Year of Jewelry 3rd go, and psychology

My third week into the Year of Jewelry Project:

A lotus pendant. I like the way this one turned out...the more gems I put on it, the better it looked, so it's definitely a step up for me, since I'm used to making smaller, subtler and less gaudy (and less expensive) things. It was also quite a learning experience in "use twice as much wire as you think you'll need". This includes bright and oxidized copper, peach moonstone, pink garnet, fanta carnelian, peach aventurine, picture jasper and sunstone. It looks nice with a dark green shirt, with its dramatic contrasts and fall colors.


In psychology class we are learning about the science of motivation. It's well-known (but little practiced in the business world) that incentives for something decrease performance...the higher the incentive, the lower the performance. At least, that holds true for things that require even rudimentary cognitive work...tasks that are purely mechanical are better accomplished with incentives than without, but nowadays, not that many people have jobs that are purely mechanical work. The best work is accomplished with "autonomy, mastery and purpose" - being able to do what you want went you want, being able to become better and better at something that matters, and feeling like you are contributing to a cause bigger than yourself, whether only a little bigger or world-wide. This rule has been noted by businesses like Google, whose employees are free 20% of the time to work on whatever they feel like working on...and about half of Google's most awesome innovations...gmail, for instance...were born from employees puttering around working on their own projects that turned out insanely good.
This is also what my boyfriend is going through, and struggling with, right now...the conflict between his class demands for code and his desire to make his own game. Google says: What kind of email client would you want to use? Could you make it? Go for it. Jeff says: there is a game that I want to play that doesn't exist yet. Can I do it? The fact is...he can, if he puts enough work into it...but no amount of money is going to convince him to do so, only the doing itself can do that.


The Year of Jewelry is giving me my non-incentivized rewards. I am not doing this for the money, though of course that is my "aim" - making jewelry started being less fun when I had to go through all sorts of rigamarole to do it...*had* to being the key word. Now, I still go through rigamarole, but it's a challenge! I made two pairs of earrings on a ballroom dance floor. I put six kinds of gemstones on a pendant because it looked best that way. I ran out of wire halfway through a pendant, and started up with another kind of wire, adding a cool vine effect at the bottom. I have ALL of my pictures formatted to go up on Etsy...my least favorite part. These things are obstacles to be overcome, not to complain about and use as a reason to not do any work.

Long story short: my productivity has SHOT UP over the past few weeks.

The reason for this is that now I have a different aim - to do work when I can (autonomy), to get better at jewelry-making (mastery), to get feedback(purpose), and of course, though most other people's YOJ contributions are far superior to mine, to show off. Granted, that "purpose" is only a little bit bigger than myself...but I envision things for it that are bigger than I am. I'd love to support myself on jewelry, though I know it's unlikely to ever happen that way. I'd love to learn until I master it and then to teach. I'd love to create things I can look on with wonder and not understand with anything but rationality how something so beautiful could have come out of me. You know, just the usual.

So thank you, Year of Jewelry, for putting me back on my track.