Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them. | Hacker News Reader

Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them.

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151 pointssivers58 comments

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 motivation whenever I explained to someone else what I was working on.

It felt like holding a secret only you knew and then letting it out spoiled it. After awhile I learned to contain my enthusiasm and direct it toward making a functioning product before telling anyone... this probably explains why I tend to be much more independent when it comes to my startup ideas...

Working in secrecy makes you feel like you're about to pounce a revolutionary new idea upon the world and take it by storm.

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.

"Working in secrecy makes you feel like you're about to pounce a revolutionary new idea upon the world and take it by storm."

I wonder if explaining your idea to someone means finding inexact words that end up making your plans seem less majestic or even plausible.

You hear yourself describe what you're doing, and start thinking, hmm, maybe this isn't such a great idea after all ...

I wish I could upvote you 5 more times.

But now that you said it there is no need anymore.

When I did the Ironman last year, I told everyone about it: friends, family and co-workers. I did it on purpose. It was a risk I took, because would I have failed to prepare for the race or finish the race, everyone would have thought I'm a "looser" or "quitter". I used this fear as additional motivational fuel. Also, to my surprise, most people told me I'm an idiot for even attempting an Ironman and that I wouldn't be able to finish it. (Lesson learned: Culturally, here in Eastern Europe 'we' don't have the 'can do' attitude.) That was another huge boost, showing these people how limited their mindset is. It's kind of cheating, because you're using external factors to motivate you, but you need all the "help" to do extraordinary things.

Think of Ali when he was preparing for the Foreman fight --- he used an entire nation to motivate him for the Rumble in the Jungle. Whenever he got a chance, he went on TV and said he would destroy Foreman. He absolutely commited himself in front of the entire world and it worked for him. Foreman, on the other hand, was different, he was more introverted, and although he lost that fight, he was still a great boxer.

So, on a personal level, I strongly disagree with this article. I'd rather strive to be like Ali than accept some mediocre average.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5o-yxwBJuk

I had a very similar reaction. I rode a century (100mi) bike ride this spring, and telling people I was doing it was an important part of staying motivated. Also, because the ride was a charity fundraiser, once I had people sponsoring me (i.e. donated money to the cause) I felt like I couldn't back out.

I think the difference between this sort of goal and what's described in the article is that with a lot of intellectual pursuits, just telling people that you've been thinking about it and sketching out how you would do it gets you 80% of the respect and satisfaction for 20% (or less) of the total effort. On the other hand, you don't get much cred for just saying you're going to do a marathon or tri or century.

That is amazing. Anyone who does ironman is amazing.

> It's kind of cheating

If you ran, swam and cycle the distance you made it, no cheapting about it.

Amazing - nice work!

...It's kind of cheating, because you're using external factors to motivate you...

It's just a tool, and an effective one at that. I use it all the time, especially if I am facing something that scares me a bit.

I'm with you. When I announce to people that I am going to undertake a big challenge, part of the reason to do so is to put pressure on myself to complete the task. If you don't tell anyone, dropping out is easy -- there is no loss of face associated with it. When I started my grad school studies, not only did I announce it to my friends and family, I also started a blog -- not the same as Ali and the rumble, but still it involves putting a stake in the ground in a very public way. It forced me to give regular updates to my audience (and also keep my own studies moving forward) and avoid long stretches without any activity.

Congratulations on the Ironman.

I don't think that article is really about Ironman-type goals, though. By the time you are preparing for the Ironman, I'd imagine that you would be quite dedicated to your training. As I understood it, that article is about goals which you have to start from scratch -- for example, choosing to start running and train for your first 5K race.

This slightly overstates the case. Structured announcements ("I will have done X by date Y") give you a chance to fail in the eyes of people whose opinions you value. That helps. I have an online friend who used this idea a couple months ago. To make himself achieve his weight-loss goals, he announced that he'd be posting nude pictures of himself on his blog at a set date. I'm not sure how well it worked (he lost weight, but not as much as he'd hoped), but he did actually post the pictures.

Link? Or actually, never mind...

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 membership and are reminded that you're losing money. It does not work if it's a gift (money you never had). It would be interesting to see if it matters between extroverts (get energy from talking to strangers) and introverts (lose energy when talking to strangers).

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.

I think he should be a bit more specific here. Zig Ziglar says: Share "give up" goals with everybody. Share "Go up" goals only with family, friends, and people you can rely on who will support you and not bash your ideas.

So if you want to give up smoking, tell the whole world and they will hold you accountable. If you want invent something new and exciting, only share it with people you know will support you.

Conversely, announcing your plans and having a financial stake in the completion of those plans is shown to work exceptionally well. The company, stickK (stickk.com), is founded on this principle. It is drawn from behavorial economist Dean Karlan, so it is based on incentives rather than rigorous psychological evaluation, but it seems to work well: http://www.stickk.com/about.php

If the financial state is already having invested the money, I wonder if this is more or less motivating than a possibility of money later. The money paid is a sunk cost, so failing to follow up negatively impacts your experience and not the financials.

I was about to boast about something... but never mind.

"The soft over comes the hard, the slow over comes the fast,

let your working remain a mystery

just show people the result."

- Tao Te Ching -

This is exactly what Friedrich Nietzsche was talking about when he said;

"160. One no longer loves one’s insight enough once one communicates it." [Beyond Good & Evil (1886)]

The story is that Nietzsche returns from his mid-day walk having had what he considers a brilliant idea. He is smiling. He passes an acquaintance who asks him what he is smiling about. He explains the idea.

