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Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009)

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Re: Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009)

#51

Post by onemoresoop »

JohnFen wrote: post #24

I'm exactly opposite of that. If I announce plans, that adds an additional cost (embarrassment) to failing to accomplish them, which makes it less likely that I'll procrastinate or abandon the effort.

That's how I thought the fear of embarrassment turns into motivation too, but that is not real motivation as it doesn't come from within but from the outside, fearing of disappointing others or fearing personal embarrassment. That may work to keep one going but the reality is that things change, priorities change, motivation fades for good reasons. It is probably better to not announce anything until you've started off and made some progress and realized that you're on a good path.

Re: Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009)

#52

Post by mrslave »

I don't share ideas with many people anymore. Even ideas, and especially not goals. Any negative people are out, which unfortunately is too many.

The few that are trusted and have an analytical mindset are helpful for sound boarding, even if you don't exactly get them to immediately quit their jobs and join you at exciting-new-startup-here.tld.

Finally, I try to spend more time in general with those directly contributing to achieve my goals, usually in the activity itself (e.g. work, training, study). Work can be harder to navigate because, well, I'm not responsible for firing ;-) but it is possible to at least move the needle.

Re: Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009)

#53

Post by KangLi »

[Premature sense of completeness] Sums it all. I'd also add that such negative behavior is encouraged in our society to the point where praise is given for anything said, which is not even done yet. Premature achievers as well indeed take the idea of making the first step further down the perdition road and assume it's indeed even better to announce it publicly. I've always felt that speaking of what I plan to achieve is worthless because I knew I was seeking some gratification behind it, which sucked because why would you seek praise for what you haven't done yet?

Re: Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009)

#54

Post by zikani_03 »

SkyTreasure wrote: post #12

So true it happens to me many times. When I tell about the new idea or half done projects I feel less motivated to complete it. So right now my lips are sealed on the current project that I am working and it's coming in good shape as of now

This happens to me too, and it's doubly worse when I've made a little progress on a project in addition to telling/showing someone.

For example, a couple of days ago, I implemented a 'MVP' for a sweet (my opinion ;) IntelliJ plugin[1], but since telling/showing co-workers I lost the motivation that got me started on it.

[1]: https://github.com/nndi-oss/intellij-gensett

Re: Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009)

#55

Post by munificent »

GCA10 wrote: post #31

This article treats all types of announcements as being equal. Not so! A hazy announcement like "I'll be doing more to fight climate change" may indeed be empty virtue signaling that leads to nothing. But what about a more precise announcement like: "I'll be writing a book on Topic X, which I plan to publish 15 months from now, and I'll be completing one chapter on the 25th of every month until then"? Now we've got i…

> "I'll be writing a book on Topic X, which I plan to publish 15 months from now, and I'll be completing one chapter on the 25th of every month until then"?

I did something similar when I began my first book. It accomplished nothing. I ended up stalling for several years.

What helped was a private commitment to myself to work on the book every day. It's definitely important to have a plan, but that's orthogonal to sharing a plan.

> your friends and rivals will keep you honest.

This depends on your friends, but I think at least in the US, most friendships are based on uncritical support. They aren't likely to cause friction by calling you on things you previously committed to doing unless that commitment actually affects them personally.

Maybe that's the way to use your social network to keep you honest. Make a commitment like: "If I finish this project by date X, I will contribute $YYYY to your favorite charity." Now your friend has some skin in the game.

Re: Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009)

#58

Post by enobrev »

Does reserving a domain name fall under the category of "Announcing your plans"? If so, my experience absolutely correlates with this. I might as well save my ideas to pocket. At least that's a free way to keep really interesting things I'll never see again.

Re: Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009)

#60

Post by hi41 »

How would this work in the context of work in a team? Say you have an idea for fixing a bug. Without telling the manager about your intent how could you actually work on it? The manager comes quickly to find where all your hours went doing what pursuit.
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