Concepts of Success, Motivation, and Attitude Change as related to Personal Productivity.

Success

The idea of success differs from one person to another. There is no one accepted definition of what success entails. There are many definitions, but there's one thing all the greats agree on: Success only comes by persevering despite failure. Success can come after several trials and failures.

Thomas Edison said "I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come indirectly through accident, except the phonograph. No, when I have fully decided that a result is worth getting, I go about it, and make trial after trial, until it comes."

The dictionary describes success as the following: “attaining wealth, prosperity and/or fame”.

Success can be considered as achieving a preset aim or objective. This aim or objective could vary from one individual to another. Hence, the concept of success differs from one person to another. When you find success in a preset goal, it creates a form of self-motivation in you to set more goals, pursue them, and achieve them. Success thus influences personal productivity. When you set a goal and you achieve it successfully, it can make you realise that you could achieve goals you thought to yourself were never possible.

Motivation

Motivation can be seen as the psychological feature that arouses an organism to action toward a desired goal, the reason for the action, that which gives purpose and direction to behavior. Motivation has a direct relation with personal productivity. It helps individuals and organizations to perform optimally.

Because people are the most valuable assets in every organization and their performance becomes at peak when motivated, motivation should be considered as a major influencer of productivity. When it comes to motivation, people are like machines. Just like machines need fuel/operators to function, people need motivation.

Bright Hub wrote that motivation and productivity are twin concepts in organizational development. First, motivation works as the means toward attaining productivity as an end. Another point is that Motivation is the best cause to reach productivity as a favorable effect. Lastly, motivation is the stimulus to trigger productivity as a response. All these are concrete connections between the two factors.

Attitude Changes

'Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.'- Lou Holtz.

Individual effort is a function of attitudes and beliefs covering all of the cognitive characteristics of the individual that motivate a person to productive behavior on the job. Attitude could work hand-in-hand with motivation to influence success. Attitude can increase or decrease motivation. Attitude and motivation can be combined together to form 'attitude motivation.'

Attitude motivation is the practice of motivating people by influencing their thoughts and behaviors. Attitude and motivation are closely linked and can act as strong motivators of personal productivity.

Employee motivation could change his attitude toward work. Productivity requires a positive attitude towards work. While some forms of attitudes are impervious to changes, others are very susceptible to modification through persuasive orientation or arguments.

Kronick in 1988 demonstrated that the presence of other indicators of attitude strength, such as high importance, certainty, extremity, or accessibility of the attitude, implies an attitude’s stability. Influencing these indicators of attitude strength can lead to attitude change. Changing of attitude could be difficult especially when it comes to changing a negative attitude. Generally, a positive attitude will have a positive impact on productivity, while the reverse is also true.