All posts in Fundamentals

What Is Your Motivation?

A question that goes over my head while i sit and examine my life and my career journey; where i am, how i got here and where the hell am i heading.

It seems to be the sauna at my health club where the thinking process occurs; this time when a random chap begins talking (like hello, this isn’t the place to make chit chat pal, im nearly naked).

Anyway, we were talking about what fields we are in; this guy is apparently a semi-pro Rugby player, struggling to reach the next level and not sure if this is the life he actually wants.

He spoke of not being given opportunities by his coach and the feeling like he was being neglected. He said he never had the urge to go beyond what was asked of him because he wondered why he should seeing as no-one would notice.

This got me thinking (as always).

What is it that motivates us to go that little bit further? Beyond what is being asked of us or what is the necessary and strive to make things happen that are not in front of our faces.

Motivation is a funny thing; it acts as an ever lurking energy within the spirit, cropping up in every decision we make. It creates reason, and with reason we create actions.

Getting out of bed for example, especially when you know you could fall back to sleep on the touch of the snooze button. Is that a form of motivation we can consider a positive, or is it based primarily on fear? Fear from our employers, fear of letting people down or even fear of failure.

As humans we are very different and a persons motivation will no doubt vary from the events in our past, the thoughts in our present and by the aspirations in our future.

To reach that goal, to strive for that next level and to achieve beyond what is considered the norm, we have to dig deep; understand what our motivation is, and transform the thought in our brains to an action in our lives.

It is within our journey for self fulfilment (call me Socrates) that we find the key to our minds and unlock the truth (or Sigmund Freud) behind what truly motivates us to achieve.

Call To Action

It is incredibly easy to just coast and float along, but being labelled average is far worse than being labelled a failure, in my opinion anyway.

The call to action from this post… What is your motivation? What is your tipping point and at what stage do you get up out of bed with the mentality that today is going to be the day that you make things happen?

Don’t answer the above… Just do it!

January 19, 2011 / 2 comments / Category: Fundamentals, Inspiration, Personal Development / Tags: , , , ,

Personal Branding Tips & YourName.com

I often speak about Personal Branding , Personal Development and how we can use Digital Tools to assist both those areas.

The most important asset to any individual looking to raise their brand online, is a Personal Website.
It is the forefront of you online, the home of your image and the gateway to opportunity.

Therefore if you are in the position where you are thinking of getting yourself a professional website, you should be considering some of these questions:

  • Who do i get to build my Website or do i try do it myself?
  • What platform do i use to build the site?
  • Are there any layout templates or do i have to get one coded?
  • Where do i get the Hosting for my site?

Then you will ask yourself the all important question:

  • Damn, what name do i even give my site that best suits the image i want to portray?

Choosing a name for your personal Website is like naming your first born, (ok, i’m speculating here but it’s important). You may think your name isn’t very catchy or you may want to go with an alias.


Continue Reading

November 21, 2010 / 17 comments / Category: Brand Development, Fundamentals, Personal Development / Tags: , , , , ,

Back To The Drawing Board

Currently in a state of no motivation, recovering from flu and illness and a severe writers block, questioning the life of this site and if writing on Social Media and Digital Technology is even worth it.
The content is everywhere, and to be honest im bored of reading and writing about how we can use Social Media to improve our business and lives.

In the past few months i’ve changed a lot and my outlook on both projects i am/was involved in has also changed. This is due to a flip in career direction and also meeting someone who has made a large impact on my life. Now im feeling good about things, but im questioning my reasoning for all this in the first place.

I’ve written on Urban Music on my previous Music Blog and transferred the learnings to this site where my career is in football as a Digital Analyst (It’s ironic that my job is to be the guy that thinks too much and explains the what, where, why and how).

My other persona lives on a gaming site named The Urban Gamer, again created to use influences from Urban Music merged with Video Games. There isn’t really a huge business model here, just playing games and writing about them. My team are brilliant though! Big up the UG crew!

As for this site, i’m currently brainstorming to figure out a niche area to focus on. Im buggered if im gonna continue on this path scouring the net for Digital recycled content to put my own thoughts on like a bootleg version of Mashable.

Thinking back, one of the first posts i wrote for this site was about the benefits of a Performance Appraisal.

This is a key exert from that post:

The 4 main reasons for Appraisal are:

Motivation and Satisfaction – Performance appraisal can have a profound effect on levels of employee motivation and satisfaction – for better as well as for worse.

Training and Development – Performance appraisal offers an excellent opportunity – perhaps the best that will ever occur – for a supervisor and subordinate to recognize and agree upon individual training and development needs.

Recruitment and Induction – Appraisal data can be used to monitor the success of the organization’s recruitment and induction practices.

Evaluation – At its most basic level, performance appraisal is the process of examining and evaluating the performance of an individual.

So within these four values, i was set a specific set of questions on how to construct this task.

– What is my Ultimate Vision?
– Why am I Doing This?
– 3 areas to strive for?
– Define a set of goals that i want to achieve.

It’s been over six months since that post and somewhere along the journey of being an unemployed depressed bum to an entrepreneurial freelancing mastermind to an employed Digital Whiz Kid, i have let go of the fundamentals.

I’m going back to basics and back to the drawing board to figure out where i went wrong/right.

I’ll be back soon chappies! In the mean time, you can follow me on twitter.com/iamluca if you aren’t already.

Love!

October 22, 2010 / 3 comments / Category: Fundamentals, Personal Development / Tags: , , , , , ,