Around the topic of motivation, the following video posted on youtube illustrates 'what motivates us' particularly at work.
Within the ten minutes of the presentation, the cartoon approach makes the topic light in content but appealing to the eyes while pointing to a very interesting finding: there is a link between our motivation and the rewards we may get from completing the required task. However, there is a limit for the rewards to have positive influence on us to get us going. If overwhelmed by the feeling of getting too much reward, we may tend to do even worse than if not rewarded at all. Why not be your own judge and watch the clip.
Too much reward at work? I wonder how does it work out at home? Is it possible to think that we may occasionally give too much rewards to our children to get them motivated to do things?
Well, I may be a little bit pulling too many ideas from different directions, but as I am thinking and writing I cannot stop linking this idea about motivation and rewards to my everyday life as mom. My children need to do things around the house for example, for they need to learn to become responsible, autonomous, collaborative etc. how should they be rewarded? what is the limit? The recent Youtube posting of the laptop shooting dad, followed by a recent response to such posting by a blogger on Blogher and the flow of comments it created on Blogher led me to put this all together. In my opinion, yes, the father went over the border: what kind of example are we setting: you are not happy about something, go ahead and shoot it! Anger management, here I come. On the other hand, yes, complaining is part of us, we need to set limits dear Hannah so that we are not pushed in all directions but to actually go to the extend of publicly revolting against your parents? That is out of border as well. Doing chores around the house is everyone's responsibility. Some parents may choose to pay for the work, some other may believe that it is part of life and no monetary reward should be given. Our opinion is as vary a we are. We all grew up in different parts of the world, with different level of education, different beliefs and traditions, just to name those. So yes, we may not all reach the same conclusion.
I have tackled here various topic, raised many questions while leaving out many answers. On the topic of motivation, rewards and children: I am working on the following with my children. I do not provide monetary rewards in exchange but more chances to be responsible in our everyday family activities, from choosing to plan out our next meal, to the different things we could do throughout the day, to when to watch TV and what program to watch, etc. What has become key is that the more involved they are with such decision making, the healthier our relationship has become and the more motivated they may seem to get to take on a task and tackle a new one.
I will need to watch and learn. That is true, as some days are better than others for the reasons that I am not always aware.
Thank you.
The various subject for discussion that I opened up earlier, I will come back to them in future blog posts.
Go, go, family go!
