image of person I wanted to be. For example, not afraid of jokes when I say it, I am immersed in the illusion to act like a professional, deep-thinking with wisdom, well self-management, successful guy when investigating note management system like notion or obsidian and even blogs. I can feel good when acting like this kind of guys cuz I simply want to be them.
Autonomy#
Foster a Culture of self-control
→ Create a Psychological Safe Environment - feeling control of how, when and what you work on
→ Regular Feedback and Communication - sense of ownership and accountability
→ Avoid micromanagement
This is more about how much I can control, such as the elastic time of checking in, the free and relaxing feeling of using toilet, the optional work I can choose, what style of appearence I can adopt, what computer I can use and even what kinds of tool and content I can view, etc. The more I can control, the more sense of ownership and accountability I can have. (Maybe this is the same when childs in home, reference to concept "living room family" which means kids have more)
Questions to ask myself:#
Q: 1. How high is your interest level in learning about your role?
A: 8/10， I do love coding since finding that I can craft things and implement my thoughts, no matter doing this as a job or simply for easier life.
Q: 2. Is there a direct correlation between what you are learning (cause) and impact and outcome (effects)?
A: 9/10, think so. Apart from the basic LLM learning, other things like fastapi, autogen, yolo are exactly "project based" learning.
Q: 3. What skills or sub skills will advance your long-term goals? A: Noting when thoughts jump out during daydreaming or inputting other's content, then digest with a slightly deeper layer.
Q: 4. Do what degree have you improved on your skills required for work?
A: Can't say a specific degree, but I am sure that I am getting better when looking back at the work done before.
Q: 5. How much do you crave your daily work when you are not doing it?
A: Sometimes, can be a 7/10 when having work that can be done but not done yet.
Q: 6. What are your superpowers? Can you tap into flow states doing what you're good at?
A: Possessing divergent thinking and intense curiosity, pursuing deep exploration to ultimately achieve logical coherence.
Q: 7. Does the organization have a clear purpose?
A: 5/10 on surface and 8/10 underwater. This phrase can be weird because of missing context.
Q: 8. Can you get behind it and support it?
A: 5/10, 8/10, the same as above.
Q: 9. How often do you feel in control of your work?
A: 8/10 when I can view whatever I want with nobody standing behind me.
Q: 10. How much choice do you have in what you work on, when you work, who you work with?
A: By myself, mostly and currently.
Q: 11. Are you building skills, experiences, and relationships that will benefit you in achieving long-term goals?
A: Yes, only with this way I am motivated to move on.