Motivation and you - 2024

Some things you really want to do, some you’re less excited by, and there are some things you would rather just avoid. While we all know motivation is not uniform across all the activities of a PhD, many of us would rather it was a bit more uniform than it feels on some days.

So, what is your experience of motivation? What is it about your environment, the way you think and behave that supports your motivation and what is it that gets in your way? This workshop focuses on these very practical questions with a view to being able to access greater motivation when you need it. We can’t guarantee that suddenly everything will be wonderfully exciting and engaging, but with this understanding as a guide, you can develop practices that might just make the difference.

This is an interactive, hands-on workshop by Jamie McDonald. We use small group, paired and whole group discussions to review a range of focused, structured activities and reflective exercises that raise fundamental aspects of motivation. There is no role play, and we ask participants to apply what they are learning to genuine situations, to make things practical, useful and personal, as well as enjoyable and informal. Models and personal experience are the foundation of the programme.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the workshop, you will have learned:

• What helps to motivate you, based on your experiences
• About five different models of motivation
• About your values, needs and their overlap with patterns of motivation
• A process to derive meaningful goals to get yourself into action
• Practical steps you can take to put this into practice

Methods

“Essentially, all models are wrong, but some models are useful…the practical question is, how wrong do they have to be to not be useful?” George Box, statistician.

Like Box, we are pragmatic in our use of models, and emphasise the responsibility of participants to decide whether, and how, to apply the models and concepts we discuss – trusting their judgment in that regard and inviting questioning scrutiny of what is presented. We also suggest that it is through well-intended, principled practice and subsequent learning, that a difference is made. As such, we are not dogmatic or rigid in our use of particular models and treat them as lenses through which participants can review and then adjust the efficacy of their efforts.

That said, the principles on which the workshop is based, are grounded in the following:

• Cognitive psychology
• Personal, non-directive, coaching (coactive model)
• Flow (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)
• Self-determination theory (Deci and Ryan)
• Values, needs and commitment (Rosenberg, Maslow, coactive coaching)
• Reflective practice and peer-based experiential learning

Competences

An important part of preparing for any further professional step is becoming (more) aware of the competences you have developed and/or want to develop. In the current workshop, the following competences from the UHasselt competency overview are actively dealt with:

Intellectual competences: Problem solving

• Personal effectiveness:
  • responsibility
  • self-development
  • perseverance
• Task-orientedness:
  • result orientedness
  • project planning

For whom?

• PhD students & postdocs -  24 places available

When & where?

• March 5, 13:30-16:30
• Online

Preparation?

Come along with some experiences of motivation, and the lack of it, to work on. These should be things you are happy to work on and chat about during the workshop with other participants. These could equally usefully be from different aspects of your life. We will use these on the programme.

During the workshop, the online note-taking package, Padlet will be used – and the calls will be on Zoom. Please familiarise yourself with these packages before coming. Specifically, the desktop app for Zoom is better than the mobile and web-based versions.

Registration?

• Registration is closed
• As places are limited, registering does not automatically imply that you will be able to participate. You will be notified by email after the registration deadline has passed.
• Please cancel your registration at least one week in advance in case you cannot make it (cf. cancellation & no-show policy).

Acknowledged as?

• DS BSH: category 'career management & personal development' - session aimed at personal development
• DS ST: category 'career management & personal development' - course/session about career or personal development
• DS HLS: category 'transferable skills' - half of a transferable skills course