8 ms·

Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them.

151 points by sivers 17y ago

byrneseyeview 17y ago
This slightly overstates the case. Structured announcements ("I will have done X by date Y") give you a chance to fail in the eyes of people whose opinions you value. That helps. I have an online friend who used this idea a couple months ago. To make himself achieve his weight-loss goals, he announced that he'd be posting nude pictures of himself on his blog at a set date. I'm not sure how well it worked (he lost weight, but not as much as he'd hoped), but he did actually post the pictures.
- Tichy 17y ago
  Link? Or actually, never mind...
bonaldi 17y ago
The third way is to announce something as complete. That gives you a real sense of motivation to get it done (see Vikings, burning boats).
abossy 17y ago
Conversely, announcing your plans and having a financial stake in the completion of those plans is shown to work exceptionally well. The company, stickK (stickk.com), is founded on this principle. It is drawn from behavorial economist Dean Karlan, so it is based on incentives rather than rigorous psychological evaluation, but it seems to work well: http://www.stickk.com/about.php http://www.stickk.com/about.php
- srn 17y ago
  If the financial state is already having invested the money, I wonder if this is more or less motivating than a possibility of money later. The money paid is a sunk cost, so failing to follow up negatively impacts your experience and not the financials.
- reconbot 17y ago
  I was about to boast about something... but never mind.
gaius 17y ago
That's really interesting. It's taken as read in marathon running that you should tell everyone you're going to do it and this well help you keep motivated to train during the winter. I did that because I was "supposed" to, but it didn't seem to affect my motivation much - however lots of people did prematurely say well done, hmm.
curej 17y ago
"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, and then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- dtf 17y ago
  Inspiring words. The full quote is actually by W.H. Murray, inspired by a couplet of Goethe's (roughly the last two sentences).
- zackattack 17y ago
  I find the italic really annoying to read
  - zackattack 17y ago
    Italic is more annoying/difficult/straining to read. Seriously. You know how they say hackers don't think about user experience?
- 10ren 17y ago
  The above (wonderful) quote is preceded by: 'But when I said that nothing had been done I erred in one important matter. We had definitely committed ourselves and were halfway out of our ruts. We had put down our passage money--booked a sailing to Bombay. This may sound too simple, but is great in consequence. http://www.goethesociety.org/pages/quotescom.html http://www.goethesociety.org/pages/quotescom.html
nw 17y ago
http://rulesformyunbornson.tumblr.com/post/51600839/222-dont-boast-about-projects-in-progress-celebrate http://rulesformyunbornson.tumblr.com/post/51600839/222-dont...
kirse 17y ago
I noticed this effect very early on as a kid, where I was often hacking away at some new project or trying to undermine some system. Some of my ideas were pretty exciting, so usually I'd be bursting to pass on my excitement to someone else - usually my parents. (As any entrepreneur can confirm, coming up with a great new idea is very rewarding) However, I never failed to feel like I lost some intrinsic level of motivation whenever I explained to someone else what I was working on. It felt like holding a secret only you knew and then letting it out spoiled it. After awhile I learned to contain my enthusiasm and direct it toward making a functioning product before telling anyone... this probably explains why I tend to be much more independent when it comes to my startup ideas... Working in secrecy makes you feel like you're about to pounce a revolutionary new idea upon the world and take it by storm.
- rokhayakebe 17y ago
  I wish I could upvote you 5 more times.
  - ArcticCelt 17y ago
    But now that you said it there is no need anymore.
- psyklic 17y ago
  Of course, on the flip side ... having people continually asking about your progress is actually pretty motivating (even if for the wrong reason)!
  - rivo 17y ago
    Once I tell people, however, I find myself waiting for those other people's questions about my progress. And if I don't get them, I do lose motivation although the reasons for them not asking me could be any (e.g. they didn't really understand or they're too busy with themselves). So once I put it out there, I tend to constantly look for external validation even though I might not want to. It's not my own anymore.
ABrandt 17y ago
First of all, I was immediately turned off by this article when it cited a study from 1933. Sure he used other evidence later, but I've come into the habit of being seriously skeptical of any scientific work done more than twenty years ago. I may be reading this article wrong, but this seems to fly in the face of Steve Blank's customer development model and other wisdoms that are being thrown around these days. To me, part of putting your plans out there is the resultant pressure from peers to see them through. When an idea is just in my head, nobody knows when I abandon it for no apparent good reason. But when I tell my friends, family, and everyone I meet what I am planning to do, then I better follow through or risk hurting my credibility. I like to call this "going balls deep."
- gruseom 17y ago
  I've come into the habit of being seriously skeptical of any scientific work done more than twenty years ago. That has amusing implications for us, twenty years from now.
  - shard 17y ago
    Considering that everything I learned in school I learned about 20 years ago, that has "amusing" implications for all the knowledge that most people who went through higher education has received.
