%20(400%20x%20100%20px)%20(3).png)
Factor 1: Your Motivations & Interests
Motivations fuel your drive and sustain your engagement in your career. Identifying what truly inspires you—whether it’s financial rewards, leadership opportunities, meaningful work, balance, or purpose—helps focus your efforts on roles that fit your passions and keep you motivated over time.
Reflect honestly on the aspects of work that energize or drain you to guide your future career decisions.
Motivations Drive Success
Motivation is what keeps you going—it’s the fuel behind your focus, your energy, and your drive to improve. Understanding what truly pushes you forward—your core motivations—is key to finding both personal and professional fulfillment.
Everyone’s driven by different things. Your main motivators might include:
• Money – wanting financial security and reward
• Power – seeking leadership or influence
• Interest and job satisfaction – loving the work itself
• Work-life balance – valuing time, family, and lifestyle
• Cause – feeling driven by a mission or purpose
Knowing what really motivates you helps you recognize what keeps you inspired and what drains you. That insight is powerful.
Your Interests, Likes, and Dislikes
Self-awareness matters. Alongside knowing what motivates you, it’s worth exploring what you actually enjoy—and what you don’t.
Think about your:
• Interests
• Likes
• Dislikes
We don’t always get to do what we love every day. But being honest with yourself helps. Look back at past experiences—when were you happiest, most fulfilled, or proudest of your work? What tasks made you lose track of time? On the flip side, what kinds of work left you drained or unmotivated?
These patterns reveal a lot about where your natural strengths and satisfaction lie.
Aspirations Shape Direction
Once you understand what motivates you and what you enjoy, ask yourself: What do you really want?
Our early dreams—artist, athlete, rock star—often shift as life unfolds. Some people never revisit those dreams, while others lose sight of their goals in the day-to-day grind. Life gets busy. It’s easy to forget to check in with yourself.
So take a step back. Think about:
• What you’re aiming for
• What kind of life you want
• Where you see yourself heading next
Your goals don’t have to be fixed forever. Keep them flexible. Realign whenever you need to. That’s how you keep moving forward on your own terms.
Why This Is Important to You
Aligning your motivations and interests with your career matters—for three reasons:
First, it makes you far more likely to feel happy and fulfilled at work instead of bored or stressed.
Second, it sets you up for success. When your work fits who you are, you perform better, stay motivated, and avoid the burnout or career stalls that come from being in the wrong role.
Finally, for anyone with big ambitions, this alignment helps you unlock your potential and consistently bring your best self to the table.
Why This Is True
When you’re genuinely motivated and interested in what you do, something shifts.
-
You focus more deeply.
-
You work smarter, not just harder.
-
You feel energized and resilient.
-
You think more positively—and that unlocks creativity and better problem-solving.
This kind of motivation powers you through obstacles, helps you maintain high standards, and keeps you pushing for results that truly matter.
That’s when you start unlocking your superpowers.
Of course, the opposite is also true—when motivation fades, energy and focus drop fast. That’s why staying connected to what drives you is so important.
A Double Act!
As you read this, you’ll see that your motivations, interests, and values often overlap - they’re more alike than different.
This isn’t some technical box-ticking exercise; it’s just about figuring out what really grabs your attention and matters most to you.
If something’s important but you’re not sure whether it’s a motivation, interest, or value—and it probably fits two or more—don’t stress, just jot it down in either category. What matters is capturing what’s meaningful, not getting hung up on labels.
What next?
Jot Down In Your Note Taking App
What are your most important motivations and interests?
-
Jot down your motivations and areas of interest that you'd like to accommodate in your world of work.
-
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
-
Sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.
-
Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
-
Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.
Suggestions for the above
-
Take five minutes now.
-
Grab your note-taking app, and jot down your top 3-5 motivations and interests—don’t agonize, just get them down.
List them roughly by importance and tweak as you go; these priorities may shift as you work through the 12 Factors Program.
Examples
-
Work-life balance in a hybrid role
-
Transform from average to top-tier in my role
-
Aspire to be CEO
-
Make £200k a year
-
Be the top performer in my dept
-
Move up from first line manager into a leadership position
-
Progress into a different role type, a project management one
-
Prioritize job satisfaction
-
Seek stable, secure employment
Quick Prompts to Uncover Your Motivations & Interests
Think back: what did you dream of doing when you were younger? What grabs your interest now at work? What parts of your current job get you fired up, and which ones do you wish you could avoid? When have you felt most “in your element” or proud of something at work? What tasks or projects genuinely drain you? Look for patterns—are there certain types of work, challenges, or people you keep coming back to (or steering clear of)? Consider what you want more of, and what you’d happily do less of, over the next year or two. If you’re unsure whether something is a motivation, interest, or value, just note it down—no need to overthink the labels. Capture your main insights and themes in your note-taking app. The goal isn’t perfection—it’s building a real, honest picture of what drives you, so you can steer your career in the right direction and make changes that actually matter.