{"id":2416,"date":"2014-01-18T18:07:35","date_gmt":"2014-01-18T18:07:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.curved-vision.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/?p=2416"},"modified":"2014-01-18T18:07:35","modified_gmt":"2014-01-18T18:07:35","slug":"inspiration-vs-motivation-in-presentations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/inspiration-vs-motivation-in-presentations\/","title":{"rendered":"Inspiration vs Motivation in presentations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I spend some of my time training people in various things &#8211; mainly presentation skills of course! &#8211; and a concept I found myself explaining recently (rather to my surprise) was something called the \u2018Urgent-vs-Important Matrix\u2019.\u00a0 The basic ideas is that the two ideas (urgency and importance) are <b>not<\/b> the same. Often, of course, people assume they are, elide the concepts, and act accordingly&#8230; they treat urgent tasks as though they are important, no matter how trivial they may be, just because it&#8217;s urgent.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a recipe for disaster, in terms of prioritisation and time management, obviously!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.curved-vision.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/keep-calm-and-carry-on-11.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-2421\" alt=\"keep-calm-and-carry-on-11\" src=\"http:\/\/www.curved-vision.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/keep-calm-and-carry-on-11-213x300.png\" width=\"149\" height=\"210\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/keep-calm-and-carry-on-11-213x300.png 213w, http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/keep-calm-and-carry-on-11.png 426w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 149px) 100vw, 149px\" \/><\/a>I had a similar revelation today, reading my friend <a title=\"How not to worry\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/How-Not-Worry-Remarkable-ebook\/dp\/B007Y30S8K\/ref=la_B001JOWPYU_1_3?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1376578013&amp;sr=1-3\" target=\"_blank\">Paul McGee\u2019s book \u2018How Not to Worry\u2019<\/a>. (By the way, you should buy a copy) when he talked about the difference between being inspirational and being motivational. \u00a0I realised that in my head I\u2019d thought of the two things being more or less synonymous. They aren\u2019t, of course, but I&#8217;d elided them. A slightly different definition than Paul used might be this:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Inspirational: providing inspiration (for anything, such as a creating a work of art)<\/li>\n<li>Motivational: inspiring you to <b>do<\/b> something<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That means, of course, that it\u2019s entirely possible for something to motivate you without being inspirational. You can be motivated by fear &#8211; which is hardly inspirational &#8211; but possibly effective!<\/p>\n<p>Can it work the other way around? Can you motivate without being inspirational?<\/p>\n<p>And what\u2019s that got to do with being a speaker or a presenter?<\/p>\n<p>This.<\/p>\n<p>Something that\u2019s perhaps more important than any difference in terms of what the works mean in the dictionary sense is what they mean in the real world &#8211; the so called connotation.\u00a0 The <a title=\"paid to exist\" href=\"http:\/\/paidtoexist.com\/inspiration-vs-motivation\/\" target=\"_blank\">Paid-to-Exist<\/a> blog suggests that motivation is associated with working yourself up to do something you don\u2019t really want to do. On the other hand, Inspiration is associated with something altogether more positive.<\/p>\n<p>So as a presenter or speaker, what would you rather do? Motivate people to make a change, or inspire them to do so?<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, I saw a lot of art recently, while touring Italy. (More in other blogs!) Some of it inspired me. It made me realise how fantastic, how magnificent the human race can be. But it didn&#8217;t motivate me (at least not directly) &#8211; it didn&#8217;t make me rush out and <strong>do<\/strong> anything. I&#8217;m blurring the definitions a bit here and moving into soggy ground, so to speak, but perhaps the job of a great presentation is<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>to inspire you to want to change, to do something, to move on; and<\/li>\n<li>to motivate you with the tools to do that.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Each is only one side of the coin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I spend some of my time training people in various things &#8211; mainly presentation skills of course! &#8211; and a concept I found myself explaining recently (rather to my surprise) was something called the \u2018Urgent-vs-Important [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2421,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-presentation-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}