Iowa Specialty Hospital

Amy's Reflections

March 2, 2020

This is the time of year when I start to feel like I have a plan. As we look towards Spring and the warmer temperatures, I start to embrace the need to organizing. I wouldn’t go so far as to say embrace spring cleaning but definitely a desire to set a goal and make some progress. This has been a topic of discussion at our house lately. I have been racking my brain for ways to get my kids motivated after school and in the evenings to do something besides video games or play on their phones. Yep, I know, they should have limited time with electronics. I completely agree and I completely fail at this daily, hence the need for a more creative way to motivate them. So, I took a page from our wellness plan book and I set up a financial incentive for them based on the amount of steps they get in each day. They earn $1 a day for 10,000 steps or more, $0.50 for 6,000 steps and they owe me a $1 if they don’t make 3,000 steps. It has been an interesting mix of results so far. Maleigha is my overachiever but is also in dance, softball and basketball. However, there are certain nights that she hops on the treadmill to make sure she gets full credit. So she is 100% for a dollar a day. Andrew is somewhere in the middle. He had a day he forgot his Fitbit so he owed me as example and Jacob has been slow to embrace this new plan. I am betting he is waiting to see if there will be an actual payout before he really puts forth the effort needed to earn the money.

Each of us has a driving motivator, our own currency if you will that makes us strive and push to accomplish that next goal. For some it can be the financial reward, for some it is praise and accolades and for others it may be accomplishing the task. Our challenge in our everyday life is to try to identify those personal motivators in different projects we are working on and find the right balance of people to achieve the goal. That is the strength of working in a team. You combine the skills, knowledge and motivation of variety of individuals to accomplish a task. We truly are stronger together. 

« Back

© 2024 Iowa Specialty Hospital. All rights reserved.