Motivation

What drives you? What gets you out of the bed every morning? What is your tipping point? You know, that moment when a project that’s been weighing on you suddenly enters into flow, that energy where time doesn’t seem to exist, and your focus blossoms faster than you can plant a seed.

Recently I read Daniel Pink’s DRIVE, with the hope of finding some inspiration for motivating not only myself, but my students. My upper-level art majors design and create an independent project. Some are more successful than others–and it almost always comes down to those who are motivated versus those that are not. Pink talks about how the carrot and stick form of motivation no longer is the model. That instead, a new “operating system” for motivating employees, students, self must be employed, a way that comes from deep within–a desire to direct our own lives.

How do you motivate yourself? Your children? Your employees? Your students? And how do you do it without the carrot and stick method?