  - GeneralMaximus 17y ago
    I think he was talking about behavioral studies.
    - shard 17y ago
      I would imagine that human nature changes much more slowly than that.
      - GeneralMaximus 17y ago
        You have to take into account the rapid changes in technology. Surely, the Internet has somehow affected human behavior?
Maro 17y ago
When I did the Ironman last year, I told everyone about it: friends, family and co-workers. I did it on purpose. It was a risk I took, because would I have failed to prepare for the race or finish the race, everyone would have thought I'm a "looser" or "quitter". I used this fear as additional motivational fuel. Also, to my surprise, most people told me I'm an idiot for even attempting an Ironman and that I wouldn't be able to finish it. (Lesson learned: Culturally, here in Eastern Europe 'we' don't have the 'can do' attitude.) That was another huge boost, showing these people how limited their mindset is. It's kind of cheating, because you're using external factors to motivate you, but you need all the "help" to do extraordinary things. Think of Ali when he was preparing for the Foreman fight --- he used an entire nation to motivate him for the Rumble in the Jungle. Whenever he got a chance, he went on TV and said he would destroy Foreman. He absolutely commited himself in front of the entire world and it worked for him. Foreman, on the other hand, was different, he was more introverted, and although he lost that fight, he was still a great boxer. So, on a personal level, I strongly disagree with this article. I'd rather strive to be like Ali than accept some mediocre average. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5o-yxwBJuk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5o-yxwBJuk
- dan_the_welder 17y ago
  ...It's kind of cheating, because you're using external factors to motivate you... It's just a tool, and an effective one at that. I use it all the time, especially if I am facing something that scares me a bit.
- cturner 17y ago
  That is amazing. Anyone who does ironman is amazing. > It's kind of cheating If you ran, swam and cycle the distance you made it, no cheapting about it. Amazing - nice work!
- Adlai 17y ago
  Congratulations on the Ironman. I don't think that article is really about Ironman-type goals, though. By the time you are preparing for the Ironman, I'd imagine that you would be quite dedicated to your training. As I understood it, that article is about goals which you have to start from scratch -- for example, choosing to start running and train for your first 5K race.
gsk 17y ago
The author emphasises: "Announcing your plans to others satisfies your self-identity just enough that you’re less motivated to do the hard work needed." This is one of those sentences that seem to make sense but don't. It's a oversimplification at best, psychobabble at worst.
- sivers 17y ago
  It is just a useful summary of the many academic studies. The article's links point to the actual studies for those who want the details.
dan_the_welder 17y ago
Funny, I have noticed this exact same phenomenon in bars.
shellerik 17y ago
"those who kept their intentions private were more likely to achieve them" Or they forgot about or lied about having those private intentions? How do you know that someone had private intentions?
- cracki 17y ago
  exactly. if you keep quiet, you can't disappoint the people you'd have opened up to. perhaps a defense mechanism? don't kick me. i'm talking about myself here. i'm no psychiatrist, just a programmer who talks too much.
- Ardit20 17y ago
  the same can be said about the other group however, they could have lied or forgotten that they shared their ideas. How do you know they shared their ideas?
dannyr 17y ago
I partially agree on this. I believe it depends how a person values the opinions of friends and families. If I care about what they think, I will be accountable and try to reach those goals. If I announce my goals and do not deliver, my friends and families would stop believing in and listening to me. I'm very selective on the plans I announce. I only announce those that I think I can achieve.
wglb 17y ago
I don't think so. Who was it that said that one of the forces keeping an entrepreneur going was the embarrassment factor--having announced the plan, then being committed to prevent the shame of failure. Studies of this sort leave me questioning the true amount of science in social science. The business about "symbols in the brain" is pretty lame. (As if that is where the mind is--but that is another discussion altogether.)
- PebblesRox 17y ago
  I agree that the bulk of this article is speculation. "Identity symbols" and a "premature sense of completeness" may be one possible explanation, but the article presents them as the only explanation of the correlation shown in the studies.
PebblesRox 17y ago
I'm not convinced that announcing plans causes people not to fulfil them. The studies may show correllation, but I wouldn't assume cause and effect. Another explanation could be that the people who keep their plans to themselves are the kind of people who are more likely to carry them out.
- bhrgunatha 17y ago
  Yes, I suspect there are a large number of factors that affect our motivation, and each of those factors has a different effect on different people. What's more important is finding those factors that personally motivate you. For me making a public announcement helps in the short term, to get the ball rolling, but doesn't keep my motivation at a high level.
wallflower 17y ago
"The soft over comes the hard, the slow over comes the fast, let your working remain a mystery just show people the result." - Tao Te Ching -
ALee 17y ago
