Bridging the Gap

In the last couple of posts we’ve been talking about the evaluation, intentionally taking time to see how we are going on our path to manifesting our vision. One strategy we use in the evaluation is called bridging the gap.

When we refer to the gap we are talking about the distance or difference between what we had planned to occur and what really did occur. If we have used the three step process for successability, we have clarity as it relates to what we planned to have occurred (see the posting on clarity). This makes it easy for us to see if there is a gap, and if there is, easy to determine exactly what it is.

As part of your motivation plan, you have written down your goals and your tasks. Are you accomplishing your goals? If you aren’t, that is your gap. Are you completing your tasks? If not, then that is your gap. If you are accomplishing your goals, is your vision becoming manifest? If not, that is your gap.

Once you have identified your gap or gaps, it is time to bridge the gap, find out why you have a gap, and figure out how to close that gap, how to make happen what you have planned on happening. Make sure you don’t forget the Drucker ratio when you examine the gap. Instead of asking why something went wrong, ask how you can make it right.

Use your vision > goal > task paradigm to assist you in bridging the gap. If you are completing your tasks, but the goals aren’t being met, than you need to redefine your tasks. If you are completing your goals, but your aren’t manifesting your vision, you need to create new goals, are maybe restate them more clearly. If you aren’t completing your tasks, you need to figure out why. Are they too difficult? Are there things blocking you from completing them?

Perhaps you missing some skills you need to accomplish your goals. What type of training can you get to add those skills. Are there changes to your environment, either physical or social that will help you bridge the gap?

What you want to do with this strategy of bridging the gap is come up with solutions that are clearly stated and achievable, that will get you back on your path to manifesting your vision.

Ongoing Improvement

If you have been reading my postings, it may have become apparent to you that in order to become motivated and stay motivated, you need a system, a plan. Haphazard attempts at getting ourselves motivated are not going to work. There are just too many things going on in our lives that distract us and turn us away from our path to expect motivation just to happen. Only by having a system will you be able to keep yourself motivated.

However, the focused activity does not stop after you have created your plan, you need to establish a way to make sure not only that the plan continues to work, but also allows you to improve the plan, as you gain experience and wisdom about yourself. The way we guarantee this ongoing improvement is through evaluation. All highly functioning businesses establish a process for ongoing improvement, through self evaluation.

We’ll talk in future blog postings about how to do an evaluation. Today we will talk about when to do an evaluation, the timing of your evaluations.

There are two ways to time your evaluation; you should use both ways. The first is on a regularly scheduled basis. Every week, two weeks, or month, your choice, you need to sit down and figure out how you are doing. Are you moving forward on your goals? If you find out you aren’t, you will now know you need to figure out why. If your evaluation shows that you are bumping into one particular ongoing problem, this knowledge will allow you to take steps to stop that from happening.

The second way to time your evaluations is on an “as-needed” basis. Evaluations are needed when something good happens, and when something bad happens. When something good happens, we need an evaluation to find out why the good thing happened, so we can make it happen again. We don’t want to lose the benefit of that lesson. We also need to take time to bask in the good feelings that will arise when it happens, and also to see if there are benefits from the good thing that maybe we don’t see at first blush.

When something bad happens, we also need to find out why, so we can avoid it happening in the future. We also may need to take some time to heal over any pain that results when things don’t go according to plan.

As intentional man, we don’t let things happen, we make things happen. A proper evaluation is one way we do that.

Physical Environment

The third factor of self motivation is environment, both physical environment and social environment. Today’s posting deals with physical environment.

Physical environment is usually what we think about when we hear the word environment. It’s a place. It’s the place where you do the work that is required to manifest your vision. But it’s more than just the place; it also includes the things in that place. For many people the place will be an office, whether outside or inside their home. For others it might be in their car, for example, a person who does outside sales. A library could be a physical environment, for a researcher. The place or places where you pursue your vision is your physical environment.

As intentional man your goal is to make your physical environment enhance your motivation. There are several ways you can do this. The first way is to set up your physical environment so that you are more productive. This increases your successability, your confidence in your competence.

My physical environment, the place, consists primarily of my office in my home. In my office I have a desk, on which is a computer. I have a wide screen monitor which lets me have two documents open at the same time, next to each other on the monitor. This makes the constant editing I have to do so much easier. I have a built in book shelf next to my desk, on which I keep the books related to the work I do to manifest my vision. They are right at hand whenever I need to look up something. My physical environment, both the place and the things in it, make me more productive and thereby increase my motivation.

Another way to make your physical environment enhance your motivation is to make it inspiring. Posters are a great way to make your physical environment motivating. Many different inspirational posters are available at any mall. But inspiration can come from something as simple as an advertisement from a magazine. I have above my desk a Smith Barney advertisement I cut out of a magazine. It shows a new Town Car backing out of the drive way of a very nice, upper middle class home. In the back ground you can see the sun is just coming up. The ad reads, “Luck? There’s blind luck, dumb luck and then there’s get-up-every-morning-at-5:30-and-sweat-the-details-luck.” I may not want a Town Car, but the beautiful house looks real attractive, and these words remind me that to achieve my dreams I need to work hard; luck is not going to do it.

