Monday, December 18, 2006

Changing gears…Maslow’s theory of Driving Needs and Motivation


It’s that time of the year, the end of the year, when we start thinking about the year that just went pass by, some of us think it was as good as it could have been, others look forward to a better year to follow and make necessary changes. Personifying this blog, there is a need to change gears. The branding of this blog has come under severe pressure, owing to a series of serious posts! It’s time to get back to the basics of the blog, get back to the drawing board and make necessary adjustments to the portfolio of serious and funny posts featured on this blog!

Over the last couple of days, I have dwelled about funny topics for this post. As always, I struggled for topics, it's much easier to write serious stuff, I suddenly realised! Finally, I decided to amalgamate two topics in the hope that something funny would pop up. Here is an attempt at this. Let me introduce Maslow’s theory of driving needs and motivation!

For those who need to refresh the original theory that Maslow proposed, please see this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs

With all due regards to Mr. Maslow, let me now mutate the genetics of this theory that has withstood the test of time and apply it to driving needs and motivation:

Physiological needs: At the very first stage, you drive to meet the basic transportation needs. As such, you don’t care whether you drive a BMW or a bullock-cart to help you change your coordinates on the surface of earth!

Safety needs: You probably consider to be safer than local train/ auto/ taxi/ air travel. It’s probably all about having confidence in the seat-belts, the air-bag, the anti-collision bars, etc, etc. However, driving here sounds more like a compulsion and you would rather have a chauffer than drive yourself.

Belonging needs: This is when things start to get interesting and the real motivation starts to show up, when you feel the strong need to belong to the driving fraternity! Call it peer pressure, driving at this stage is all to prove a point ‘so can I’

Esteem needs: This is a fairly high-up need, when one starts thinking of driving as a career, when one thinks of driving in terms of achievements be it distance covered in a day or a how far did the speedometer stretch, etc. This stage is probably all about the 'drive to drive'!

Self-actualization: The ultimate level of motivation, when you drive not to attain something, but simply ‘coz you strongly believe that driving is what life is all about. This is the highest level of motivation, when distance, speed, power, etc loose relevance - it’s all about enjoying the feel of steering wheel, the gear, accelerator, brake and clutch!

Well, that's it for this post, didn't come out as funny as I once thought it would. But who cares!

Friday, December 08, 2006

Optimal thinking to improve Quality-of-Life...




The previous post on optimal thinking left a few very basic questions unanswered. Here is an attempt to solve some part of that mystery, though not quite there yet, but an attempt nevertheless.

I found one comment very interesting - will there be enough to look forward to in life if things were all perfect? Do we need to go through times when we feel “the entire world is against me” to appreciate the good side to life? Do we need to go into a shell of our own making to motivate ourselves? Frankly, I do not know that the answer to this riddle is, but my guess is that it probably gets down to individual personalities and what we expect out of life. The good thing about any argument around personalities is that there is no right or wrong answer!

So, I thought, before we get back to optimal thinking, may be it is important to know what is the eventual goal or the objective function here? To put in very philosophical words, what’s the eventual goal of life? I follow very little of philosophy or literature on this, but what I have observed, there are many ways that we as individuals could define the end-goal of life.

From what I have heard and read, most people look for happiness eventually. But, somehow I have found it a bit too abstract and difficult to comprehend, evaluate and measure. So, here is another attempt to define the eventual goal – must say it is still preliminary and based on feedback that I get to this post, I will continue to refine it.

I define the ultimate measure as “quality-of-life” – well, it sounds just as abstract as happiness! - Just that there is a bit more of thought behind this. My definition of ‘quality-of-life’ revolves around two key dimensions with one often a trade-off to the other:



  1. Success – Sounds too measured and profession-related, but on the contrary, success here is how we measure on various dimensions of life that matter the most to us. Each one of us would have a unique definition to ‘success’ – probably, a weighted average of personal life, career, education, helping others and society, making an impact, etc, etc.

  2. Stress – Not the exact word I wanted to use here, I thought of ‘input’, but then after a bit of thought, decided to stick with stress. Essentially, the factor that reduces the overall quality of life.

These 2 dimensions feed into the quality-of-life matrix as shown. Before going into the specific details of the matrix and the inferences, there are a few things to note here:



  1. Measure of success should be very internal - it is a comparison to our ‘full potential’ as opposed to how we rate vs. others. It’s not about how I am vs. my neighbour, friend, etc

  2. The matrix is not a comparison of individual A vs. B – the points are only for illustration and if we plot ourselves at different periods of time, that would somewhat fill the matrix up.

