Categories
apps

Kerstdag calculator

Vorig jaar tijdens kerst heb ik een nuttige app geschreven. Ik gebruik deze zelf ook steeds vaker tijdens gesprekken rond kerst, dus wilde hierbij de app met jullie delen.

https://finkingma.com/kerstCalculator/

De eerste twee mogelijkheden zijn het omrekenen van een datum naar een x’te kerstdag. Dit kun je gebruiken als mensen je vragen hoeveelste kerstdag je wilt afspreken.

De derde mogelijkheid heb ik laatst nog toegevoegd omdat ik ondertussen al 36 jaar oud ben, en als mensen me vragen hoe oud ik ben, ik dit moet uitrekenen in mijn hoofd. Omdat ik lui ben heb ik hier ook een app voor geschreven. Voor als je dit vaker wilt gebruiken sla ik hiervan de ingevuld datum op als cookie, zodat als je de app vaker opzoekt, je automatisch je nieuwe leeftijd binnenkrijgt, zonder dat je opnieuw je geboortedatum hoeft in te vullen.

Graag gedaan!

Categories
Mijn Geloofsopvattingen

Break the patterns that limit us

De laatste tijd ben ik weer wat verder op zoek gegaan naar mijn persoonlijke drive. Naar de vraag wat mij doet bewegen. Met name omdat ik de laatste tijd wat vaker twijfels heb of ik nog wel met de juiste zaken bezig ben rondom werk.

Tot op enkele weken geleden had ik het idee dat ik mijzelf het meest herkende in de term ‘the trickster’. Deze term voelde heel bekend aan en verklaarde veel van mijn acties op en buiten het werk. Maar een maand later begon ik te beseffen dat de trucs en technieken die ik verzamel meer op het niveau van de “hoe” zitten van de golden circle van Simon Sinek. Daarnaast werd ik ook lichtelijk geinspireerd door “Freedom of concerns” purpose van Jim Carrey. In het kort, tijd voor een revisit van mijn motto / lijfspreuk.

Na een paar nieuwe wandelingen, en een lange jog sessie – 18km, ik voel em nog steeds, kwam ik terecht op een nieuwe zin.  Iets dat in ieder geval voor nu juist voelt. Het verklaart veel van mijn gedrag, en voelt voor mijzelf ook inspirerend.

“To break the patterns that limit us”

Ik heb altijd een grote aversie gehad voor schaamte. Deze emotie hield mij vaak tegen om dingen te doen die ik eigenlijk wel leuk vond. Hier heb ik op jonge leeftijd veel moeite mee gehad, maar uiteindelijk heb ik hier bewust “nee” tegen leren zeggen, waardoor ik allerlei nieuwe toffe dingen begon te doen.

Een ander voorbeeld is dat ik altijd de neiging heb om de andere kant op te gaan. Als ik een groep mensen voor me rechtsaf zie gaan, ga ik linksaf. Dit roept bij mij het gevoel op van “Die kant wordt al door hun gezien, ik ga wel iets opzoeken dat nog niemand heeft gevonden”. Dit gedrag werd versterkt toen ik me begon te verdiepen in het Bystander Effect.

Daarnaast ben ik altijd bezig geweest met het ontdekken van andere richtingen. Joggen is voor mij een avontuur waarbij ik altijd op zoek ga naar paden die ik nog niet eerder heb bewandeld (behalve dan wanneer ik me niet zo lekker voel en op tijd thuis wil zijn). Vanmiddag tijdens het joggen nam ik ook weer een nieuwe afslag die mij in een nieuw dorp bracht waar ik nog nooit geweest was, het voelde heerlijk.

Ik zou nog met flink veel andere voorbeelden kunnen komen, maar het belangrijkste is dat deze lijfspreuk gewoon goed voelt voor mij. Ik haal er inspiratie uit, en het voelt als een zin die beschrijft wie ik ben en waarom ik dingen doe. Dus zolang ik deze lijfspreuk niet kan weerleggen, staat hij vast!

Categories
Uncategorized

The Motivation Model (name in progress

At the beginning of 2019, I started working on a new project on motivation. That is partially the reason I haven’t been posting anything here. I really loved diving into different motivation theories and the spacemap has been quite a useful model to better understand motivational problems in teams.

