Sometimes you can OVER think things.
Other times, you really SHOULD take a moment to think things through.
Today’s American rarely thinks through their motivations…so driven are we to produce, achieve, accumulate…or just NOT get left behind. The urgent supersedes the important.
Since late last Summer, I’ve watched voice talent pro Amy Snively get motivated. I really should find out what spark ignited her. Because I want some of it.
Snively (rhymes with lively) is the driving force behind FaffCon. To her credit, she’s surrounded herself with really smart, capable helpers, and she knows how to delegate, ask, cajole, and otherwise convince people to pitch in.
Her single-minded dedication to making FaffCon a success (two times over, now) prompts me to think about motivation.
I’m not gonna get too philosphical on you, here…but walk with me…willya?
This exercise may help you in choosing VO directions.
THE THREE HUMAN NEEDS DETERMINING MOTIVATION
Competition-Driven: The need to achieve, produce, compare status, and out-do the next guy. (NASCAR driver?)
Power/Money Driven: To heck with the competition…this motivator is the need to control and enjoy influence over others. (politicians?)
Community Driven: The need to belong, contribute, associate, and build relationships. (mentors?)
We all have some combination of these three, but it seems to me the voice talent I’ve met exhibit a wealth of the third determiner….and Amy seems to have an overflowing cup of it. How cool is that?…’cause it benefits us all.
Amy is creating a community of community-oriented voice-talent. That’s what FaffCon is at its core. VO givers..giving.
Competition drives me to be better…
The need to have money to live comfortably is strong…
But nothing makes me feel more humanly fulfilled than helping someone else.
No wonder Snively rhymes with lively…
CourVO
P.S. Abraham Maslow is the father of Modern Management, even though his main work came out during WWII. A lynchpin of his theory of work motivation is: “Human needs arrange themselves in hierarchies of pre-potency. That is to say, the appearance of one need usually rests on the prior satisfaction of another, more pre-potent need. Man is a perpetually wanting animal. Also no need or drive can be treated as if it were isolated or discrete; every drive is related to the state of satisfaction or dissatisfaction of other drives.”
To read more about Maslow, see his Theory of Motivation.
