What drives and motivates us

Humans like animals have a biological drive that motivates us to eat, drink and copulate. It's the most basic form of motivation that keep us alive and well. We are also motivated by extrinsic elements like rewards and punishments. These extrinsic motivations are the basis of our business world. You want something done better and faster, you pay more. If you want to prevent a certain behavior, you punish them.

The third drive is by far the most powerful form of motivation. It's intrinsic motivation that drives programmers to release open-source software and made Wikipedia the best encyclopedia in the world. They are doing it for the enjoyment of the task itself. The performance of the task is in itself the reward.

This is the reason why you should be doing things that you love. Intrinsic motivation is both renewable and limitless.

One at a time

They say women are better in multi-tasking than men. I say if you want to get something done, something that matters, you have got to do it one at a time. Focus is the key and luckily both men and women can do just as well. If you focus on a single task, it's way easier to get started. Shut out the distractions and concentrate on the task at hand.

It also helps to get you into the flow. It's like a mental state where you are fully immersed by what you are doing and sometimes referred to as the zone. Programmers often get into the zone and lose track of time.

Another benefit of this approach is that you can prevent yourself from getting the idea-to-idea syndrome. You spend your time and effort on execution instead of coming up with new exciting stuff to do.

Most importantly, by doing one thing at a time, chances of completing the task is way higher. All these small victories will slowly build up your momentum and confidence.

Time to get started on your goals and ideas, one at a time.

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Life is too short

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I received this last week. It's one of the painting from Hugh Macleod of GapingVoid. This is not actually the one I ordered but I like all of the Linchpin series so it's fine. 

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Life is too short not to do something that matters, not to become a "Linchpin". I know it, you know it, we all know it, so let's stop futzin' around at get on with it. Like Seth says, "Decide". - Hugh

This will serve as a daily reminder for me that life is too short to waste time and get myself to start working on those ideas. You just have to try to know if it will work.

Stop buying stuff you don't need

Annie Leonard created a film and also released a book about the true cost of our consumerism on the nature and human beings. It's a story that shows why we should stop buying stuff (at least less of them) because it is simply unsustainable. Take 20 minutes and watch the film below and it will change your perceptive of things you use everyday.

For those who are interested, here's the book.

If it is mine, it is worth more

Economist Richard Thaler was the first to came up with the endowment effect theory. He theorized that people tend to value goods that they own more than those they don't even if the goods are both identical. In an experiment, those who are given a mug consistently price it higher than those who are asked to just value the mug directly without owning them. This is a cognitive bias and seems to be related to status quo bias where we prefer things to remain unchanged.

This is probably the reason why I'm unable to sell off most of my unwanted things and leave them rotting somewhere in the house.

Rework your business

The guys from 37signals just released their new book REWORK. I'm hoping to get my hands on one soon. It's a compilation of essays that give you great new insights on how you should run your business. A must read for every entrepreneur out there.

In the real world, you can't have over a dozen employees spread out across eight different cities over two continents. In the real world, you can't attract millions of customers without any salespeople or advertising. In the real world, you can't reveal your formula for success to the rest of the world. But we've done all those things and prospered. The real world isn't a place, it's an excuse. It's a justification for not trying. It has nothing to do with you. - Excerpt from REWORK

If you would like to know more about the book. check out the REWORK manifesto on Changethis.

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Too many ideas, too little time

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If you have too many ideas and you don't have enough time to execute them, you should check out this article by Scott Belsky on how to overcome the idea-to-idea syndrome. By now, I hope you understand the real value of an idea is in its execution. But there's another problem that arise while you are executing your idea. You might get bored and lose your initial momentum and creativity. And being addicted to ideas, you come up with a new one to keep yourself interested and abandon the old one.

Scott proposed some tips on how to stop yourself from going from idea to idea. First we need to restrain ourselves from coming up with too many ideas. Execution of the idea is still the main goal. Stop being addicted to inspiration and start the perspiration.

We also need to run our idea through the others, the ones that live in the real world. Their input is invaluable if you want your idea to go mainstream. Scott calls them the sober monitors.

Try skipping meetings and appointments that doesn't align with your goals. Because when idea-lovers get together, all they can do is just generate more ideas and prevent you from actually bringing yours to live.

I suggest you keep an eye on the next article of the series to get more tips on how to turn your ideas into reality.

Tagging in the real world

​In Flickr, you can tag your photos to categorize them. On Facebook, you can tag the faces in your photos to link them to the actual person. (or spam others) Now, stickybits gives you a way to tag objects in the real world with digital content like photos, videos or messages. Tagging is done by scanning the bar-code on the item using their application that is available on iPhone and Android. If you are the first to scan the bar-code, the content that you tag onto it will appear first. There is also a history log to track if there's new content being attached to the item or when it changed location.

Currently the business model is selling packs of vinyl bar-code stickers so you can tag any items you want by simply stamping the stickers on them. There's nothing stopping stickybits from charging for exclusive rights to add content to items first and maybe even show related items when you scan something. Google Adsense for the real world anyone?

Now this is a brilliant idea that is well executed.

Are you a laggard?

When a new piece of technology or gadget comes out, are you the early adopter that couldn't wait to get your hands on it or are you the laggard who waits till everyone else is on board before getting one? Or maybe you are the innovative mind behind the new invention? Below is the Technology Adoption Lifecycle that shows how new ideas and technologies are adopted by different demographics.

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For a product to enter the mainstream, it needs to move from the left to the right of the curve. State of the art and ground-breaking technology we hear about from researchers and scientists are still in the early innovators stage. Electric cars are still stuck in the early adopters stage until they figure out how to cross the chasm or the earth blows up.

In recent years, Facebook and Twitter have finally captured the attention of the early majority and sooner or later almost everyone is gonna have a Facebook account. To most businesses, reaching the late majority is the ultimate goal. The laggards are just too troublesome to be bothered with.

The Chasm is something proposed by Geoffrey A. Moore in Crossing the Chasm. For disruptive and discontinuous technologies, there is a chasm between the early adopters and the early majority. Inventions like MP3 format and the Internet is disruptive because they are innovation that are unexpected by the market.

If you want these disruptive technologies to be adopted by the mainstream, you have to position your product differently. Moore argues that the early adopters and early majority have very different expectations from your product and this is the main reason why most high tech products fail to reach the mainstream.

I'm still on the fence about using a smartphone but I do want to adopt the iPad as soon as I can.

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Driving risks

Our brain is notoriously bad at assessing modern risks and here are some that is related to driving.

  1. We overestimate chance of big catastrophe happening and underestimate risks in everyday events. After 9/11, many opted to drive instead of getting on a plane resulting in more accidents knowing that driving is actually far more dangerous than flying.
  2. We substitute one risk with another. This risk compensation caused drivers of ABS-equipped vehicles to drive more aggressively. Same thing happens when we wear seat belts.
  3. We take more risk if (we think) are in control. It feels less dangerous if we are given the choice to decide how much to risk. The reason why I always choose to drive myself.

There are many more scenarios where we misjudge the odds of danger. Check out this article if you would like to know more.