It would seem that for some public shame (announced plan that you never completed) is a motivator, while for others public announcement gives you a sense of reward. Most studies show that the biggest motivator for anyone is when it costs you and not accomplishing the goal costs you even more. There is a study on going to the gym and they found that the primary motivator for working out is if you pay for a gym membership and are reminded that you're losing money. It does not work if it's a gift (money you never had). It would be interesting to see if it matters between extroverts (get energy from talking to strangers) and introverts (lose energy when talking to strangers).
- electromagnetic 17y ago
  Personally I'm an introvert and while possibly not as bad a case as others, I'm restricted to a handful of friends who being with doesn't seem to drain me. Again, personally, I seem to lose motivation when I tell other people about a project, because I expect other people to ask about the project. However, that isn't realistic, I'm sure a hardened extrovert would tell their friends about every single part of the project as it progresses. From what I can tell, an extrovert is going to be motivated because they get to tell everyone new stuff because they keep working. Where as an introvert is going to lose motivation, because they don't have the tendency to be out there talking to everyone, they expect an unrealistic and disproportionate amount of questions. I guess a good analogy is that an introvert is the actor on the stage who always wants to be in the spotlight, but doesn't do enough to attract the spotlight. Where as the extrovert is the spotlight, who wants to tell everyone where and what to pay attention to.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
Vivtek 17y ago
At first glance, this rings very true -- I've seen it myself in open-source work. As long as I'm privately chugging along solving problems, things go well, but as soon as I see the project as an attention-getter, I find myself focusing on the attention instead of the actual project. This has happened to several times over the last decade, and it has always led to me abandoning whatever it was I was working on. (Not that I don't take it up again later, but by then it's a different project.) But I have a counterexample, too: my house renovation, which I'm blogging. (Cf. http://big-old-house.blogspot.com http://big-old-house.blogspot.com) Clearly, I'm being public about my plans there, and yet, knowing that people are going to look at what I've gotten done today is a real motivator in getting something done every day, even if it's trivial. So in that instance, the publicity has really helped motivate me (as Maro noted earlier with the Ironman prep). Perhaps human involvement in big projects isn't necessarily a demotivator; in my house case, I'd say that I assign my social value to each task only as it's done and I can show people what I did -- by breaking the big project down into little tasks, and not talking about the little tasks until they're complete, I can get the best of both worlds (i.e. having the social support and advice of people, without the loss of motivation due to talking about unhatched chickens).
nreece 17y ago
However, announcing your plans early can generate buzz (which is helpful in case of startups), IF you can "under promise, and over deliver."
- cracki 17y ago
  what's the most extreme form of underpromising? promising nothing? not promising? and then you pull the rabbit out of your hat. the buzz might be achievable by just giving off the impression that you're working on Something Big, Details Are Secret etc...
xexers 17y ago
I think he should be a bit more specific here. Zig Ziglar says: Share "give up" goals with everybody. Share "Go up" goals only with family, friends, and people you can rely on who will support you and not bash your ideas. So if you want to give up smoking, tell the whole world and they will hold you accountable. If you want invent something new and exciting, only share it with people you know will support you.
known 17y ago
Does Open source makes you less motivated to accomplish?
- jodrellblank 17y ago
  How many times have you heard the words "I'll release the code when I've had some time to clean it up", implying it was developed in private. How many abandoned projects are there on Sourceforge and Freshmeat?
gurtwo 17y ago
If true, this has a devastating effect on elections. The more a political party talks about its agenda, the less it will do? It totally contradicts the notion that the voters like a candidate that can clearly explain what his goals are.
mccon104 17y ago
This is exactly what Friedrich Nietzsche was talking about when he said; "160. One no longer loves one’s insight enough once one communicates it." [Beyond Good & Evil (1886)] The story is that Nietzsche returns from his mid-day walk having had what he considers a brilliant idea. He is smiling. He passes an acquaintance who asks him what he is smiling about. He explains the idea. The instant he does so he regrets it. As he is speaking his mind is suddenly changing, his emotions deflating. The smile becomes a concerned frown. He goes home and writes down number 160. He no longer loved his insight enough. Communication ruined it. --- The idea is you can never formulate experiences/thoughts into words. The best we have are metaphors which only cheapen the beauty of the original by associating it with the everyday.
Aron 17y ago
I suspect the worst thing to do is to talk glowingly about your progress or efforts to people who don't have the ability or desire to judge the accuracy of it.
flinc 17y ago
http://ideas.al3x.net/ http://ideas.al3x.net/ Alex Payne's Open Ideas: he's publishing his notebook of "someday" ideas http://twitter.com/al3x/status/2169778627 http://twitter.com/al3x/status/2169778627