But motivation isn’t just about work. It’s the reason why we do, think and believe what we do. For a long time, I have been trying to come up with a model that could help us understand the big picture of our motivation. A model that could help us understand and discuss both the work-related questions: “Why is my colleague not adopting this new way of working that we agreed on?”, but also the simple questions, like: “why am I drinking a soda now?”.

For a year I have been creating several simulations to test out certain behavior patterns that I noticed in myself, and later also in others. It was a lot of work, but I believe I have finally built an abstract model that can be used to explain various different aspects of motivation. A model that handles the core abstract concepts of motivation.

It comes down to four abstract concepts:

  • Mental blockades are everything that prevents you from doing anything. It’s related to the hygiene factors from Herzberg’s two-factor theory, but it goes beyond work. A few examples are insecurity, pain, lack of time, lack of energy.
  • Motivation. The mental willingness to do anything, your drive to do anything (unrelated to any task). If this is higher than your mental blockades, you will essentially become activated and pick up a task, a thought, or a belief. Whatever is closest to your mind at that moment.
  • Sustainer. Every task/idea you have or are working on has a sustainer. If it is positive, your motivation level will increase over time while doing this, if it’s negative it will decrease. The internalization part of self-determination theory plays a big role in the sustainer of the task. In a perfect world, all our tasks/ideas will have positive sustainers, so you’re motivation will be endless. Unfortunately, we are living in the real world.
  • Triggers. It can be anything that triggers you to think of something. This is what happens to us in life on a continuous basis. Your clock waking you up, your partner asking you to make dinner, but also personal triggers, like looking at a picture that reminds you of your last holiday. Over time these triggers have built connections with specific tasks, like the clock triggering you to wake up (instead of just turning off the clock). A trigger will increase your motivation level (and if your motivation gets higher than your mental blockades, will motivate you to perform that task), and depending on the strength and internalization, it will often decrease your sustainer.

A strong trigger (phone battery down while you’re expecting a call) has a big positive impact on your motivation level (causing you to recharge the phone) but also a big negative impact on your motivation sustainer (damn that useless battery). Your motivation will immediately spike, triggering you to recharge the phone. But the longer you spend on recharging your phone (perhaps you can’t find a cable), the more motivation you will lose. A smaller trigger (a friend asks you to play squash) will have a smaller impact on your motivation level, but also less negative impact on your sustainer, or perhaps even a positive impact.

This also explains why we suddenly start on a new task (like cleaning), right after we’ve had a very pleasant phone call. The phone call boosted our motivation and kept it high, even after the phone call ended. So we still had plenty of motivation left after the task ended. We remain motivated and our mind just looks for the next best thing to pick up.

I’ve drawn an example in the above image of my period after I’ve recovered from my burnout. I had very high mental blockades, which prevented me from getting motivated. Most of my sustainers were also very low because I’ve lose most of my internalization during my burnout period. My relatedness was impacted because I had missed out on a lot of social activities I had going before. But also my competence was down because I was doubting myself much more and I lost several of my personal skills (I was able to jog for 2 hours straight, now I have trouble with 30 minutes). So every time I tried to motivate myself with triggers, I quickly lost my motivation. This explains the strong fluctuations in the example above.

I’ve used this model to help myself understand this troublesome period and also to give myself strength and figure out what to do in certain moments. Over time I managed to decrease my mental blockades until I started seeing positive effects. For instance, I started singing along with a song on the ready. Which proved to me that I was able to get motivated with a small nudge. This meant my motivation was already higher than my mental blockades, otherwise, it would’ve required a stronger trigger to motivate myself to sing.

Categories
Uncategorized

The Motivation Model (name in progress)

At the beginning of 2019, I started working on a new project on motivation. That is partially the reason I haven’t been posting anything here. I really loved diving into different motivation theories and the spacemap has been quite a useful model to better understand motivational problems in teams.

But motivation isn’t just about work. It’s the reason why we do, think and believe what we do. For a long time, I have been trying to come up with a model that could help us understand the big picture of our motivation. A model that could help us understand and discuss both the work-related questions: “Why is my colleague not adopting this new way of working that we agreed on?”, but also the simple questions, like: “why am I drinking a soda now?”.

For a year I have been creating several simulations to test out certain behavior patterns that I noticed in myself, and later also in others. It was a lot of work, but I believe I have finally built an abstract model that can be used to explain various different aspects of motivation. A model that handles the core abstract concepts of motivation.

