What motivates us more than most anything else?
ogress. I've posted about this before. In his excellent blog Mind Hacks, Vaughan Bell points out that we don't even need to make real progress -- the illusion of progress is enough to light that fire: I just came across a fantastic study published in the Journal of Marketing Research which shows that we can be convinced to shift into a higher gear of work and spending, even when the perception of progress is a complete illusion. And: They did an experiment where they gave some…
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What’s a good way to trick yourself into getting work done?
xtronet offers a good tip and I've used this successfully myself: I tell myself that I will merely write down the steps needed to complete the task. Just a rough draft, at first, and that’s it. Maybe just 3 steps. I then add more steps, breaking the 3 steps into smaller sub-tasks. I then add some details, and thoughts, notes of things that I shouldn’t forget when doing this task. I just think the task through and write everything down. After a…
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Can asking questions help you accomplish those things you procrastinate doing?
a Eurekalert: Can you help you? Recent research by University of Illinois Professor Dolores Albarracin and Visiting Assistant Professor Ibrahim Senay, along with Kenji Noguchi, Assistant Professor at Southern Mississippi University, has shown that those who ask themselves whether they will perform a task generally do better than those who tell themselves that they will. And: Albarracin's team tested this kind of motivation in 50 study participants, encouraging them explicitly to either spend a minute wondering whether they would complete…
1 min read
Is it better to start off with ambitious goals or conservative goals?
a Eurekalert: Consumers who set ambitious goals have a greater level of satisfaction compared to those who set conservative goals, according to a recently published paper by the Cecile K. Cho, a University of California, Riverside assistant marketing professor. Cho and her co-author and Gita Venkataramani Johar, a professor at Columbia University, set up two experiments to compare people who set ambitious goals to those who set conservative goals. They focused on situations in which goals were achieved, and measured…
1 min read
Can being antisocial be an advantage?
r programmers and tennis players, yes: Attachment-related avoidance and anxiety have repeatedly been associated with poorer adjustment in various social, emotional, and behavioral domains. We examined two domains in which avoidant individuals might be better equipped than their less avoidant peers to succeed and be satisfied – professional singles tennis and computer science. These fields may reward self-reliance, independence, and the ability to work without proximal social support from loved ones. In Study 1, we followed 58 professional singles tennis…
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What’s Dan Ariely’s trick for beating procrastination?
n Ariely, author of the excellent Predictably Irrational, The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions gives us this tip: Join over 140,000 readers. Get a free weekly update via email here. Related posts: How to beat procrastination quickly Is there a way to reduce procrastination in the workplace? Could forgiveness be the cure to procrastination?
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Should “carpe diem” be our motto?
u will not have more time next week, and, as a very interesting New York Times piece explains, we never seem to remember that fact: There is never enough time or money; this much we all know. Yet a new study finds that when people estimate how much of each they will have in the future, they are consistently more likely to overestimate their time than their dollars. Dr. Gal Zauberman of the University of North Carolina and Dr. John Lynch of…
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What are proven tips that will help you achieve your goals?
rst, here's what doesn't work: By comparing the techniques of successful and unsuccessful resolution makers, he came up with a list of tips for staying the course when making changes in one's life. People who failed tended to dwell on the ''bad things'' that would happen if they did not achieve their goal, said the professor. They were likely to remove temptation from their surroundings, adopt role models, fantasise about being successful, and rely on will power. ''Many of these ideas are frequently…
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