Motivation is a strange thing for most of us. Today a good friend over at Flexbandit forwarded me a video that captures the spirit of our motivation as people. It also captures something that I feel is wrong with many businesses today.

Below are a few highlights from the video, which I hope you will take a moment to watch and think about, whether you’re a writer, animator, programmer, martial artist, or just a person interacting with this world of commerce and business.

We are not as endlessly manipulable and predictable as you might think.

Money is a motivator. If you don’t pay people enough, they won’t be motivated.

But once they are paid enough, money is taken off the table. There are three factors that lead to better performance:  Autonomy, the desire to direct our own lives; mastery, the urge to get better at stuff and achieve; and, a sense of purpose.

Companies that are flourishing are animated by [a transcendent purpose]

The video begins a bit abstract and vague, but then really gets into some interesting details. You should take a few minutes and watch this video now. And, for more detail, the one on TED.

I’ve taken up some freelance work at Examiner.com. I write local content for the Carson City and Reno area. Check out my bio and, should you find the articles interesting–many of are wider interest than local focal–or just want to help send my daughters to college, subscribe to my page. It’s free and I get paid by the subscriber and page view. It’s not a lot of pay, more pennies than dollars, but it does increase considerably as I get more subscribers and views. Being prolific is key to putting change in the pocket.

The main reason I like this idea is that it’s professional freelance work. This is resume building to be sure. If it paid only a penny an article, it would still be worth it just to have a couple hundred published works I can refer agents to during the query process. The drawback is that it consumes a day of my writing time. Hopefully the material I’m generating will help to hone my skills and make this part worthwhile.

If any of you writerly types are interested in signing up to provide local content in your area, please let me know. I do get a sizable referral bonus if you follow the right process.

As Marilee Swirczek said,

Writing is the act of selecting and organizing words–creating prose with words–with the purpose of providing the reader with an insight, or truth, into the human condition.

Yes, one can write simply to entertain or to produce a laugh or a reaction, but insight is the higher goal of writing, The Art, if you will.

There are many reasons people study martial arts: Some want to get in shape, some want self confidence, and some want to beat people up. Those who make a serious study of martial arts ultimately pursue a higher path: Enlightenment. There are many philosophies and analogies to describe what enlightenment means; because, like writing, it is unique to each individual. A simple way of describing it is thus:  The pursuit of martial arts is the act of selecting thoughts and actions and organizing them–creating prose with movement–with the purpose of discovering an insight into one’s own state or condition.

Both of these arts achieve similar goals. Both of these arts are vast, lifelong pursuits with an ever-expanding horizon. This literally means that the more I learn about each, the larger the field of possibility becomes, the more I understand how little I know. There is an odd comfort in seeking excellence in this way. Sure, it stings at first. This pursuit of an ever expanding target is much like the Christian pursuit of God. One strives to be like perfection, knowing that the effort is vain, that each step forward is still infinitely far away. But it’s still one step closer.

There is a humbling peace in this discovery. I can let go of feelings of inadequacy and the need to achieve and excel and to conceal my ignorance and failures. They are par for the course. The arts I strive to grow in are too vast for any to master in full. Wherever I am on the path relative to another, we are both still at the beginning. Another may be a horizon away from me, but still looks to an even farther horizon of his own.

And, with each new discovery of the craft, I may only grow one step closer to enlightenment; but, I also understand my companions for the journey just a bit more intimately, and find a little more capacity to love the diversity of culture and pragmatism that is a human being. It is all about the journey and nothing about the destination.