It comes down to four abstract concepts:

  • Mental blockades are everything that prevents you from doing anything. It’s related to the hygiene factors from Herzberg’s two-factor theory, but it goes beyond work. A few examples are insecurity, pain, lack of time, lack of energy.
  • Motivation. The mental willingness to do anything, your drive to do anything (unrelated to any task). If this is higher than your mental blockades, you will essentially become activated and pick up a task, a thought, or a belief. Whatever is closest to your mind at that moment.
  • Sustainer. Every task/idea you have or are working on has a sustainer. If it is positive, your motivation level will increase over time while doing this, if it’s negative it will decrease. The internalization part of self-determination theory plays a big role in the sustainer of the task. In a perfect world, all our tasks/ideas will have positive sustainers, so you’re motivation will be endless. Unfortunately, we are living in the real world.
  • Triggers. It can be anything that triggers you to think of something. This is what happens to us in life on a continuous basis. Your clock waking you up, your partner asking you to make dinner, but also personal triggers, like looking at a picture that reminds you of your last holiday. Over time these triggers have built connections with specific tasks, like the clock triggering you to wake up (instead of just turning off the clock). A trigger will increase your motivation level (and if your motivation gets higher than your mental blockades, will motivate you to perform that task), and depending on the strength and internalization, it will often decrease your sustainer.

A strong trigger (phone battery down while you’re expecting a call) has a big positive impact on your motivation level (causing you to recharge the phone) but also a big negative impact on your motivation sustainer (damn that useless battery). Your motivation will immediately spike, triggering you to recharge the phone. But the longer you spend on recharging your phone (perhaps you can’t find a cable), the more motivation you will lose. A smaller trigger (a friend asks you to play squash) will have a smaller impact on your motivation level, but also less negative impact on your sustainer, or perhaps even a positive impact.

This also explains why we suddenly start on a new task (like cleaning), right after we’ve had a very pleasant phone call. The phone call boosted our motivation and kept it high, even after the phone call ended. So we still had plenty of motivation left after the task ended. We remain motivated and our mind just looks for the next best thing to pick up.

I’ve drawn an example in the above image of my period after I’ve recovered from my burnout. I had very high mental blockades, which prevented me from getting motivated. Most of my sustainers were also very low because I’ve lose most of my internalization during my burnout period. My relatedness was impacted because I had missed out on a lot of social activities I had going before. But also my competence was down because I was doubting myself much more and I lost several of my personal skills (I was able to jog for 2 hours straight, now I have trouble with 30 minutes). So every time I tried to motivate myself with triggers, I quickly lost my motivation. This explains the strong fluctuations in the example above.

I’ve used this model to help myself understand this troublesome period and also to give myself strength and figure out what to do in certain moments. Over time I managed to decrease my mental blockades until I started seeing positive effects. For instance, I started singing along with a song on the ready. Which proved to me that I was able to get motivated with a small nudge. This meant my motivation was already higher than my mental blockades, otherwise, it would’ve required a stronger trigger to motivate myself to sing.

Categories
Models

the SPACEMAP is dead, long live the SPACECAR

Please forgive. I did not know better at the time.

I’m sorry to all of you, for making you believe our intrinsic motivation focuses on factors like Purpose and Mastery. That our Intrinsic Motivation is determined based on making the world a better place or being the best at what we do.

For many years I believed that the terms Purpose and Mastery were actual improvements on the Self Determination Theory, but over the past few years, I slowly started to realize that these terms have distanced ourselves from the truth.

It sounds great. Inspiring even, but it’s not true. Even worse, believing that our Intrinsic Motivation is determined by such unrealistic goals, makes us chase something that is in fact, unreachable.

But aren’t we motivated by helping the world and being awesome?

Yes, but to a much lesser degree than terms like ‘Purpose’ and ‘Mastery’ make us believe.

An answer that lies closer to the truth can be found in the original works of Edward Deci and Richard Ryan (Self Determination Theory, 1960). They also spoke of 3 work factors, of which one already sounds familiar: ‘Autonomy’.

However, instead of Purpose, the original works spoke of Relatedness. Which meant nothing more than being part of a group. Being able to relate to something beyond yourself. We don’t want to change the world, we just want to be part of it.

