Motivation has been on my mind a lot over the past month.
I’ve been wrestling with my own motivation, watching my to-do lists fail to get shorter because I couldn’t find the heart to do anything. It’s not that I don’t like the tasks on my to-do lists. I actually like the vast majority of them. Each and every one of them is a step toward accomplishing some goal, and I love setting and achieving goals.
This lack of motivation has spilled over into other areas of my life, causing me to be sluggish in my editing, my blogging, my jewelry. It makes me feel guilty.
I’m definitely looking for some way to jump start my motivation so May won’t go by as passively as April seems to have.
As I sit here grappling with my motivation, definitely more intrinsic than extrinsic, I’ve also had to deal with a friend’s motivation, more extrinsic than intrinsic. I think it’s been her pursuit of gaining motivators that has actually pushed me to write. While I understand that she is more driven by extrinsic motivators, I have found myself utterly repulsed at her methods of gaining or expressing those recently.
It makes me wonder how often she feels similarly when confronted with my intrinsic motivation. Does she look at my actions and get annoyed with what appears to be me taking a lot of grief that, in her opinion, I shouldn’t have to? (A lot of people watch me work and think that, actually.)
Regardless of whether it intrinsic or extrinsic, motivation is one of those things that is very personal, and changes from person to person. Somehow, it just doesn’t seem to be one of those things so easily judged.
Perhaps it’s just me being so upset for being so unmotivated lately.
Posted by Rebecca as Uncategorized at 7:58 AM EDT
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The other day, I decided to treat myself to a trip to a bookstore. In all honesty, I just really needed to get out and away from things going on in my house, and I had a couple of topics I wanted to check out.
To my great delight, I found part of what I was looking for: a PSP 8 book from the Barnes and Noble line. I can hardly wait to bust it out! What’s funny, though, is how hard the book was to find. I had to comb through a rather large Photoshop section, running across two books I acquired a couple of years ago when I was trying to figure out Photoshop 7. One of them, oddly enough, is another one from the Barnes and Noble line. I remember when I bought it. Photoshop was causing me no end of grief, and I wasn’t entirely certain a book was going to help me, especially since none of the online tutorials I’d been reading had helped me at all.
To my great surprise, the book quickly became a favorite. I was thumbing through it for everything. I imagine this PSP 8 book will become about as used. It’s amazing how the simplest books can be the most useful.
It’s also amazing exactly how much of my learning has come from random books I’ve decided to seek out for no other reason than I want to know how to do something!
Posted by Rebecca as Uncategorized at 8:28 AM EDT
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I have been giving interviews for the past year concerning the use of blogs in my jewelry business. On the one hand, it’s kind of nice becasue I know it’s bringing exposure to my jewelry. On the other hand, it’s something of a nightmare. I’ve never been good at talking about myself, especially in “important” situations.
Phone interviews are nice because when they ask me to come up with specifics, I can pull up the site and quickly scan it for something useful, but it just seems that I should be able to talk more easily about things that come from me. Chalk it up to my inherent shyness, my great desire to avoid the spotlight.
After I hung up the phone this morning, I started wondering if perhaps it might be in my best interests to create an interview prep file in my notes. Interviews are not going to stop coming my way, which is a good thing, but I should take them very seriously, and I’m not sure that I’m doing that at the moment. The notes file could contain responses to questions that have come up in each interview, and then a few out-there responses that might serve me well if someone throws an unusual question at me.
What do you think? How do you prepare for “guru” interviews?
Posted by Rebecca as Uncategorized at 7:47 AM EDT
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After putting it off for various reason over the past few weeks, I finally managed to put up the pink eyeglass minder for purchase through eBay this morning.
Please check it out. Bid on it! The auction closes on Friday!
Posted by Rebecca as Uncategorized at 3:20 PM EDT
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This great article suggests that managers need to create more “white space” in their workplace, but I think the metaphor can be further entended into all areas of one’s life.
For those unfamiliar with the concept, white space is an important part of anything published. White space is necessary to give the eyes a chance to relax between processing text and images. Otherwise, the eyes start sufering from strain, and they soon stop looking at what you want them to look at.
I think the concept of creating more “white space” in one’s life is an interesting one. One that many of my friends will be speaking to me about once they see this and it sinks in. When you don’t step back and take a break once in a while, it leaves you empty, and then you’re absolutely no good to your business.
Perhaps I can start by physically adding white space to my to-do list, as a visual reminder to add it to my daily activities as well.
Posted by Rebecca as Uncategorized at 8:06 AM EDT
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