Punishment is an awful way to motivate anyone, yourself included. The reason we think it works is because that's how everybody else in our lives treat us: parents, the school system, employers, financial institutions, etc. We get to the point where we think we have to be abused in order to perform, like whipping a dancing bear.
Trying to motivate with punishment leads to value judgment, leads to guilt, leads to mental avoidance.
Avoidance involves much less effort than actually doing the work.
Which is the real reason that it's hard to get personal projects done.
One other reason is that people talk themselves into doing personal projects because they "should," not because they're fired up. And lastly, burn-out from the should-punishment-guilt-avoidance cycle makes it hard to get motivated.
When you get out of this cycle, when you cut yourself a break, when you stop "shoulding all over yourself," magical things can happen... and you can devote regular time to things because you love them, without breaking out the stick or the carrot.
Thanks for the comment and excellent advice. I like what you said and where you're headed and would love to hear from you or anyone out there on what they are doing to motivate themselves to finish their product/service and get to the launch pad.
All I'm after at the end of the day (I assume others are the same), is to find tools we can use to help improve the chances of our startups succeeding.
Loved to hear from the more experienced folks out there on what keeps them going. My article was only intended to help others by sharing what my present thinking is, but if I'm wrong, I'll be the first to admit it and reshape my mental picture.
The question I would ask you, dave, is why aren't you motivated? Why is motivation something that has to be done to you? Why don't you wake up jazzed to do your startup thing, at least a couple days a week?
I had a real awakening when I started to take the guilt load off myself, and started viewing all my actions (or inaction) not as indicative of my worth as a person, but simply choices, which had logical consequences, which I had to either accept or change. Consequences doesn't seem like a neutral term, but I do look at them fairly neutrally, not as punishments for being dillatory.
Not judging yourself is really hard -- from childhood on up we are told "No!" all the time, guided mainly by negative feedback or the carrot (which is attached to the stick), and it is insinuated that our being "lazy" or "unproductive" or "not fulfilling our promise" or "not being where we ought to be by now" is not just a choice, but a sin.
But boy does it feel better when you can achieve a more objective look at the situation.
I surely don't hyperventilate (literally, or psychically) over decisions or screw-ups any more.
When the mood strikes, I blog about these topics here:
Thanks for the great feedback - and great blog entries. I see where you're coming from especially if the guilt makes you avoid working on your startup.
For me, it's not so much as guilt. It's more about a question of focus. How does one consider an open-ended task done? Is it when it is at a quality we are satisfied with?
If my startup has 100 bugs, can I say it is finished? I guess it'll depend on the bugs, priority, importance of these bugs and what type of product it is. Early adopters are probably also more forgiving of using a buggy system, so it's probably ok to ship with known bugs.
The problem with time boxing is we allocate fixed amount of time to work on something, but if the time elapses and the task isn't finished, we're likely to schedule more time at it. The problem is without proper focus (maybe being conscious of some reward or penalty) if we're late, we might continue the blow out.
You're right though, as everyone around us is on our back, we don't need us to get on our own backs too! So perhaps, it isn't a black/white situation, but case-by-case instead.
dave, I think you "just" need to look at the consequences of being late, and what those mean to you, and make the decision on a case-by-case basis. That's more realistic than the punishment anyway. All of life is a trade-off, if you think about it. "If I do it with x bugs, then..." "If we ship before y is done, then..." Then you are prepared for those consequences (or not). That tells you whether to keep going.
But I'm in the corner for shipping earlier. For our app, Freckle Time Tracking, we got the time entry interactions really, really done well, but the rest was very beta/alpha. We decided that we wanted to focus on the single biggest, most important interaction. We're still polishing the rest.
It is, of course, an unending task, but you have to use logic & foresight to decide where the intermittent goal posts are.
Creating a punishment for yourself for going over a timebox is not gonna do that hard, human thinking for you :)
Trying to motivate with punishment leads to value judgment, leads to guilt, leads to mental avoidance.
Avoidance involves much less effort than actually doing the work.
Which is the real reason that it's hard to get personal projects done.
One other reason is that people talk themselves into doing personal projects because they "should," not because they're fired up. And lastly, burn-out from the should-punishment-guilt-avoidance cycle makes it hard to get motivated.
When you get out of this cycle, when you cut yourself a break, when you stop "shoulding all over yourself," magical things can happen... and you can devote regular time to things because you love them, without breaking out the stick or the carrot.