Apr 29 08
So You Feel Demotivated? Understanding What’s Getting You Down and Putting You Behind
By Art Bell
Face it: we each have a well-rehearsed set of excuses and justifications for inaction. Here’s my set of fifteen demotivators. Compare these with your own favorite excuses, with an eye toward getting in gear and avoiding procrastination.
1. “I just don’t feel like it.” This catch-all demotivator is often accompanied by a yawn or a vague sense of nausea: we get a sinking feeling at the prospect of getting started with the task at hand. If we press our feelings for more specific information, our internal thoughts may go something like the following. ‘Do you mean you need more sleep?’ No, not exactly. ‘Do you mean you’re ill?’ No. ‘Do you mean that you could do a much better job on the task at some other time?’ Probably not.
At this point in our ruminations, we have ferreted out the true content (or lack thereof) of this classic demotivator. If we can locate no good reason why we should procrastinate, we have to consider the unthinkable: actually getting busy. The same kind of interior examination should be undertaken for the rest of the classic demotivators treated here.
2. “I would if I could.” This demotivator depicts you as being unable to accomplish the task at hand. Again, you must ask yourself whether the demotivating statement is true—on at least two levels. First, is it true that you are unable to accomplish the task? If you decide that you have the talent and energy to do the job—as you probably have—go on to ask the second question: Is it true that you would do the task if you decided that you could do it? Here is the sticking point for many of us. We find ourselves admitting that we wouldn’t do the task under any circumstances—that we just don’t want to do it. We use our supposed inability to do the task as camouflage for the deeper reality that we won’t do it in any case.
3. “It’s no use.” This classic demotivator asks us to envision outer circumstances so averse to our interests that no amount of effort on our part can make a difference. We need to ask ourselves whether this is an accurate portrayal of the outside world, or whether we are shaping the world to suit (and disguise) our fundamental unwillingness to act. This demotivator does not serve us well if it keeps us from facing up to the real factors influencing our decision whether to act or not.
4. “It’s so difficult!” We have all wilted at one time or another when faced by a large task. This classic demotivator tempts us to envision all the effort necessary to accomplish the entire task, then to decide whether we have that amount of energy on hand at the outset. Often we decide that we’re short a volt or two. But our evaluation might be very different if we asked ourselves how much energy it would take simply to begin the task.
5. “I’m too busy.” This demotivator usually involves not a little exaggeration: it takes our busiest day or week and establishes it as typical of our calendar. No wonder we find ourselves too busy to do almost anything in this scenario. A more realistic evaluation would look at our activity level on an average day, not an unusually hectic one, and base judgments on that schedule.
6. “I’ve done that before.” The concepts of “new” and “different” are hallmarks of contemporary culture. This demotivator uses this cultural totem to depreciate any activity or task that isn’t new or different. For example, we might decide we don’t feel like writing a letter to our congressional representative—“I’ve done that before.” This demotivator subtly suggests that we aren’t moving ahead as we should be so long as we are involved with activities we’ve done before. Too easily we can fool ourselves into justifying inactivity on the basis that we don’t want to retrace old ground. Fortunately we do not apply this logic to repetitive activities such as breathing and eating.
7. “Let someone else do it this time.” This demotivator, among the subtlest of all, shifts our focus to the supposed lazy, luxuriating “someone” who has so far avoided the workload we have endured. In evaluating whether we want to act, we turn our attention not to our own motives or interests but instead to the imagined status of the mythical “someone” who could take our place. Even if we can put a face and name to this someone, we nevertheless fabricate a scenario in which we do too much and the “someone” does far too little. Notice that this demotivator keeps us from confronting the core question of whether we want to do the task—and if not, why not.
8. “What would they say?” Like the previous demotivator, this one creates an “other” or audience that will respond in some devastating way if we undertake a task. What the audience says, of course, is generated not by the audience itself but by our own ventriloquism. We make the audience say what we need to hear in order to justify our inactivity. ‘Should I take on the chairmanship of the committee? “They” (the imagined audience) might say that I was too much of a social or organizational climber. I’d better not.’ In this case, the decision of whether to take a leadership role was turned over to an invented chorus of fictional voices. In doing so, the person gives over personal power to others, real or imagined.