Your physical environment may be the dining room table after the kids have been put to bed. It doesn’t matter. Whatever your physical environment, there are steps you can take to make it more motivating for you. It’s well worth your while spending some time thinking seriously about the changes you can make in your physical environment to enhance your motivation.

The role of intent

The key to self motivation is being in control of the three elements of self motivation: the vision, successability and environment. We do this by exercising our intent, by acting intentionally, rather than acting automatically.

Animals other than humans act only on instinct. There is a stimulus, which triggers an action. It’s automatic. Instinct works very well in the animal kingdom. The zebra smells the lion (stimulus) and immediately runs (action). Were the zebra to reflect on the proper course of action, hmmm, maybe the lion will eat my fat friend next to me, he would likely be eaten himself.

Humans will frequently act this way as well. Humans, however, have the capacity to act otherwise, to act with reflection. Reflection occurs in the space between stimulus and action. Rather than two steps, stimulus and action, there are three steps. In step one, there is a stimulus. In step two the person reflects on what action to take. In step three the person takes the action. It is in middle step that motivation occurs.

A person who acts without reflection, without that center step, I refer to as automatic man.

As self motivators, we want to avoid being automatic men. Being automatic men means we are being controlled by things and people outside ourselves. Instead we need to stay in touch with that middle step, and stay aware that we have the power to choose the action we take.

Being in control of our actions has two positive impacts on our motivation. One, it lets us takes steps to increase the positive impact of each of the three elements of self motivation, vision, successability, and environment. Two, exercising control or autonomy in our lives automatically increases our motivation.

In future postings, I will write about how you can exercise your intent to increase the motivational impact of each of the three elements.

My interest in self motivation

I wanted to take a step back in this blog posting and talk a bit about me, and how I came to be interested in self motivation.

I was never a particularly motivated child. I did well in elementary, middle and high school, getting by on the brains I inherited from my mom. I never worked hard at anything, at least that I can remember, except for Latin. The only reason I worked hard at Latin was because there was only four people in the class, so you were guaranteed to be called on to read at least twice a week. Consequently, you never knew when that would happen. If you weren’t prepared …

I never really cared about any of my subjects, but did what was necessary to get decent grades, which luckily wasn’t a lot. My mother’s lament was always, “Bob, you aren’t working up to your potential.” I heard that a lot.

Based upon my performance on the PSAT (my mom was an excellent test taker as well), I got a scholarship to a good school outside of Chicago to major in engineering. The application to take the PSAT asked what my professional goals were, so since I was good in math and science, I wrote down engineering. Did I know what an engineer did? Nope. Did I ever talk to an engineer? Nope.

At this college I wasn’t able to get by on just my brains - hard work was required - and I flunked out. Eventually I returned to school, got my bachelors, went to law school and passed the bar. By this time I had at least learned how to work harder. But I still wasn’t really interested in much of what I was learning.

After being a lawyer for 15 years I decided I wanted to be a psychologist. I checked around at two near by universities, but the PhD programs were extremely difficult to get into, and I was a single parent, and … I never made the effort it would have required to get accepted.

Eventually I enrolled in an online masters program in instructional design. I wasn’t in a relationship at the time, so I had time on my hands and thought it might be a good substitute for becoming a psychologist. Running through all of the classes was the concept that you needed to build motivation into the design of your instruction.

This was an amazing concept for me. I don’t remember any of my teachers ever trying to motivate me. I became fascinated with motivation. I expanded my knowledge of motivation into fields other than education, motivation in sports and motivation in the employment setting. I slowly came to realize that the reason I was sort of floating along, living a pleasant hassle free existence, was that I wasn’t motivated. Instead of making choices, I had been floating with the current.

Motivation would change all that.

Do you have a dream that you just can't seem to get moving on? Maybe it involves a career change, or a change in your personal life. If so, I would love to hear about it. Just leave a comment below, by clicking on the word comments.

Overview of the model for self motivation.

After studying motivation in education, and employment and sports, I saw some commonalities in the models of motivation in these three disciplines. One thing I found especially interesting was that most of these models were focused on one person motivating another person. In sports it was the coach motivating the player, in employment it was the boss motivating the employee, and in education it was the teacher motivating the student.

But I wanted a model in which a person motivated him or herself, not someone else. So I examined those commonalities and thought about them for a long while, and came up with my own model, a model focused on self motivation.

The model I came up with states that self motivation is influenced by three things, what I call factors. I labeled those three factors, the vision, successability, and environment. The model states that when you positively impact any of the three factors, you will positively impact your motivation.

In future blog entries I will explain what each of these factors means, and explain how you can positively impact each one so you can keep your motivation at a high level. Keeping your motivation at a high level means you will achieve your dreams.