Motivation

Episode 23

In this episode Mike and Matt discuss motivation in it's many forms, and how it affects working on variety of projects.

Segment 1 - Types of Motivation

Different types of motivation range from the tinkerer all the way to the passionate
Being in any of these camps generally dictates how much effort, and time, that you’ll put into a field that you’re checking out
In terms of web development & design, having a different level of motivation will no doubt determine where you fall within the field - maybe you’ll make a single website for fun, or maybe pursue a career
One thing of note, these classifications of motivation are from our own experiences and ideas, they aren’t some sort of “official” classification of any kind

Passionate
- When you’re passionate about something you’ll typically take it more seriously and do in-depth research to learn new things
- This type of motivation may steer your career decisions, or help you set up a side hustle of some kind
- For the web field, this generally means you won’t be using your “local” website builder like Squarespace, but rather diving in head first to the code, determining what tools you’d like to use and how to use them efficiently

“Forced”
- Sometimes you’re figuratively “forced” into a doing something due to outside pressures, such as financial situation, or availability of work
- When this happens you may take your work seriously, however, you’ll be taking it more seriously and efficiently than someone who wants to be there, because generally you’ll want to get in there and just get the work done
- Often times people get trapped into these types of situations due to the outside pressures never alleviating, or more that suddenly pile on, leaving you trying to find methods to get out of the field
- Bringing this into the web industry, sometimes people will be “forced” to do professional web work, either full time, or by being in an associated tech field that suddenly requires web work. Generally this type of work will be rushed in some way, having tasks done in the quickest way possible - often leaving a lesser quality product

Hobbyist
- Hobbyists are people that like to do a variety of things, and get into them all the way, stopping just before getting professional.
- There are of course varying degrees of hobbyists, but generally, they could technically operate in the professional realm given a small amount of training
- Bringing this again to the web industry, hobbyists will generally not focus on one tool, language, or segment of the industry, but rather fan out and use a bunch of different tools ranging from site builders like Squarespace, then dabble in some code - getting a full range of experience to build some sites that they’re interested in, sometimes these lead to a side hustle if they’re successful

Podcast Episode Details