I recently interviewed bestselling author, keynote speaker and marketing strategist Dorie Clark. It was part of the research my new book Find Your Flame – Why Motivation Matters More Than Talent. Clark is a prolific writer and in-demand speaker who has a blue chip client list; she writes for Forbes, Harvard Business Review to name a few, is adjunct professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, she lectures at top Business Schools all over the globe and has several successful online courses under her belt. You don’t get that far without being highly motivated.
I wanted to know what motivated her to put in huge amount of the work required to build a successful international career. She shared three key things that can help us all keep moving forward:
1 – Turn procrastination to your advantage
She told me that she doesn’t do her best work under the wrong type of deadlines and prefers to feel like there’s always a choice about what work gets done – and when. To get away from feeling the pressure, she writes things well ahead of deadlines. That way it stays fun to do. It’s a great example of self-knowledge and building an effective self-management strategy around the way you think about things.
So when you are putting something off that really needs doing – try doing something else that puts you ahead of the curve. If you do that often enough, Clark told me, you stay ahead of the bigger game.
2 – Stay curious and keep reading
Despite her busy schedule she finds an hour or two to read every day. It’s a great way to fill travel time and keeps her coming up with fresh ideas.
If you are really short of time, there are some great book summary apps that can help you digest books in shortened form. New material stimulates fresh ways of thinking about challenges and might even give you a fresh perspective on an old problem.
3 – When you want something, really commit to it
Even though she had a full diary, commitments to speak all over the world and a book launch coming up, she wanted to get on a musical theatre fellowship program. At the time of the interview her book Entrepreneurial You was due out (and since been named one of Forbes Top 5 books of the year) so she was very busy getting all the PR lined up, but despite that Clark decided to fully commit to the application process. It was something that really mattered to her, so she went all in to make it happen. She got accepted.
We can all miss out on things that are important to us when we are short of time. We all have competing priorities and that’s never going to change. If something is really important, then focus on it and make it happen anyway.
There are five types of motivation that I outlined inside the book and Clark demonstrated four of them during our interview. Each motivation type (Flow, Inclusion, Results, Expression, Discovery) triggers different behaviours but staying focused on your bigger goals and dealing with the detail is just the type flexibility that successful people like Dorie Clark show us is possible.
So, whether you work for yourself or are building a company career, the insights we can take from this include;
- Become a great manager – of yourself!
- Stay curious and keep reading
- When you want something get fully committed to it and go for it.
You can read more about the five motivation types and hear more from the Dorie Clark interview (and over 40 other successful leaders) inside the book, readers from the UK can get the book here and readers from the USA can get the book here.
