Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009)

I call them "Secret Plans". You gotta save up the emotional energy and reward. On so many projects, you get the same neuro-chemical reward by talking about your project plans and how cool the result will be, as you do by making progress. By holding out, and only allowing progress itself to be a reward, and not just the talking, I usually get much further. The project may still die, but then I have something in my hands usually, and…

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've seen this in my own behaviour, so it rings true despite the popularity of the opposite approach. Perhaps this explains some of the startup wannabe-isms. The most successful startup founders I've worked with didn't have time to blog, tweet, etc. They didn't derive much comfort from being Founders. They were just trying to fight the next fire to keep things going.

This is contrary to successful programs such as Weight Watchers etc. I will have to do a bit more research into this as it seems against all logic as well.