If you’re reading this blog post, there’s a good chance that you’re not actually accomplishing as much each day/week as you’d like to, and that you’ve begun to suspect a good chunk of your time is being wasted.

I doubt there are many people who, as they look back on their lives, wish they had spent more time watching TV or cute kitten videos on Facebook. But there are probably an awful lot who, with hindsight, wish they’d watched less, and achieved more! Effective time management is about knowing what’s important to you. What would you rather do: work towards your life goals, or spend all night binge watching House of Cards? The more focused and self-disciplined you are, the more likely that you can (eventually) do both.

Motivation is the force that initiates, guides, and maintains our goal-oriented behaviours. It’s what prompts us to take action; whether it’s to climb a mountain, enrol in university, or save for our retirement. Understanding what motivates us to make the choices we make, big and small, day in, day out, can provide important insight, and significantly improve our chances of a happy, satisfying, and successful life.

Theories of motivation

Researchers have developed a number of theories to explain how motivation works, and three of the earliest and probably best known are Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Herzberg’s Motivation/Hygiene theory, and Victor Vroom’s Expectancy theory.

Our immune system is our first line of defence against infections and other external and internal attacks, and is made up of three distinct layers, which are deployed depending on the nature of the threat:

• Physical barriers: e.g. skin, lungs, gastrointestinal and respiratory tracts.

• Biochemical barriers: e.g. secretions, mucus, and gastric acid.

• Immune cells: e.g. T and B cells which produce antibodies to target and destroy the pathogen.