The instant he does so he regrets it. As he is speaking his mind is suddenly changing, his emotions deflating. The smile becomes a concerned frown. He goes home and writes down number 160. He no longer loved his insight enough. Communication ruined it.

---

The idea is you can never formulate experiences/thoughts into words. The best we have are metaphors which only cheapen the beauty of the original by associating it with the everyday.

The third way is to announce something as complete. That gives you a real sense of motivation to get it done (see Vikings, burning boats).

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 me, part of putting your plans out there is the resultant pressure from peers to see them through. When an idea is just in my head, nobody knows when I abandon it for no apparent good reason. But when I tell my friends, family, and everyone I meet what I am planning to do, then I better follow through or risk hurting my credibility. I like to call this "going balls deep."

I've come into the habit of being seriously skeptical of any scientific work done more than twenty years ago.

That has amusing implications for us, twenty years from now.

Considering that everything I learned in school I learned about 20 years ago, that has "amusing" implications for all the knowledge that most people who went through higher education has received.

I think he was talking about behavioral studies.

I would imagine that human nature changes much more slowly than that.

You have to take into account the rapid changes in technology. Surely, the Internet has somehow affected human behavior?

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.

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.

"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.

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?

At first glance, this rings very true -- I've seen it myself in open-source work. As long as I'm privately chugging along solving problems, things go well, but as soon as I see the project as an attention-getter, I find myself focusing on the attention instead of the actual project. This has happened to several times over the last decade, and it has always led to me abandoning whatever it was I was working on. (Not that I don't take it up again later, but by then it's a different project.)

But I have a counterexample, too: my house renovation, which I'm blogging. (Cf. http://big-old-house.blogspot.com) Clearly, I'm being public about my plans there, and yet, knowing that people are going to look at what I've gotten done today is a real motivator in getting something done every day, even if it's trivial. So in that instance, the publicity has really helped motivate me (as Maro noted earlier with the Ironman prep).

Perhaps human involvement in big projects isn't necessarily a demotivator; in my house case, I'd say that I assign my social value to each task only as it's done and I can show people what I did -- by breaking the big project down into little tasks, and not talking about the little tasks until they're complete, I can get the best of both worlds (i.e. having the social support and advice of people, without the loss of motivation due to talking about unhatched chickens).

I'm not convinced that announcing plans causes people not to fulfil them. The studies may show correllation, but I wouldn't assume cause and effect. Another explanation could be that the people who keep their plans to themselves are the kind of people who are more likely to carry them out.

Yes, I suspect there are a large number of factors that affect our motivation, and each of those factors has a different effect on different people.

What's more important is finding those factors that personally motivate you.

For me making a public announcement helps in the short term, to get the ball rolling, but doesn't keep my motivation at a high level.

I don't think so.

Who was it that said that one of the forces keeping an entrepreneur going was the embarrassment factor--having announced the plan, then being committed to prevent the shame of failure.

Studies of this sort leave me questioning the true amount of science in social science. The business about "symbols in the brain" is pretty lame. (As if that is where the mind is--but that is another discussion altogether.)

I agree that the bulk of this article is speculation. "Identity symbols" and a "premature sense of completeness" may be one possible explanation, but the article presents them as the only explanation of the correlation shown in the studies.

Funny, I have noticed this exact same phenomenon in bars.

I partially agree on this.

I believe it depends how a person values the opinions of friends and families.

If I care about what they think, I will be accountable and try to reach those goals.

If I announce my goals and do not deliver, my friends and families would stop believing in and listening to me.

I'm very selective on the plans I announce. I only announce those that I think I can achieve.

The author emphasises: "Announcing your plans to others satisfies your self-identity just enough that you’re less motivated to do the hard work needed."

This is one of those sentences that seem to make sense but don't. It's a oversimplification at best, psychobabble at worst.

It is just a useful summary of the many academic studies.

The article's links point to the actual studies for those who want the details.

If true, this has a devastating effect on elections. The more a political party talks about its agenda, the less it will do?

It totally contradicts the notion that the voters like a candidate that can clearly explain what his goals are.

http://rulesformyunbornson.tumblr.com/post/51600839/222-dont...

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...

http://ideas.al3x.net/

Alex Payne's Open Ideas: he's publishing his notebook of "someday" ideas

http://twitter.com/al3x/status/2169778627

I suspect the worst thing to do is to talk glowingly about your progress or efforts to people who don't have the ability or desire to judge the accuracy of it.

Does Open source makes you less motivated to accomplish?

How many times have you heard the words "I'll release the code when I've had some time to clean it up", implying it was developed in private.

How many abandoned projects are there on Sourceforge and Freshmeat?

"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 issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now."

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Inspiring words. The full quote is actually by W.H. Murray, inspired by a couplet of Goethe's (roughly the last two sentences).

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

I find the italic really annoying to read

Italic is more annoying/difficult/straining to read. Seriously. You know how they say hackers don't think about user experience?

That's really interesting. It's taken as read in marathon running that you should tell everyone you're going to do it and this well help you keep motivated to train during the winter. I did that because I was "supposed" to, but it didn't seem to affect my motivation much - however lots of people did prematurely say well done, hmm.

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