Why motivation matters

Or so they say, albeit often rather glibly. We don’t like to quibble but that ‘perfect’ sounds like a tall order, especially if we’re talking about workplace skills, capabilities or behaviours. If, however, we are prepared to settle – and it would surely be realistic to do so – for ‘better’, then that is almost certainly achievable. And allowing a little lassitude is not necessarily a bad thing. As Samuel Smiles wrote in the genre-creating Self-Help: With Illustrations of Character and Conduct (1859): “he who never made a mistake, never made a discovery.”