151 points by sivers 17y ago

This slightly overstates the case. Structured announcements ("I will have done X by date Y") give you a chance to fail in the eyes of people whose opinions you value. That helps. I have an online friend who used this idea a couple months ago. To make himself achieve his weight-loss goals, he announced that he'd be posting nude pictures of himself on his blog at a set date. I'm not sure how well it worked (he lost weight, but not as much as he'd hoped), but he did actually post the pictures.

Tichy 17y ago
Link? Or actually, never mind...

bonaldi 17y ago

The third way is to announce something as complete. That gives you a real sense of motivation to get it done (see Vikings, burning boats).

abossy 17y ago

Conversely, announcing your plans and having a financial stake in the completion of those plans is shown to work exceptionally well. The company, stickK (stickk.com), is founded on this principle. It is drawn from behavorial economist Dean Karlan, so it is based on incentives rather than rigorous psychological evaluation, but it seems to work well: http://www.stickk.com/about.php http://www.stickk.com/about.php

srn 17y ago
If the financial state is already having invested the money, I wonder if this is more or less motivating than a possibility of money later. The money paid is a sunk cost, so failing to follow up negatively impacts your experience and not the financials.
reconbot 17y ago
I was about to boast about something... but never mind.

gaius 17y ago

That's really interesting. It's taken as read in marathon running that you should tell everyone you're going to do it and this well help you keep motivated to train during the winter. I did that because I was "supposed" to, but it didn't seem to affect my motivation much - however lots of people did prematurely say well done, hmm.

curej 17y ago

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, and then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

dtf 17y ago
Inspiring words. The full quote is actually by W.H. Murray, inspired by a couplet of Goethe's (roughly the last two sentences).
zackattack 17y ago
I find the italic really annoying to read
- zackattack 17y ago
  Italic is more annoying/difficult/straining to read. Seriously. You know how they say hackers don't think about user experience?
10ren 17y ago
The above (wonderful) quote is preceded by: 'But when I said that nothing had been done I erred in one important matter. We had definitely committed ourselves and were halfway out of our ruts. We had put down our passage money--booked a sailing to Bombay. This may sound too simple, but is great in consequence. http://www.goethesociety.org/pages/quotescom.html http://www.goethesociety.org/pages/quotescom.html

nw 17y ago

http://rulesformyunbornson.tumblr.com/post/51600839/222-dont-boast-about-projects-in-progress-celebrate http://rulesformyunbornson.tumblr.com/post/51600839/222-dont...

kirse 17y ago

I noticed this effect very early on as a kid, where I was often hacking away at some new project or trying to undermine some system. Some of my ideas were pretty exciting, so usually I'd be bursting to pass on my excitement to someone else - usually my parents. (As any entrepreneur can confirm, coming up with a great new idea is very rewarding) However, I never failed to feel like I lost some intrinsic level of motivation whenever I explained to someone else what I was working on. It felt like holding a secret only you knew and then letting it out spoiled it. After awhile I learned to contain my enthusiasm and direct it toward making a functioning product before telling anyone... this probably explains why I tend to be much more independent when it comes to my startup ideas... Working in secrecy makes you feel like you're about to pounce a revolutionary new idea upon the world and take it by storm.

rokhayakebe 17y ago
I wish I could upvote you 5 more times.
- ArcticCelt 17y ago
  But now that you said it there is no need anymore.
psyklic 17y ago
Of course, on the flip side ... having people continually asking about your progress is actually pretty motivating (even if for the wrong reason)!
- rivo 17y ago
  Once I tell people, however, I find myself waiting for those other people's questions about my progress. And if I don't get them, I do lose motivation although the reasons for them not asking me could be any (e.g. they didn't really understand or they're too busy with themselves). So once I put it out there, I tend to constantly look for external validation even though I might not want to. It's not my own anymore.

ABrandt 17y ago

First of all, I was immediately turned off by this article when it cited a study from 1933. Sure he used other evidence later, but I've come into the habit of being seriously skeptical of any scientific work done more than twenty years ago. I may be reading this article wrong, but this seems to fly in the face of Steve Blank's customer development model and other wisdoms that are being thrown around these days. To me, part of putting your plans out there is the resultant pressure from peers to see them through. When an idea is just in my head, nobody knows when I abandon it for no apparent good reason. But when I tell my friends, family, and everyone I meet what I am planning to do, then I better follow through or risk hurting my credibility. I like to call this "going balls deep."

gruseom 17y ago
I've come into the habit of being seriously skeptical of any scientific work done more than twenty years ago. That has amusing implications for us, twenty years from now.
- shard 17y ago
  Considering that everything I learned in school I learned about 20 years ago, that has "amusing" implications for all the knowledge that most people who went through higher education has received.
- GeneralMaximus 17y ago
  I think he was talking about behavioral studies.
  - shard 17y ago
    I would imagine that human nature changes much more slowly than that.
    - GeneralMaximus 17y ago
      You have to take into account the rapid changes in technology. Surely, the Internet has somehow affected human behavior?

Maro 17y ago

When I did the Ironman last year, I told everyone about it: friends, family and co-workers. I did it on purpose. It was a risk I took, because would I have failed to prepare for the race or finish the race, everyone would have thought I'm a "looser" or "quitter". I used this fear as additional motivational fuel. Also, to my surprise, most people told me I'm an idiot for even attempting an Ironman and that I wouldn't be able to finish it. (Lesson learned: Culturally, here in Eastern Europe 'we' don't have the 'can do' attitude.) That was another huge boost, showing these people how limited their mindset is. It's kind of cheating, because you're using external factors to motivate you, but you need all the "help" to do extraordinary things. Think of Ali when he was preparing for the Foreman fight --- he used an entire nation to motivate him for the Rumble in the Jungle. Whenever he got a chance, he went on TV and said he would destroy Foreman. He absolutely commited himself in front of the entire world and it worked for him. Foreman, on the other hand, was different, he was more introverted, and although he lost that fight, he was still a great boxer. So, on a personal level, I strongly disagree with this article. I'd rather strive to be like Ali than accept some mediocre average. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5o-yxwBJuk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5o-yxwBJuk

