Results tagged “motivation”

Sound, yet often ignored advice from Patrick Rhone:

I'm a writer. I have everything I need, right now, to write. Take away my computer? I'll still write. I'll use pen and paper. Take away my pen and paper, and I'll use my fingernail to scrawl it into the soft bark of the nearest tree.

Extreme? Perhaps. But I can tell you for certain that, when it is time to write, nothing will stop me from doing so.

You know how exciting it is to tell a friend about your new idea for a product/business/invention?

Turns out, it's better to keep your mouth shut:

Unfortunately the mind sometimes has a nasty habit of sabotaging our best attempts to control ourselves. Recent research by Gollwitzer et al. (2010) suggests that, in fact, making our goals public can have precisely the opposite effect from what we intend.

Across three experiments the link between making goals public and actually working towards them was tested. What they found in every study was that when participants had shared their goal with someone else, instead of increasing their commitment, it reduced it.

Seems the best way to approach your goals is to just do them.

David, from 37Signals, talks about motivation:

When you're not working on something you're inspired by, your efficiency is so much lower. You find more moments in the day to let yourself be distracted by email or reading on the Web or something else. That's usually the key smell I detect when I'm working on something I don't really want to be working on: I check email much more frequently and I engage in chats about things that aren't related to what I should be working on.

You could hate on the 37Signals dudes with all their inspirational talk and books, but they run a profitable company based on their beliefs.

They walk the walk.

(I was going to say they eat their own dogfood, but that's such a negative analogy)

I love it. This is going on my list of things that motivate me.

I'm an ideas guy, I think ideas can do anything. Anything, that is - if they're executed. This company was named after an idea. Ideas inspire people. Ideas kick people in the ass. Below is a small list of things that have inspired me. Some are things you watch, some you read, and some you can listen to. They're not in any particular order.