I am forever curious on what motivates us. What motivates me and what motivates you. What motivates someone to do something horrific and selfish or what motivates someone to be incredibly altruistic.

One of the first things I do when someone joins a team that I am a part of is to find out what motivates them – towards action, yes, but also what motivates their own joy to rise to their surface; many times those two outcomes are intertwined. I may ask them to choose one characteristic from a well-known resource list of ten values (the Hogan’s Leadership Values)* because that mix of action and personal joy that seeds their motivation likely tracks back to an individual's personal value-system. 

These days, I feel like I am a part of a bunch of different groups where our connection is the crux of where our personal values match. These groups want to take action, and I'm thinking the mathematically sound way to do this is to call up our friend Newton,* who wrote a pile of text that built upon the work of mathematicians before him – like, Galileo and Kepler. That work is known as Newton's Laws of Motion (it comes up in my Pendulum essay, too) and it compels me to suggest we use our collective values to seed our motivations because they can be channeled into energy that we all so dearly need to draw upon right now.

Though there are many types of energy, they're gonna fit into one of two categories: either potential energy, or its partner-in-(hopefully no)crime, kinetic energy. Motivation can take on the form of a dynamic forcing factor, be it a force that prompts an action, or a force that throws up a barricade to block an oncoming other(!) force, or a force that has such power behind it that it changes the very terra firma we're standing on.

The most beautiful thing about energy is:
It never goes away completely.

Sure, it diminishes, it dissipates. Energy can be elusive at times just as much as it can be overwhelming. But one thing it cannot be is gone if it ever existed somewhere, anywhere, in the first place.

Energy never expires – all it can do is change from one form to another.

“The Wave Watcher's Companion: from ocean waves to light waves via shock waves, stadium waves, and all the rest of life’s undulations”
by Gavin Pretor-Pinney (pg. 40)

Energy exists around us, at all times. Energy is using us as its medium, a way for it to travel and to change its speed; most likely, to get a change going. Don't make the mistake of thinking that we have all-powerful control over it. It has us.

Which brings us to the supremely logical see-sawing relationship that potential energy and kinetic energy have.

There's a very balanced exchange going on. It's symbiotic! Plus, each of these types of energies – potential and kinetic – have a specific job. Where potential methodically gathers and pushes up, kinetic springs forth and expends outward.

Energy can be defined as the capacity to do work. When a body is raised to a certain height, against the (constant) force of gravity, the work done to put it there is proportional to the body's mass, the force of gravity, and the height to which it is raised. Conversely, if we then let the body go, it can perform the same amount of work when it falls back to its original height. This type of energy is called potential energy. 

“In The Pursuit of the Unknown: 17 equations that changed the world”
by Ian Stewart (pg. 48)

We know the word 'potential' is most commonly used in everyday life when offering encouragement,  a reminder that a possibility exists – one that may have been lounging around for a while, biding its time in a dormant reclination, waiting to be woken up so it can have its moment to shine! There just needs to be a smelling salt to get it out of its (likely) self-imposed hibernation, so again I bring up that word: motivation.

There's also this shout-out to capacity when it comes to potential – both in our common usage as well as in mathematics. Capacity isn't only describing the presence of capability but, significantly, it's also telling us that there actually are limits to its potential (energy).

[18th century mathematician Joeseph-Louis] Lagrange's formulation involved the concept of a mathematical "potential" – an idea related to "potential energy" – and the "work" done by a force. For instance, it takes effort – work – to lift a weight against gravity, but once it's up there it has the potential to expend energy doing more work if it falls. You can see this kind of application in the huge demolition balls hoisted on cranes or in the falling water that drives a turbine. To lift up the demolition ball, though, you need to apply a force to it…

“Vector: A surprising story of space, time, and mathematical transformation”
by Robyn Arianrhod (pg. 125)

Potential & kinetic really are partners
of the "I got you, boo" variety.

They have a relationship. And you, too, can have a relationship of sorts with the care you take in the conservation of your own potential energy.

Picture this: You’re holding on to the end of a piece of string. You're unable to see where the other end of the string is. You wanna go uphill, and as you move up, you wind the string around your hand, slowly, taking the time needed so that it does not knot itself and so that the tension remains consistent on the string as it's wound. The longer you keep this up, the more string – and energy – you will have stored. Ah, look at the potential you (quite literally) hold in your hand! 😊 

Human needs arrange themselves in hierarchies of prepotency,* That is to say, the appearance of one need usually rests on the prior satisfaction of another, more prepotent need. Man is a perpetually wanting animal. Also no need or drive can be treated as if it were isolated or discrete; every drive is related to the state of satisfaction or dissatisfaction of other drives.

“A Theory of Human Motivation”
by Abraham Maslow

Eventually, though, there comes a time when you and that ball of string have reached capacity- at least as far as what you alone can manage. You've taken it as high as you can and are able to push against gravity's pull only for so long. You certainly can hold onto it and its potential (energy) for as long as you like – as long as it stays contained. It doesn’t move one millimeter. And if you want to keep all the potential for yourself, all that energy that has been conserved, no one else can touch it.

Then, you release it. Out it goes, unwinding, yielding to gravity, yet it doesn't disappear. It's out there, waiting to be gathered up again, whether it's by you or someone else.

Looking at a group's actions in this way – tracking their linear movement as:
Values > Motivation > Creating Potential Energy > Expending Kinetic Energy 
is a good way to gain some understanding of the "why" behind* someone's actions.
It's also how a collective motivation can be a starter pack to generate potential energy. 

It brings some mathematical sense to why we say someone else's actions are contagious. Since energy never goes away, it only changes form, then you can see how one person's kinetic energy transfers into someone else's potential energy.*

One last thing: what motivates each of us can be very situationally based. You may be fueling your potential energy by gathering information in order to feel safe because your personal value that defines your motivation is all about security,* But I hope that once you get the opportunity to 'spend' that potential energy that you conserved and it is translated into kinetic energy with such intensity and grand impact that it positively alters your situation, that the new conditions you exist within allow you to tend to your secondary motivator – which would automatically move into the top position.

Because, yes, of course, our motivators in life change. There is most definitely a hierarchy to them.

My deep hope here is that we can all acknowledge that change – which some might deem as good while that same change may be looked at as bad by others – is driven by energy that is mathematically required to be transferring itself back and forth because it is always in exchange mode, that potential energy and kinetic energy. One gathers and saves, the other expels and spends. It's a fact, y'all. Energy never stops existing. It's constantly transferring.* 

You just need to find / take / demand the time to gather it for its – and your – full potential.

One just has to know that we have opportunities for creating adaptive change in every moment: to cultivate greater interactivity between people, to reinforce homeostatic societal feedback loops, to be courageous in resisting (what appear like) top-down controls, and to trust that nothing is determined or fixed. Every moment has the random potential to surprise us with new possibilities. 

“Notes on Complexity: A Scientific Theory of Connection, Consciousness, and Being”
by Neil Theise (pg. 170)

Thanks math, you're the best.

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