Okay, so what does the quality-of-life matrix have to say? Here are some of the key inferences from the matrix:



  1. We all should strive for top left corner – high success, low stress would be the ideal thing to look for. The exact opposite is the bottom right corner.

  2. The 7 quality-of-life indifference bands have a great message. Look at points A, B and C – essentially these have the same quality-of-life, with very different approaches and outcomes. Point A is someone who is striving for his full-potential; however the resulting stress is high. Point B, is the same individual, now having a balance between stress levels and ambitions/ success. Point C, is the chill dude, low success, but low stress as well – and all 3 points have the same quality-of-life.

  3. At different times and different phases of our lives, we would have probably seen most parts of the matrix, reflecting very different quality-of-life.

  4. Once we have identified where we stand, this is when optimal thinking steps in. “What’s the best I could do to improve my quality-of-life?”

Let us try applying optimal thinking to some of the points of the matrix:



  1. If I am at point H, negative thinking would mean I say “My life is doomed, any sympathy please?” Positive thinking on the other hand would result in “I hope things will be fine”.

  2. An optimal thinker however would attack the problem is two possible ways:
    One, how do I reduce my stress levels?
    Two, how do I then improve my success levels in order to have a better quality of life.

  3. It’s perfectly fine to transform from H to C right away.

Well, that’s it for this post. I tried to connect two very different things – end-goal of life with optimal thinking as these are somewhat inter-related. I understand that the entire concept is still in the preliminary stage, so would appreciate comments and feedback.

Sunday, December 03, 2006

Optimal Thinking...




I like to alternate between serious and funny posts on this blog – however, I will deviate a bit from that norm today - for one I know that I can easily make up for not-so-serious-posts anytime with minimal effort!

Anyways, not withstanding the sequencing of this blog, this post is about optimal thinking - a term carved out from the title of a book that I have been reading intermittently over the last few weeks.

Before going deeper into the concept of optimal thinking, let me state that I am still in process of reading the book, let alone understanding it fully or mastering the topic.

So, what is optimal thinking all about? Prior to reading this book my understanding of the ‘reaction’ world comprised of two extremes:

  1. Positive thinking – as an individual, you try to be in a positive frame of mind, the underlying philosophy being a positive intent enhances the chance of a positive result

  2. Negative thinking – often as individuals, we get into the negative thinking groove. Though it sounds as simple as a crib, in my view, negative thinking is often used to dissociate oneself from the outcome/situation. In some ways, we either try putting the blame on externalities or take it all on ourselves and confide in a shell of our own making
Interestingly, there are 2 major problems with the above:
  1. Both positive and negative thinking are not based on ‘reality’ or ‘sound assessment of current situation’ – a positive thinker would say all is great, superb, perfect, etc to have an aura of positive feelings around, while thinking negatively, we simply assume the worst and feel sad/stressed about it


  2. There is little action that results out of positive or negative thinking. Having eluded the truth, positive thinking would result in “all is great, do nothing” while negative thinking results in higher focus on emotions and stress, again leading to no constructive action – “the world is against me, I really can’t help it!”

This is where optimal thinking steps in. Optimal thinking is all about having a good assessment of the situation and then immediately focusing on two very important words – “what next?” – Sounds simple, but come to think about it, might be a bit difficult to practice. However, training one’s thought process around “the truth” and then thinking about “what next” repeatedly is all that is needed to start thinking optimally.

One key question remains to be answered though – How do we know in what frame of mind are we in? The following could help us estimate where we stand in terms of our thought process:


  1. If our immediate reaction to a situation is “that’s great”, “big achievement!”, “nothing to worry here and stay chill”, etc, then we are probably in the “fake” positive thinking mould


  2. On the contrary, if our reactions revolve around “I am very bad at this”, “The entire world is against me”, “Things always head the wrong way with me” or if we react to situations with anger and frustration, then probably we are wearing the negative thinking cap.

Whereas, thinking optimally, in the ideal world, the reaction should be “this is how things are” (with almost zero focus on emotions) and then immediately shift to “so, what next” or “what’s the best that I can do to …”

To sum it all up, I have tried to illustrate the optimal thinking process with flow chart in graphical format to make this post easy to understand. (see pic above)

Please do get back to me with comments and thoughts, while I will continue to research deeper into this rather interesting topic with a reasonable upside to making a difference we lead our lives.