I woke up this morning to an empty flat. I started looking for my clothes; the clothes that I’d optimistically left overnight on the washing line…which were now soaked with rain.
Not the best start. But when I finally left the house and saw other people en route to work, something shone brightly through all this potential pain of the morning. It was a revelation, an epiphany perhaps.
The simple realisation that we need to be surrounded. Not necessarily “boxed in”, but boxed with, others. We need to be amongst other people in order to stay motivated. Most surprisingly though; who or what these people mean to us (or even whether we like them or not) doesn’t seem to matter.
Art Markman* once discussed how ‘people feel more secure when they know that they have others around them who share their goals and care about their progress’. He mentions an experiment where participants read an article written by a mathematician, which had the author’s birthday written at the top of the page. Then they were given an impossible maths problem to solve and oddly, those with the same birthday as the author spent longer on the problem than those without. So if something as trivial as this can motivate people, what can we do with an even more reinforcing concept?
At Jollydeck, we employ this approach to motivation in many ways. Firstly, we’re lucky enough to be in an environment provided by Wayra UK where other like-minded startups share the space here. Not only is this directly motivating by allowing us to consult, approach and actively learn from other businesses but it also has a huge passive motivational influence on us. Simply by being placed in this environment makes us feel different to if we were alone in the building. Constantly.
We have taken this idea and applied it right down to the basics of what we do; unique training and e-learning for businesses.
We’ve put together the perfect ingredients to make internal business training not only more efficient and therefore cheaper for our clients but also genuinely fun and engaging.
Users play our e-learning games at a time that suits them; be it in a coffee break, at home or on their commute.
By creating not only a user friendly world which you can inhabit (as your avatar) we have made it competitive, open for interaction, with an ongoing with a narrative for your personalised campaign. Whilst users may be alone physically when playing, in the virtual world they are surrounded. We know you need a good reason to return regularly so we created a place you will really feel you belong to.
If ever you felt alone when it comes to training, fear not. Get onboard with Jollydeck!
(*Read the rest here: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201203/it-is-motivating-belong-group)