Page 55 - Make Work Great

It Starts with You

Be Overt About Your Incentives
FIGURE OUT WHY

• Consider your salary and the positive things it enables you to do.
• List the most positive or enjoyable aspects of the work involved
with your summary outputs.

• Seek opportunities to expand on those positives, even if only
slightly.

fond of it. It could be as simple as having a few coworkers you like or
as personal as the chance to give back to your community. Or perhaps
there’s one particular aspect of the work itself that really gives you
a charge. Are you an accountant who loves number crunching or a
salesperson whose favorite activity is talking to people?*
If so, you have a jump on the third type of overtness—your incen-
tives, or why you want to keep doing what you’re doing. These incen-
tives, paycheck included, keep you showing up. If you have enough
of them, they also make your workday seem interesting rather than
dreadful. Ask yourself, “Why do I work here?” The happier you are
at work, the easier the question is to answer. The more miserable you
are, the more important it is for you to fi nd out!
Why? First, like Tanya, you can use what motivates you to identify
new alternatives. Self-knowledge gives you a fi lter through which to
screen opportunities that come up. Second, once you know what’s
driving you, you can try to adjust your current work to include a little
more of it. Finally, you can focus on those workplace positives when
trying to coax yourself out of bed on Monday mornings when you
would rather keep sleeping.

*One framework for measuring personal motivation suggests that there are six possible motivating
factors and that all of us are motivated most strongly by one or two of them; they are to learn, to pro-
duce results, to experience harmony, to assist others, to control one’s destiny, and to be consistent. 5

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