This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.

Motivation gets discussed as though it were weather. Here today, gone tomorrow, nothing to do but wait for it to come back.

The research says something much less comfortable than that

On simple repetitive work, rewards and penalties do work — that part is real. On work that requires thinking, they measurably reduce performance, and this has been reproduced too many times to argue with. Which means that if your work is harder than an assembly line, you cannot fix your motivation by promising yourself something. The things that do work are autonomy, mastery and purpose: three conditions you can design into how you work, rather than three feelings you can wait for. That is the difference between this course and the willpower literature. Willpower is a resource you spend. These are conditions you build once.

What this course covers

Thirty-eight lessons from the mechanism to the practice. The mechanism first: what a motive is, why people work at all, how to measure motivation instead of guessing, how motivation and results connect, what an environment actively obstructs, how Google and Netflix approach it, loyalty and how it is measured, the twelve motivating factors from the Gallup research, and Motivation 3.0 — the three generations, why the carrot and stick fail on thinking work, and the three elements that replace them. Then your own state: developing emotional intelligence, influence through logic against influence through emotion, energy and recovery, how high and low emotional intelligence look from outside, self-awareness, moving from a negative attitude to a positive one, whether fear motivates anyone for long, the ideal version of yourself, and the change process with its three development zones. Then the thing that stops most people before anything else: what impostor syndrome actually is, why it hits the person who knows most, the trap of finding something too easy, what your market value rests on, standing on three supports rather than one, and turning knowledge into income. Then drive applied to yourself: a personal audit across talents, mindset, engagement and burnout, what the research says about high performers, being your own manager, managing upward, overdelivery, running yourself in short cycles instead of classic time management, growth, and maintaining motivation when it runs out. Then discipline as a cycle: goals and key results, the from-X-to-Y-by-Z format, running the cycle with leading indicators, and closing it properly. Finally momentum: low-budget mechanics that need no platform, recognition against prizes, shaping behaviour rather than announcing it, and what actually drives completion.

Four of the six blocks were recorded for a workplace audience

Two were not, and they need no translation: the high-performer block is first-person throughout, including a lesson specifically on maintaining your own motivation, and the impostor block is three lessons of personal analysis. Of the rest — the motivation block is the research base of this course, so the examples involve employees while the mechanism describes a person; the emotional intelligence block was recorded around leadership, but five of its eight lessons are about your own state and your own change process; the goals block includes two lessons with a corporate layer on top, though the cycle itself works for one person unchanged; and the gamification block is four-sixths internal, kept for the completion and recognition mechanics. You are translating a noun, not a discipline.

Who is teaching this

I am Mike. I built the people system at Preply as it became a unicorn, and I have worked at Wargaming, iDeals and Alfa-Bank. More than 1.6 million students have enrolled in my courses across 185 countries, and over 150,000 specialists have gone through my programmes. I hold PHRi and SHRM-CP certifications and represent HRCI in more than ten countries.

What is included

• Lifetime access to all 38 lessons

• Active instructor support in the Q&A section

• A Udemy Certificate of Completion

• Working material: the personal audit, the twelve motivating factors, the Motivation 3.0 frame, the from-X-to-Y-by-Z goal format, the cycle review structure, the three development zones, and the recognition mechanics

• Research rather than encouragement

Where to start

Take the thing you keep meaning to do and have not started. Ask which of the three — autonomy, mastery, purpose — is missing from it. It is almost always exactly one. Enrol now and start today.