Notes: I wrote this post in early July, describing self-diagnosed reasons that I was struggling. But I didn't publish it. Too raw. In the weeks since then, things have changed enough. The measures our state is taking in the pandemic are working. I am teaching again, finding fulfillment and mental stimulation there that had been missing. And perhaps I am just getting used to peace at home, chaos everywhere else. It's an interesting post in any case. I may want to read it again. So this time I'll publish it.
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8 July 2020
After a spike in cases, the city of Melbourne is back in lockdown for six weeks.
And I am fine. We are ok. We have everything. Food, health, economic stability. I am ok. I am not ok.
I recently read a recommended article from the Harvard Business Review, located here:
It has given me things to think about.
The article, written an eternity ago in 2015, is actually about company culture, and how to shape it to make your employees the most profitable, so whatever. But what stuck with me was the bit about motivation. They cite a study from the 1980s on the six main reasons that people work. Three reasons are good, and lead to increased performance, and three reasons are not good, hurting performance.
Honestly, I don't care about performance. Let's talk about happiness and motivation during crises, and why it has been so so so hard to keep going, in spite of the fact that me and mine are healthy and safe and economically stable.
Motivation for working.
Good reasons, leading to increased performance:
1. Play. You love the work.
2. Purpose. You are doing good for the world.
3. Potential. You are developing important skills for the future.
Bad reasons, decreased performance:
4. Emotional pressure. If you don't work, others will be disappointed.
5. Economic pressure. You have to pay the bills.
6. Inertia. This is what you have been doing. So keep doing it.
The world is ending. The US flails in chaos that seems to be perniciously designed by its leaders to stoke chaos. Police are rioting. China is treacherous. Russia is doomed. Brazil is dying. Australia is has locked up the vulnerable and I don't know how to help.
Here, at the end of the world, who can focus enough to work on abstract mathematics? And what good does obscure mathematics do? Will the skills developed lead to anything useful in a future of war, plague, famine?
Then carry on because the students need me. The dean expects it. The bills have to be paid somehow. I did it before, I can keep doing it now.
Did you see that? Did you see how the mental reasons for showing up on zoom have changed so so so quickly from the three good reasons, happy reasons, to the three negative reasons?
Everything is good. Everything is ok. Nothing is ok.
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