Procrastination means postpone a task that should be execute immediately.

Procrastination is a form of lack of motivation or at least motivation to act is lower than motivation to do not act.

Procrastination in some cases can be seen as beneficial. In particular when some problems require more time to make better decisions or find better solutions.

In the following table I report some reasons of procrastination.

Related Questions:

Related Topics:

• Motivation

References

The main principles about motivation are:

• Understand people’s needs and values. In particular:
  • be aware of basic psychological needs that drive people
  • when there are various people involved to reach a goal, try to involve people that have shared values.
• Create a vision, then quickly move on to the execution phase.
• Use rewards and positive reinforcements or find ways to quickly satisfy the needs.
• Balance positive vs negative feedbacks.

Related Questions:

Related Topics:

• Motivation

References

Gamification means using game design principles to improve something.

The goal is to increase people motivation to complete particular tasks and activities.

Some game design principles are:

• Points: numbers that represent people’s progress.
• Badges: visual representation of people’s achievements.
• Performance graphs: show people performances over time to show people progress.

An example of gamification technique is the Calendar Chain that involves marking an X on the calendar each day you complete a specific behaviour, task or activity. Over time, the Xs form a chain. The goal is to not break the chain.

Here I report various factors that contribute to increase people motivation:

• Having a growth mindset. See Mindset.
• Following self-transcendent values. See Values.
• Creating a vision, but also focusing on execution. See Balance vision and execution.
• Getting quick wins and celebrating successes.
• Using some gamification techniques may help to boost motivation. However it is important that people are intrinsically motivated, otherwise it may not work.

Here I report various factors that contributes to decrease people motivation:

I noticed that I focus more on negative feedback than on positive feedback both addressed to myself or other people.

Researches suggest to focus on positive reinforcements (see Reinforcements and punishment). Although feedback and reinforcements are different concepts (see Motivation - Definitions), positive feedback are a way to give positive reinforcements.

But is it always true that positive feedback are better? In the article Positive versus negative feedback that refers to the research How Positive and Negative Feedback Motivate Goal Pursuit is suggested that the answer to the question depends on the level of expertise of the person to whom you’re giving feedback.

In the course Inspiring and Motivating individuals is suggested a technique to identify what motivate people starting from behaviours and proceeding backward to values and needs that motivated that behaviour.

The technique is quite simple and consists in observing person’s behaviour and then asking ourselves:

• What is the need this person wanted to satisfy with that behaviour?
• What is the value that subtend this need?

I have not found researches about this technique, however it seems to me quite logical considering: