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Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them.

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Re: Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them.

#41

Post by cracki »

ABrandt wrote: post #11

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 m…

so you like external pressure. I don't. actually, I hate external pressure.

that's why I never tell anyone I know in person about my projects. I usually spill my guts to folks on IRC. they're liable to either find it an utterly fascinating idea which lacks execution or it turns into a trollfest. either way, I'm still left with zero external pressure, some nonspecific encouraging words or lots of close-minded opposition that needs to be shown the finger by Getting It Done.

Re: Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them.

#42

Post by cracki »

shellerik wrote: post #18

"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?

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.

Re: Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them.

#43

Post by cracki »

nreece wrote: post #39

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

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...

Re: Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them.

#45

Post by 10ren »

curej wrote: post #8

"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…

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

Re: Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them.

#46

Post by rivo »

psyklic wrote: post #33
kirse wrote: post #10

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 motiv…

Of course, on the flip side ... having people continually asking about your progress is actually pretty motivating (even if for the wrong reason)!

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.

Re: Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them.

#47

Post by Ardit20 »

shellerik wrote: post #18

"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?

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?

Re: Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them.

#48

Post by Ardit20 »

ABrandt wrote: post #11

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 m…

I was immediately turned off by this article when it cited a study from 1933

That seems to suggest that as we progress we know better. However, not many would suggest that the wisdom of Aristotle is no longer relevant. And that Milgram experiment am sure was done more than twenty years ago, yet it shed some great light into our psyche.

There is no reason to suggest that we know better than the people of the last century. Humans remain humans afterall and unlike physics where truth may be more rigid, in matters of human behaviour it may be safer to trust an older source for if it has survived the tides of time, then it must have some goodness in it.

Re: Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them.

#49

Post by electromagnetic »

rivo wrote: post #46
psyklic wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, on the flip side ... having people continually asking about your progress is actually pretty motivating (even if for the wrong reason)!

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.

I have the same problem, although (as I've mentioned before) I'm a writer, which I believe requires the same kind of creativity and ability to pull out unique ideas for solving problems.

Once I've announced a project, it seems to lose some of its energy and when people don't ask to see more, it makes me question my work. I stalled on one project after showing it to my wife, she didn't ask about it for a long time (which due to college, work, friends and immigration papers, she hasn't had the time to read anything). However, the self-doubt creeps in and now I'm stuck deciding between an entire rewrite of the old project to correct the problem, or to switch completely to my 'on the side' project that has occupied me for a week (compared to a few months) and has produced about half as much in much less time.

I also realised that the people I've listened to have been the wrong people, despite them being well intentioned. When I used to work as a reviewer, my editor praised my personal voice as akin to Terry Pratchett, but when I used it in actual stories I was told it had too much personal voice in it. Stupidly I listened to the other people and not my instincts.

So now I'm back to pointing my own compass, which is where I enjoy being and where my motivation stays up. Ironically it involves hiding the work from my wife, although I usually don't write when she's home anyway, which is definitely going to get me kicked (the question is where) if I end up with a finished 80,000 word novel I neglected to tell her about.

Re: Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them.

#50

Post by electromagnetic »

ALee wrote: post #27

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 members…

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.

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