[LI] Explaining lack or loss of motivation in job settings: A tentative inventory

Man & Floating Fish in Desert. Source: iStock https://www.istockphoto.com/photos/salvador-dali-art While researching something else, I realized I needed a better understanding of factors that lead to low motivation on the job - all the way from disinterest and just being there to do the minimum for the paycheck, to actively disliking much or all of what's …

[LI] The space​ between (and around) jobs and hobbies

Source: "My hobby: present perfect,"​ ESOL Nexus, British Council https://esol.britishcouncil.org What relationship, if any, do hobbies have with jobs? I never really considered this beyond the perspective that work and leisure tend to occupy separate domains, even if we might interleave small bits of one with the other in various contexts. What led me to …

[LI] African languages as indigenous languages?

UNESCO, IYIL2019, & AU/ACALAN logos from the Africa Regional Meeting on IYIL2019 We're two-thirds of the way through the International Year of Indigenous Languages (IYIL2019), and it seems that there's still a big question in the background: Do African languages count as indigenous languages? This is significant as there is an active discussion of expanding IYIL2019 to a Decade …

[LI] East of ikigai: Motivated, needed, & paid, but not skilled

The ikigai meme - an image popularized as a way to show how overlapping of work you Love, are Good at, that the world (or some part of it) Needs, and that you can be Paid for can help you to find purpose (ikigai) - can be scaled as a Venn diagram depicting all of our relationships with all kinds of work. …

[LI] Decoupling income from “traditional work”​? Maybe it’s bigger than that

Martin Ford, the author of Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future (2016) and Architects of Intelligence (2019), gave a TED talk in April 2017 entitled "How we'll earn money in a future without jobs." Just before he gets to his main topic of universal basic income (UBI),¹ there is a phrase that caught my …

[LI] West of ikigai: Skilled, motivated, & paid, but not needed?

The ikigai meme - a Venn diagram intended to show how overlapping of work you Love, are Good at, that the world (or some part of it) Needs, and that you can be Paid for can lead to finding purpose (ikigai) - seems to me to lend itself to discussion of aggregates of work. I previously "misused" this diagram in that way …

[LI] North of ikigai: Skilled, motivated, needed, and unpaid

As part of a larger inquiry about the nature of the world of "work," I previously (mis)used the Venn diagram that has been "memed" as an expression of "ikigai" to raise some questions and speculations. That diagram (two modified versions with set notation are in header) proposed that as individuals we can find our ikigai, or purpose, at …

[LI] Physiological reactions to IVR & voice AI?

Has anyone done any research on physiological reactions of people when their phone calls are answered by a interactive voice response (IVR) vs. a person? Personally, I'm sure "voice misrecognition" systems raise my blood pressure - like facing a gauntlet of inevitable miscues. Reason behind frequent frustration with this is a problem common to all …

[LI] A gentle critique & constructive misuse of the “ikigai” meme

The Venn diagram popularized as a representation of how to apply the Japanese concept of "ikigai" in life and career¹ has issues and possibilities. This is a quick look at both, with the idea that such a schematization can be more than just a meme, in that it is useful not only to individuals as …

[LI] Four categories of “work” in Japanese & “ikigai”

"Work" in English can mean a number of things, but it is often used synonymously with job or employment. On a high level then, without getting into very specific kinds of activity, "work" is generally paid (a job) and when it isn't, it isn't called work, or is given a modifier to set it apart. …