dan_the_welder 17y ago
...It's kind of cheating, because you're using external factors to motivate you... It's just a tool, and an effective one at that. I use it all the time, especially if I am facing something that scares me a bit.
cturner 17y ago
That is amazing. Anyone who does ironman is amazing. > It's kind of cheating If you ran, swam and cycle the distance you made it, no cheapting about it. Amazing - nice work!
Adlai 17y ago
Congratulations on the Ironman. I don't think that article is really about Ironman-type goals, though. By the time you are preparing for the Ironman, I'd imagine that you would be quite dedicated to your training. As I understood it, that article is about goals which you have to start from scratch -- for example, choosing to start running and train for your first 5K race.

gsk 17y ago

The author emphasises: "Announcing your plans to others satisfies your self-identity just enough that you’re less motivated to do the hard work needed." This is one of those sentences that seem to make sense but don't. It's a oversimplification at best, psychobabble at worst.

sivers 17y ago
It is just a useful summary of the many academic studies. The article's links point to the actual studies for those who want the details.

dan_the_welder 17y ago

Funny, I have noticed this exact same phenomenon in bars.

shellerik 17y ago

"those who kept their intentions private were more likely to achieve them" Or they forgot about or lied about having those private intentions? How do you know that someone had private intentions?

cracki 17y ago
exactly. if you keep quiet, you can't disappoint the people you'd have opened up to. perhaps a defense mechanism? don't kick me. i'm talking about myself here. i'm no psychiatrist, just a programmer who talks too much.
Ardit20 17y ago
the same can be said about the other group however, they could have lied or forgotten that they shared their ideas. How do you know they shared their ideas?

dannyr 17y ago

I partially agree on this. I believe it depends how a person values the opinions of friends and families. If I care about what they think, I will be accountable and try to reach those goals. If I announce my goals and do not deliver, my friends and families would stop believing in and listening to me. I'm very selective on the plans I announce. I only announce those that I think I can achieve.

wglb 17y ago

I don't think so. Who was it that said that one of the forces keeping an entrepreneur going was the embarrassment factor--having announced the plan, then being committed to prevent the shame of failure. Studies of this sort leave me questioning the true amount of science in social science. The business about "symbols in the brain" is pretty lame. (As if that is where the mind is--but that is another discussion altogether.)

PebblesRox 17y ago
I agree that the bulk of this article is speculation. "Identity symbols" and a "premature sense of completeness" may be one possible explanation, but the article presents them as the only explanation of the correlation shown in the studies.

PebblesRox 17y ago

I'm not convinced that announcing plans causes people not to fulfil them. The studies may show correllation, but I wouldn't assume cause and effect. Another explanation could be that the people who keep their plans to themselves are the kind of people who are more likely to carry them out.

bhrgunatha 17y ago
Yes, I suspect there are a large number of factors that affect our motivation, and each of those factors has a different effect on different people. What's more important is finding those factors that personally motivate you. For me making a public announcement helps in the short term, to get the ball rolling, but doesn't keep my motivation at a high level.

wallflower 17y ago

"The soft over comes the hard, the slow over comes the fast, let your working remain a mystery just show people the result." - Tao Te Ching -

ALee 17y ago

It would seem that for some public shame (announced plan that you never completed) is a motivator, while for others public announcement gives you a sense of reward. Most studies show that the biggest motivator for anyone is when it costs you and not accomplishing the goal costs you even more. There is a study on going to the gym and they found that the primary motivator for working out is if you pay for a gym membership and are reminded that you're losing money. It does not work if it's a gift (money you never had). It would be interesting to see if it matters between extroverts (get energy from talking to strangers) and introverts (lose energy when talking to strangers).

