This lively RSAnimate, adapted from Dan Pink’s talk at the RSA, illustrates the hidden truths behind what really motivates us at home and in the workplace.
Employees want:
(Source: youtube.com)
Jason Fried has a radical theory of working: that the office isn’t a good place to do it. At TEDxMidwest, he lays out the main problems (call them the M&Ms) and offers three suggestions to make work work.
(Source: ted.com)
The most impressive people I know are all terrible procrastinators. So could it be that procrastination isn’t always bad?
Most people who write about procrastination write about how to cure it. But this is, strictly speaking, impossible. There are an infinite number of things you could be doing. No matter what you work on, you’re not working on everything else. So the question is not how to avoid procrastination, but how to procrastinate well.
There are three variants of procrastination, depending on what you do instead of working on something: you could work on (a) nothing, (b) something less important, or (c) something more important. That last type, I’d argue, is good procrastination.
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I think the way to “solve” the problem of procrastination is to let delight pull you instead of making a to-do list push you. Work on an ambitious project you really enjoy, and sail as close to the wind as you can, and you’ll leave the right things undone.
An idea turns into a meeting and then it turns into a project. People get brought along, there’s free donuts, there’s a whiteboard and even a conference call.
It feels like you’re doing the work, but at some point, hopefully, someone asks, “what’s the point of this?”
Is it worth doing?
Compared to everything else we could be investing (don’t say ‘spending’) our time on, is this the scariest, most likely to pay off, most important or the best long-term endeavor?
Or are we just doing it because no one had the guts along the way to say STOP.
Are you doing work worth doing, or are you just doing your job?
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Jason Fried, 37SignalsTags:
