Intrinsic motivation helps you secure a good job

The UK official unemployment data published by the House of Commons Library of UK Parliament on the 13th Feb 2024:

• unemployment rate is 3.8% and 1.32 million people aged 16+ are unemployed
• both unemployment rate have fallen slightly over the last year
• 9.28 million people aged 16 - 64 are economically inactive
• the number of vacancies fell over the last year to 932,000 in Jan 2024

And to add my latest experience in providing executive mentoring to MBA students here in the UK: the overall challenge remains the same as in 2023:

The time required to secure a job has extended up to 6- 9 months.

One of my mentee, a bright MBA student with a PhD as well is still not able to secure a successful job in spite of having the high education.

That is a very cruel reality to digest for someone who does everything to invest in high education, in certifications and have been applying for jobs for 8 months ..

So what is happening?

Is it the economic environment adverse to securing good jobs, with super high competition ?

OR

Is it the lack of self confidence?

OR

Maybe the lack of keeping being persistent and motivated?

OR

It's altogether, external and internal factors.

My key learning from landing good jobs for decades and helping hundreds of people secure careers, all the way to now securing business contracts is one 👇

Keeping your motivation AS HIGH and AS LONG as possible throughout the entire period of the goal.

Easier to say than done.

Intrinsic motivation = how I motivate myself = is the most powerful and lasting motivation.

And Prof. Dr. Huberman dispels the myth around accountability if you share the goal publicly. Not True!

The positive motivation can dissipate rapidly and we don't need that, especially in the current economic reality with long timelines required to secure a job .

HOW TO KEEP YOURSELF MOTIVATED

There are science based strategies, protocols that we can utilise to stay motivated:

1. Ask yourself: do I want to achieve this goal, on a scale from 1 to 10 how motivated I am to pursue and achieve this career goal? Make sure it's not only an imposed goal by your line manager, this is your goal.
2. IF you are motivated use this strategy: POSITIVE VISUALISATION: visualise the end, how would you feel when you accomplish it? From 1 to 5 minutes we can visualise the positive end and how you might feel? This is a very effective strategy for when you feel motivated.
3. IF you don't feel motivated use FEAR BASED VISUALISATION: how much more lousy you would feel if you don't achieve the career goal? Visualise severe consequences, even failure. To me personally is a bit harsh, but there were many times when I had to employ this fear based strategy. The scientific data proves that there is a certain shift in our brain that recruit the reward molecules.
4. Use FOCUS to increase motivation - it's called COGNITIVE FOCUS and mental readiness. We need a physical target within the proximity of where we are performing our work activity, keep that focus (blink or not 🤓) for 30, 60 or 90 seconds. What's happening in our brain in that moment is that there are chemicals produced to increase the cognitive focus. Also the dopamine is generated to increase our focus and motivation.
5. Another protocol mentioned by Tim Ferriss is to put your phone on air mode whilst performing the action to accomplish the goal. This is what I literally do at the time of writing this newsletter. There is so much silence at home, no distractions, a cup of organic mint tea and my cat Chocolina snoozing off 🤩
6. Another protocol: RANDOM INTERMITENT REWARD *RIR - the point is to not reward yourself for every single step. Simply flip a coin to randomly reward yourself. This RIR is going to keep you motivated. This is an easy one, especially in toxic workplaces where managers 'forget' or ignore consistently to reward employees for the good progress. Or am I wrong? I'm dreaming of a workplace where coins are flipped or at least some kind of coin flipping to randomly reward the good progress of the teams. 🤓
7. If you feel less motivated half way through the goal - MIDDLE PROBLEM - the neuro science advises to chunk that section so then, you acknowledge + move + eliminate the middle problem.

🍏🍏🍏

If you liked our newsletter share it with your network. And we would like to hear your thoughts on how you achieve INTRINSIC MOTIVATION that will bring you fulfilment. Don't forget to have fun, socialise, sleep well, eat healthy and exercise. As Huberman does.

this article is written by our founder Ana-Maria Velica 🍏