electromagnetic 17y ago
Personally I'm an introvert and while possibly not as bad a case as others, I'm restricted to a handful of friends who being with doesn't seem to drain me. Again, personally, I seem to lose motivation when I tell other people about a project, because I expect other people to ask about the project. However, that isn't realistic, I'm sure a hardened extrovert would tell their friends about every single part of the project as it progresses. From what I can tell, an extrovert is going to be motivated because they get to tell everyone new stuff because they keep working. Where as an introvert is going to lose motivation, because they don't have the tendency to be out there talking to everyone, they expect an unrealistic and disproportionate amount of questions. I guess a good analogy is that an introvert is the actor on the stage who always wants to be in the spotlight, but doesn't do enough to attract the spotlight. Where as the extrovert is the spotlight, who wants to tell everyone where and what to pay attention to.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

Vivtek 17y ago

At first glance, this rings very true -- I've seen it myself in open-source work. As long as I'm privately chugging along solving problems, things go well, but as soon as I see the project as an attention-getter, I find myself focusing on the attention instead of the actual project. This has happened to several times over the last decade, and it has always led to me abandoning whatever it was I was working on. (Not that I don't take it up again later, but by then it's a different project.) But I have a counterexample, too: my house renovation, which I'm blogging. (Cf. http://big-old-house.blogspot.com http://big-old-house.blogspot.com) Clearly, I'm being public about my plans there, and yet, knowing that people are going to look at what I've gotten done today is a real motivator in getting something done every day, even if it's trivial. So in that instance, the publicity has really helped motivate me (as Maro noted earlier with the Ironman prep). Perhaps human involvement in big projects isn't necessarily a demotivator; in my house case, I'd say that I assign my social value to each task only as it's done and I can show people what I did -- by breaking the big project down into little tasks, and not talking about the little tasks until they're complete, I can get the best of both worlds (i.e. having the social support and advice of people, without the loss of motivation due to talking about unhatched chickens).

nreece 17y ago

However, announcing your plans early can generate buzz (which is helpful in case of startups), IF you can "under promise, and over deliver."

cracki 17y ago
what's the most extreme form of underpromising? promising nothing? not promising? and then you pull the rabbit out of your hat. the buzz might be achievable by just giving off the impression that you're working on Something Big, Details Are Secret etc...

xexers 17y ago

I think he should be a bit more specific here. Zig Ziglar says: Share "give up" goals with everybody. Share "Go up" goals only with family, friends, and people you can rely on who will support you and not bash your ideas. So if you want to give up smoking, tell the whole world and they will hold you accountable. If you want invent something new and exciting, only share it with people you know will support you.

known 17y ago

Does Open source makes you less motivated to accomplish?

jodrellblank 17y ago
How many times have you heard the words "I'll release the code when I've had some time to clean it up", implying it was developed in private. How many abandoned projects are there on Sourceforge and Freshmeat?

gurtwo 17y ago

If true, this has a devastating effect on elections. The more a political party talks about its agenda, the less it will do? It totally contradicts the notion that the voters like a candidate that can clearly explain what his goals are.

mccon104 17y ago

This is exactly what Friedrich Nietzsche was talking about when he said; "160. One no longer loves one’s insight enough once one communicates it." [Beyond Good & Evil (1886)] The story is that Nietzsche returns from his mid-day walk having had what he considers a brilliant idea. He is smiling. He passes an acquaintance who asks him what he is smiling about. He explains the idea. The instant he does so he regrets it. As he is speaking his mind is suddenly changing, his emotions deflating. The smile becomes a concerned frown. He goes home and writes down number 160. He no longer loved his insight enough. Communication ruined it. --- The idea is you can never formulate experiences/thoughts into words. The best we have are metaphors which only cheapen the beauty of the original by associating it with the everyday.

Aron 17y ago

I suspect the worst thing to do is to talk glowingly about your progress or efforts to people who don't have the ability or desire to judge the accuracy of it.

flinc 17y ago

http://ideas.al3x.net/ http://ideas.al3x.net/ Alex Payne's Open Ideas: he's publishing his notebook of "someday" ideas http://twitter.com/al3x/status/2169778627 http://twitter.com/al3x/status/2169778627