Know Thyself to Recover from Demotivation

In many activities, and most certainly in the process of a job search, it is common and expected to hit valleys of enthusiasm, or feel de-motivated. 

The human psyche constantly moves through cycles of energy or enthusiasm for any activity we undertake - our work, exercise, chores about the home. Quite frankly, we will not be able to pro-actively "level out" these peaks and valleys nor should we. 

What we need to do is understand what emotions and experiences are driving those highs and lows so that we can respond to them in a self-constructive manner.

A fascinating "big data social media" study released by social sciences researchers in 2011 noted that regardless of where you live and what you do, your enthusiasm - your motivation level - is going to naturally cycle through the day, week, month, and year.

The science behind this is explained in a variety of articles and studies and to sum it up, it's normal - there's nothing "wrong" with feeling un- or de-motivated at times. What that signals is that there is an underlying cause for the feeling that requires your response in a timely manner. 


Ask yourself why?

So key to addressing lows or "dips" in your motivation is understanding why you are feeling that way. This can be complicated, and sometimes a bit scary. And let's be frank, I'm not a psychologist or spiritual advisor, I just play one on TV. 

However, to share with you what I've learned through my current process of job transition is that it can often be easier to catch up on missed episodes of your favourite show on Netflix rather than knuckle down to the job search, but if you get at the root cause you will get re-energized and move forward with increased enthusiasm that shows through to everyone you meet.

Taking on new challenges can be exciting and invigorating at first - the motivational peak. But once under-way, the risks or concerns - what might go wrong - start to creep up, and your motivation can (and usually will) slump. Planning ahead for those slumps will help you move through them with minimal impact, and keep you moving forward.

"Plan...and use slow-down periods to re-energize..."

Expect that you are going to hit some lows, some lack of motivation. Plan some time during the motivational peaks to assess what the motivating factors are, and consider the risks that you might find demotivating - then plan, and use those slow-down periods to re-energize, focus, and move yourself forward.

Human emotions - generally - follow the "universal rules" of cause and effect. Take pause to consider the cause and you can affect the effect.

Cloud ReMix - How Personal Use Can Influence Business Decisions

Most of us spend a lot of time reading and thinking about cloud services for business use, and learning ways to ensure we make the best use of these types of services to benefit our business. Gaining the most efficiency, lowest cost, and least risk.

These are all valuable considerations, and important to be focussing on when making any cloud-based investment in IT services.  But what framework do we use use to make these evaluations?

I was recently contacted by a cloud services company called SingleHop and they wanted to share an infographic they had designed. 


The correspondence I had with Dave from SingleHop prompted me to think about leveraging ways I use the cloud in my day to day life to form the criteria used to evaluate cloud services for business use.

...leveraging every-day cloud experiences (makes the) world of business IT services in the cloud ... much less "mystical."

Further to that thought, is the consideration of how we IT professionals can communicate more effectively with other business professionals when we want them to understand how business services are enabled by cloud-based IT services.  

By leveraging their every-day cloud experiences all of a sudden the mysterious world of business IT services in the cloud become much less "mystical."  

What do you personally use the cloud for every day, or each week? I use it for storage of photos and video, collaboration & productivity with partners on various projects, and email. The fact is, Google holds the lion's share of my personal cloud-based activity and why? Because it's convenient, reliable, and inexpensive.

If you think about it, that reflects back on key cloud-service metrics such as agility, quality of service, and economics. And in thinking about how we value these metrics in our personal use of cloud-based services, we can frame ways to better communicate those metrics with others who don't live in the IT world.

So take a quick look at the graphic from SingleHop, and think about how you can influence business decisions about cloud-based business services based on more familiar personal interactions with the cloud.

And thanks Dave for sharing the graphic. Nice work.