Next, instead of Mastery, the term competence was used. It was never about being the best at what we do. We just want to feel competent at what we do.

In its most basic form, our motivation comes down the following sentence:

“We all want to be part of a group and to make ourselves useful.”

Hence, the new SPACE-CAR

Basically just replacing mastery with competence, and purpose with relatedness.

The old spacemap can be found here.

Categories
Effectief zijn in een team

Improv inzetten om voor een Agile Mindset te zorgen

Zodra ik begreep hoe motivatie werkt en hoe onze industrie ons richting een responsieve mindset heeft geduwt, begon ik mijn zoektocht naar manieren om voor een gezonde mindset te zorgen. Om voor motiverende omgevingen te zorgen op de plekken waar ik werk. Mijn eerste ontdekking was Improv.

Improv laat ons zelf onze soft skills ontwikkelen

Improv is een open format dat ons de ruimte geeft om onze soft skills te ontwikkelen, met name:

  • Scherpte
  • Communicatie
  • Teamwork
  • Luisteren
  • fail-fast houding

Belangrijk hierbij is dat het de ruimte geeft. Improv moet nooit gebruikt worden om mensen te forceren om iets te leren. Mensen die meedoen zullen voor zichzelf bepalen of en welke softskills zij willen ontwikkelen (dit gebeurd meestal onbewust). Onbewust omdat mensen vanuit zichzelf al een vaag idee hebben over welke soft skills belangrijk voor hun zijn, en welke zij leuk vinden. Omdat mensen een intrinsieke drijfveer hebben om skills te leren die relevant zijn voor hun omgeving, zullen mensen zoeken naar soft skills die voor henzelf en hun omgeving belangrijk zijn.

Gebruik korte Improv Sessies om mensen actief te betrekken in workshops

Improv hoeft niet altijd om 1-2 uur lange workshops te gaan.  Je kunt ook korte sessies van 15-30 minuten organiseren, voordat je begint aan een interactieve training of workshop. Hierdoor kun je Improv gebruiken om:

  • Mensen in een actieve/assertieve mindset te krijgen
  • Energizer!
  • Groeps kennismaking
  • Mensen fouten te laten durven maken

Organiseer je eigen Improv sessies met deze oefeningen

Ik heb een pdf gemaakt met Improv oefeningen die je kunt gebruiken om je eigen Improv sessie te organiseren. Deze is wel in het engels.

Improv-exercises

Categories
Being effective in teams

Using Improv to cultivate an agile mindset

After understanding how motivation works and how our industry has forced us into responsive mindsets, I started my search for ways to cultivate a healthy mindset. To create motivational environments. One of my first discoveries was Improv.

Improv allows us to develop our soft skills

Improv is an open format that allows us to develop our soft skills, mainly:

  • Sharpness
  • Communication
  • Teamwork
  • Listening
  • fail-fast attitude

Important to notice is that it allows us. Improv should never be used to force people to train their soft skills. People who are participating decide for themselves if and which soft skills they will train (mostly unconscious). Unconscious because people already have a vague notion of which soft skills are important to them, and which they like. And because people have an innate drive to learn skills which are relevant to their environment, they will want to develop the soft skills that are relevant to themselves and their environment.

Use short Improv sessions to get people actively participating in interactive workshops

Improv doesn’t always have to be organized as a 1-2 hour workshop. You can also organize short sessions of 15-30 minutes before an interactive training or workshop. This way you can use Improv to:

  • get people in an active/assertive mindset
  • build up energy
  • get people to know each other
  • get people to make mistakes

During a short Improv Session, you should only do simple Improv exercises and not ask people to perform on stage. In the attached file (see below), those off-limit exercises are called the On-stage exercises.

Organize your own Improv sessions with these exercises

I have created a pdf file with Improv exercises that you can use to organize your own Improv Sessions.

Improv-exercises

Categories
Models

The internalisation model – how we have created responsive behaviour

Motivation is one of my favorite subjects to talk about. For years I have been passioned about motivation, giving talks and workshops about the subject. The first model I visualized (and still use a lot), is the internalization model. It originates from the Self Determination Theory.

Everything you do is based on a specific type of motivation. It’s the reasoning behind your actions. Quite often we are not even aware of these reasons. Internalized motivation is the polarization at which your motivation comes from yourself, versus an external factor. Highly internalized motivation comes primarily from yourself, and low internalized motivation comes from external factors.

