Identity, Motivation, and Purpose: An Update on Thriving in the Digital Age

In the course I'm teaching, Thriving in the Digital Age, I seem to be learning and growing as much as my students. As I listen to them struggle to articulate how they feel and think about complex topics, such as identity, motivation, and purpose, I'm often forced to re-evaluate my own assumptions regarding these subjects. It's an extraordinary opportunity: how often do we, as adults, set aside time to think deliberately about our personal and social identities, about all the ways in which various internal and external motivators influence our actions, or exactly how our unconscious values might be directing our lives? These teens, in contrast, are profoundly and constantly aware of these things, and they are helping me to become more aware of them, too.

What I would like to do here is to share some of the materials we've used so far for the course. (For a more complete listing, refer to the Weekly TED Talks and Online Resources posted on the course website.)

We began the course with the book Quiet by Susan Cain . . .



I paired Quiet with Chapter 1 ("Attention! How and Why to Control Your Mind's Most Powerful Instrument") of Net Smart by Howard Rheingold, and this seemed to work out very well. We talked about introverts, extroverts and how to deal effectively with distractions in an "always on" world. We discovered that "distractions" can be a problem for introverts as well as extroverts but not in the same way. The extroverted students sought ways to control their multitasking habits—they loved all that stimulation and found it hard to stop—so they needed help focusing their attention. Meditation was a good addition to their tool set. The introverted students weren't attracted to multitasking; they preferred to do one thing at a time. What they craved was less stimulation, fewer interruptions, so they needed to find ways to access the digital world without becoming overwhelmed by it. The tools that were most helpful to them were dashboards and filters, which controlled the flow of information, and online discussion forums, where they could take as much time as they needed to compose and share their thoughts.

Next, we moved on to Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz . . .



The logical pairing for Schulz's book was Chapter 2 ("Crap Detection) of Net Smart. We talked about why we get things wrong, how it feels to be wrong, and what can be gained from learning to embrace our fallibility. Topics of discussion included "filter bubbles" and why it's important to consult a variety of reliable sources; optical illusions, phantom limbs and other errors in perception; internet hoaxes and other scams; the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution, and the ways in which changes in cultural attitudes toward error have transformed science and industry; forensic psychology and how people in general and eyewitnesses in particular sometimes get things wrong; neuroscience; cults; terminal illness and the stages of grief; and, as a recurring theme, how we feel about being wrong and why it's so hard to let go of our desire to be right.

Currently, we are reading Start with Why by Simon Sinek . . .


I'm combining this with Chapter 5 ("Social Has a Shape") of Net Smart by Howard Rheingold and selections from Connected by Dr. Nicholas Christakis. The primary themes for these four weeks of the course are leadership and social networks, but we're also exploring the connections between the two. How do good leaders participate in social networks? Or, conversely, how do our social networks—or lack thereof—influence our ability to become effective leaders?

So far, I've supplemented the primary readings with talks by:

• Drew Dudley ("Everyday Leadership"),
• Dan Pink ("Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us"),
• Mike Rowe ("Learning from Dirty Jobs"),
• Seth Godin ("The Tribes We Lead"),
• and Tony Robbins ("Why We Do What We Do")

These presenters have inspired interesting and sometimes heated discussions. For example, we've debated the differences—sometimes subtle, other times extreme—between motivation and manipulation, particularly when it comes to marketing. Is it the message, the product, or the image of ourselves that influences our choices? We've also questioned the relative merits of "vision" and pragmatism, the pros and cons of going after a dream versus doing a job that simply needs to get done. Where one student emphasized practicality and argued the importance of quality control (the HOW and WHAT of a job), another admired leaders who could articulate a higher purpose for mankind (the WHY of a movement).

I'm looking forward to continuing this course in the months ahead and plan to share in future posts more of what I'm learning from the students.