9. “I’ll do it later.” In the same way that grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, time is always more available at some later date. By pushing the decision whether to act to some future time, we avoid asking an essential question: What prevents me from acting now? Once I have identified those barriers, how will the passing of time make them go away? Sometimes, of course, we come up with legitimate answers in this kind of inquiry: ‘Lack of money keeps me from replacing my worn tires this week, but next week I get paid and can afford new tires.” That’s a legitimate rationale for postponing activity—the passing of time will remove the barriers to action. But often our examination reveals either that no barriers exist, or that the passing of time will not affect them: ‘I could make a charitable contribution today, but I’ll do it later.’ The barrier in this case is a hidden unwillingness to actually make the contribution. That unwillingness needs to be addressed, not put off by pushing it into the future.
10. “It’s not worth it.” For any action we take, we can no doubt imagine a best case result and a worst case result. This classic demotivator tempts us to imagine only the worst case result, and then to decide not to act at all given the prospect of that worst case result. For example, children commonly object to cleaning up their toys on the rationale that they will just get strewn around the room again (the worst case scenario). The prospect that the room will be neat and tidy for a time is not considered. Such worst scenario thinking can convince a person that virtually any activity is doomed from the beginning and not worth undertaking.
11. “It’s not fair.” This demotivator sets up a mental supreme court and calls to the bar the decision whether to act. Let’s say, for example, that you are deciding whether it’s fair that you should donate your time for the third year in a row as a speaker at a local school. What standards should you apply in deciding the fairness of the situation? The demotivator here calls up the most favorable standards to support inaction. In the ultimate scheme of things, perhaps every other available person should be tapped for speaker duty before you are asked again. But that appeal to some kind of universal justice takes the focus off more local concerns: Do you want to speak or not? Fairness, in other words, can often be used as a smokescreen to hide the real issues at play in our decisionmaking.
12. “It’s not my job.” Like some other demotivators, this one directs attention away from what you want toward an imagined “document” or code that takes decisionmaking out of your hands. One’s “job,” imagined in this way, can expand or contract to accommodate one’s deeper and unexamined intentions. This demotivator also includes a forgiveness factor of sorts: no blame can apparently be attached in the case of a decision not to act, since the “job” supposedly dictated what could or couldn’t be done.
13. “I wouldn’t lift a finger for him!” This demotivator is based on an ad hominem appeal: if I don’t like the person, any action associated with that person is equally repugnant to me. Notice that such logic fails entirely when applied to most practical circumstances. If you dislike the President, do you therefore turn down the duties of citizenship? Like most other demotivators, this one has the end result of giving power for decisionmaking over to an outside force or person—in this case, an apparent enemy!
14. “If I do this, they will expect more.” This is the ‘slippery slope’ rationale for inaction. In evaluating its core deception, notice that the first half of the proposition (“if I do this”) is quite specific, while the second half (“they will expect more”) is entirely open-ended. Virtually any negative impact can be included in this second half as a way of discouraging action. Let’s say, for example, that a friend has asked you to look over a draft of an important business letter. Using this demotivator, you could talk yourself out of the task by imagining that you will have to proofread all future drafts of the person’s entire output of business writing.
15. “I don’t like working with them.” This final demotivator tars the task at hand with the brush of negative feelings for those associated with the task. Let’s say that you must decide whether to help run a fund-raising effort for an organization to which you belong. You know that the other three people associated with the fund-raiser are not your favorite human beings—one talks too much, another gossips, and the third always seems in a bad mood. The core decision whether to assist the fund-raiser is obscured by the subsidiary matter of working with people you dislike. In effect, you are letting those you dislike prevent you from doing what you may feel you want to do and should do.
Summing Up
The quite human penchant for resisting new experiences and avoiding work has generated a wide array of classic demotivators. Examined closely, each of these excuses contains components that wage war against our best interests. Learning to recognize the influence of classic demotivators is the first step in resisting them.
Copyright © 2008 Art Bell. All rights reserved.
Tags: business communicators, corporate communications, executive communications
