The Surprising Science of Motivation

Dan Pink on the Surprising Science of Motivation

 

Source: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

"There's a mismatch between what science knows and what business does..."

1. Rewards and motivators only work in a narrow band of circumstances
2. Those if-then rewards often destroy creativity
3. The secret to high performance isn't rewards and punishments but that unseen intrinsic drive - the drive to do things for their own sake. The drive to do things that matter

WorksheetX

First off, I wanted to say that I'm glad we're doing this. I've always considered Andy Jjajiangmyun to be a very insightful, creative, smart, and nice person (k, enough of the flirting), and I believe this blog collaboration is going to help us organize the amazing thoughts and ideas we may have about anything. I haven't had the time to really suck in what Andy wrote in the first post, but I will definitely write a thorough response when I have some time to myself (and not spending it with the girl or friends).

As you know, my summer thus far has revolved around two major goals: P90X workout and developing applications for the BlackBerry platform.

So far, the workout has been great. I'm currently on day 24, and I can already see and feel the results. Only 66 more days to go... As for the BlackBerry app development, I set up all the BlackBerry JDEs (Java Development Environments) on my computer, and I set up Eclipse for BB development. Took a good chunk of my Saturday, but I got my first "Hello World" application to run on a BB Bold simulation on my computer. Progress is going pretty well, but I think it's time for me to pick up the pace. Anyways, enough of the recap and onto the meat of the post...


Working Out at the Gym
Recently, my adjustable dumbbells at home broke so I was unable to do some of the p90x workouts at home. I decided to take advantage of our awesome gym and do my shoulders & arms workout there. I brought some water, my spare clothes and shoes, and a worksheet to keep track of my reps/weights for each exercise.

My workout started pretty well since most of the beginning exercises were fresh in my mind. When I go to the middle of my workout, I started to struggle remembering what some of the exercises were. What was the difference between Deep Swimmer's Press and Upright Rows, Crouching Cohen Curls and Congdon Curls, Two-angle Shoulder Flys and In & Out Straight-arm Shoulder Flys? I had to resort to "Googling" the exercises with my BlackBerry and ended up wasting time between each set. This inconvenience led me to think that maybe I could come up with an app that would solve my problems. Or maybe I can do better? In addition to solving my problems, I could expand my idea to assist all people who are interested in keeping track of their workout progress (and not just those on the P90X program). But let's start small and focused...

The WorksheetX

Alpha Version
Version 0.1 is going to be focused on my personal P90X experience (hence the app name: WorksheetX).

Goals

• Allow users to follow their P90X routine at the gym and without the video.
• Allow users to keep a calendar of their P90X progress.
• Allow users to keep track of their reps/weight for each exercise.

Features

Calendar
I picture this to be the default viewing when the app is loaded. The calendar will be used to keep track of what day the user is currently on.

Sub-features:

• View by month, week, or day
• Each completed day will be marked by an indicator (e.g. an X mark)
• Each day will display the specified workout
• Current day will be highlighted
  

Daily Worksheets
When the user clicks on a specific day on the calendar, a worksheet will be displayed of all the workout exercises and the matching reps/weight for each one. User will be able to modify the values. Default to classic workout schedule. User has to pay for doubles and lean.

Sub features:

• View the workout in previous weeks to ensure rep/weight improvement
• Links to instructions and instructional video for each workout exercise (workout name is clickable)
• Additional: Timer for each workout exercise in accordance with the video

Notification Alarm
User sets a time for his/her workout and an alarm will notify the user when the time approaches.

Additional: Trend Analysis
User is able to see his/her improvement in a graph for each workout.

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Since this is only Version 0.1, the app will only consist of a editable worksheet for each workout (the bare minimum). All the other features will be slowly integrated into the app. If you have any other ideas or suggestions, please let me know Andy!

-gaobi

hello world

so i thought i would break this new blog in with something simple, light hearted, and easy to digest.

i would like to use this blog as a way to explore ideas and spark discussion regarding the upcoming dynamic field of start ups, internet, and information technology. posts can be as short as a paragraph that pose a question or a long drawn out analysis of current industry trends.

i would say that right now is pretty exciting, with google, microsoft, and apple butting heads in mobile apps, facebook and twitter in the social networking, and a myriad of independent players trying to eke out a great existence in this universe.

mike, if you were asked to give a short summary of what is going on in the tech industry right now, what would you say? (in terms of where the big companies are positioned, where possible trends might be heading, etc).

for this post, i would like to talk very broadly about the idea of making money with the internet.

imagine a giant field that stretches on forever in all directions and on each point on plane there is a domain name (every possible combination of letters and .coms, .nets, .orgs, etc). however, this plane is not flat; instead the height of every domain name's point on the plane is directly correlated with how much the domain name is worth (how much it can sell on the free market, so now we can see a largely flat landscape with a few towering peaks--google, yahoo, etc). and what is it behind just a string of letters attached with a '.com' that lives in a box in a building somewhere that makes it worth upward of $140 billion?

a business model, perhaps. is there anything really tangible, like for an energy company (plants, equipment, accounts receivable, etc) that can be effectively valued? or is the value based on a, perhaps too optimistic, outlook and future cash flows? how much is the brand worth, apart from the business model? but maybe it has to do with how many users are there, how many unique visitors, how 'sticky' the website is, whether or not it is able to generate content, whether or not ad-revenue is consistent. the valuation for all of these is too difficult to exact into a science.

and then was the crazy tech bubble frenzy in early 2000s, when everyone believed anything with a '.com' can be worth several million dollars. welcome to the baby internet.

but now, the internet has matured somewhat. although we don't have a solid means of distributing media to all end users (piracy is still a major concern, although the RIAA is almost dead, the next may be the movie industry), nor a solid means of monetizing said distribution, there are several phenomena that are taking shape.

some questions:
how to make internet better experience/more efficient for end user?
how to organize all data on the internet? (google is trying to be the best indexer of all information on the internet, although now with twitter and real-time search, there has been a lot of twitter only search modules that have sprang up, should be interesting to see that race and who will acquire the most market share)
how to better connect buyers and sellers on the internet?


just to think about,

andy