According to the Self Determination Theory, internalization can be broken down into five areas:

  1. External motivation => Forced. This is when you act primarily based on external factors (you want the money, or you are trying to avoid punishment)
  2. Introjected motivation => Pressure. Whenever someone pressures you into something, you are motivated from this level. Salespeople are exceptionally well skilled in using this type of motivation (usually called manipulation) to get people to purchase.
  3. Identified motivation => Social. The motivation to do something for someone you care about. Doing the dishes for your partner is a good example.
  4. Integrated motivation => Goals. Anything that you personally would like to achieve, but haven’t achieved yet. The internalization is high here, but you are still depending on something you haven’t accomplished yet. Basically, any skill that you want to learn.
  5. Intrinsic motivation => Experience. And eventually, the motivation level that everyone talks about these days, Intrinsic Motivation. Intrinsic Motivation only occurs when you don’t care about a specific outcome. The experience of doing it is rewarding enough in itself.

At work, these five levels are constantly used by colleagues and companies. Few people realize what the effects are.

The internalization determines for a large part how we behave.

Fully externalized motivation leads to responsive and passive behavior. People who are used to being pressured or always expect rewards or punishments will mainly respond to those specific stimuli. Whenever these stimuli are absent, these people show passive behavior. We have taught them to only act when we want them (through our external motivation). Many organizations are still showing these problems, where employees show responsive or passive behavior. But that’s not because they want to, it’s because our industry created that type of behavior!

On the other hand, Intrinsic Motivation leads to proactive and self-determined behavior. People who understand why their contribution is important, will fight for the companies vision and find new ways to realize this vision while making use of their own skills.

Methods like Agile (slowly even entering non-ICT departments) are highly dependent on Intrinsic Motivation, but there is still little awareness of how this works. And we cannot even influence employees based on Intrinsic Motivation (if we could influence it, it would not be intrinsic anymore). Fortunately, we can use Integrated Motivation to motivate employees. By making employees understand what the vision and the purpose of a product and company is. We need to make them understand how they as an individual can contribute to our vision.

Extrinsic Motivation overrules Intrinsic Motivation

The most dangerous thing about extrinsic motivation is that it overrules already existant Intrinsic Motivation. Take painting for example… Painting is an activity that most children like to do for fun. Research shows that when these children are given external rewards – they are given money – these external rewards will slowly overrule our already existent Intrinsic Motivation. Over time, there will be no Intrinsic Motivation left. At that moment, these people will only paint when they are being forced or pressured. Their Intrinsic Motivation has been completely overruled.

Intrinsic Motivation enhanced our creative ability

Over the last decade, another experiment has been conducted over and over again, called: ‘The Candle Problem‘. This experiment uses a puzzle, which can only be solved by thinking out of the box.

Two groups are presented with this puzzle. Group 1 hears that the fastest person to solve this puzzle gets a reward in the form of prize money. They are being motivated externally.

Group 2 doesn’t hear anything. They will just solve the puzzle using their own motivation.

And over the years, the result has been the same: the group that does not receive money is faster in solving this puzzle.

Conclusion: People who do not expect an external reward, are better at solving complex puzzles.

Categories
Being effective in teams

Add meaning and kill your darlings

One of the most important concepts that I focus on being a romanticist, is meaning. It’s a term that is difficult to describe using words, but nevertheless carries great weight wherever we go. A job with little meaning is demotivating for most of us. A job with meaning can give you the energy to get out of bed with a smile on your face.

If you – like me – want to create a positive work environment, it’s important to create meaning (for yourself and for others).

In my experience, there is one simple way to give meaning to anything: to spend time and energy on something. Because in the end, that’s where meaning comes from:

Meaning = energy (spent) * time (spent)

Things don’t magically gain meaning just by being present. We give meaning to these things, whether they are people, pets or a car. We give them meaning by spending time and energy on them.

Some examples:

  • If you talk a lot to your pet and cuddle with it, they will gain meaning to you.
  • If you bake and bring cookies to work, work itself will gain more meaning to you (because you spent extra time doing something for work). The great thing is that your colleagues will also add meaning to you if they eat your cookies.
  • A task that you finish as swiftly as possible, will have little to no meaning to you.
  • If you prepare a grand entrance on your first day on the job, you will gain meaning to everyone present.
  • If you spend half an hour chitchatting with colleagues each day, you can create meaningful relationships at work.

Unfortunately adding meaning will take time. That’s why it’s important to decide for yourself what you want to spend time on, and on who. Because based on those decisions, your environment will automatically gain meaning to you.

Kill your darlings

One of my teachers once taught me about the ‘kill your darlings principle’. It’s about what happens if you unintentionally spend a lot of time on anything, and gain an emotional bond (meaning) which makes it difficult to do the right thing. Which is quite often: destroy your old work and start over.

When I was developing my first website, I spend way too much time finetuning all these useless features. I learned a lot from those self-made challenges and it was a lot of fun. However, this website gained a lot of meaning to me. But it wasn’t good (since it was my first). It can be pretty devastating to put your old work aside and start on something new. This is what kill your darlings means. We need to train ourselves to let go of everything we fear to lose. Or else we might get stuck in horrible situations.

Positive meaning

As I explained, it’s pretty easy to add meaning to almost anything. You just spend time and energy on something. But being the romantic I am, I learned the hard way that adding meaning is not good in itself. Meaning will add weight to any kind of relationship you have. If you add meaning to a stressful relationship with someone, this relationship will end up becoming more stressful. If you spend more time and energy on a horrible date, the date will only get more and more horrible.

The trick is to add meaning to the good things in your life. That’s why its important that you decide where you add meaning in your life:

  • Do you like baking? From experience, I can say that everyone at work loves pie (or just the time spend with each other)
  • Do you like beer and cocktails? Gather a group of colleagues who like to get a drink after working hours.
  • Are you into sports? Invite a colleague to go squashing.

The 8 hours you spend working, don’t have to be filled with ‘work’. I advise everyone to spend some time with other colleagues and do fun activities with other colleagues. This is the best way to add positive meaning to your life. For yourself and for your colleagues.

Categories
Being effective in teams

Mastery Curve – how we learn new things

The ‘Mastery Curve’ is a model I picked from game designers. It’s a model to understand the learning curve of players. It’s incredibly important to understand this learning curve in the game industry, or else you might lose an immersed player halfway through the game.

A beginning player requires different stimuli than a player who has spent over 100 hours playing the game. That’s why it’s important for the game industry to have a strong grip on this type of motivation.

We can use this model to understand how our own mastery motivation works. The Mastery Curve teaches us two things:

  1. We don’t grow constantly. Occasionally we get an epiphany and everything falls into place. Most of the time we barely grow, sometimes we don’t improve for a period of months. This can be frustrating, but it’s just a part of the process. Time is an essential part of learning.
  2. Our learning process is an exponential curve. The better we get, the slower we grow. Eventually, it is impossible to master any skill for 100%.

from kratosguide.com

As you can see in the bottom graph, you can get stuck at a certain skill level for a long period (months), but that’s just a part of growing! As long as you don’t give up, you will eventually pick up the pace and continue growing.

Start learning

Whenever you start something new, expect a lot of frustrating moments in which you won’t learn anything. Epiphanies don’t happen on a weekly basis. And remember: if you endure, you might experience your next epiphany and take a huge leap forward. Especially when you start something new, there is so much more to learn.

Unfortunately, the opposite is also true.

Nobody can truly master anything

I started surfing several years ago. It was fun at the time, I kept learning new techniques and I slowly got to the point that I could surf a wave while standing up. But after a few years, I got bored. It took too much time before I got another epiphany. Especially since I live in Holland and I barely have the time to go to the ocean. And that’s the main thing, mastering any skill takes a lot of time. I slowly realized that I didn’t like surfing in itself, I just liked the growing aspect of it. And I barely grew anymore. Continuing to surf and getting better at it was getting harder and harder over time. I haven’t even surfed in 2017.

There’s a flipside to this. Everyone has these problems and nobody can fully master a skill for 100% (because it’s an exponential curve). As long as you manage to endure and keep training your skills, you could, in fact, get better than anyone else.

Do you have someone that inspires you? Someone who is so incredible that it intimates you? Let me tell you: you could beat him/her!

After all, even if your role model has mastered a skill for 99%, given enough time you could master the same skill for 99,5%.