Saturday, October 18, 2014
Create a Binding Agreement With Yourself, Just for Today, and Defeat Complacency
www.entrepreneur.com: Imagine how much you would be able to get done if you had an agreement with yourself that you had to produce to the best of your ability and give maximum effort -- just for today. If you didn’t accomplish the core basis of what was in the agreement, that particular day counts as a big loss. No one likes to lose.
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I have done a similar thing with most of my life. I always want to do my best, as that is when I feel like I've done something worthwhile. I will admit, I have had down days where I don't go up to my complete potential. I think that happens with everyone, as people get physically and mentally exhausted. That is just a fact of life. But when people try to do their best, they often prove to make things that are outstanding and innovative. I feel that Carnegie Mellon University is a great place to try this mentality. People here are always inventive and are always trying to be their best. Once they are their best, they push themselves even farther. Everyone should be the best that they can be, and the world will become an even better place than it already is.
This is an interesting method of pushing oneself to work harder and do better in the world. I know firsthand how hard it can be to stay focused and productive, and to push each day to the absolute limit. Only by holding myself to a high standard do I make sure that I am working ahead, and working well. This contract system seems to operate along the same lines: setting a goal/promise and making sure you keep it. I find, however, that breaking a promise to myself is much easier than breaking a promise made to another. If this contract was not made with myself but with another person, the "great loss" described in the article would be harder to brush off, and therefore would push me to work harder and fulfill my goals.
This self-contract is a very good idea. However, I have tried similar things in the past, and it doesn't always end well. What I found works for me, uses the same principle, but slightly modified.
When the author introduced this idea, he said that if you fail/break your contract for the day, you "lose". This, in my opinion, is not enough incentive to get work done, especially if the work is something I don't want to do.
What I have found works is creating some kind of un-movable, scheduled event (preferably something fun) that is happening towards the end of the day. My self-contract for that day is to get "x" amount of work done for that day before the event. This gives me a reward and it also keeps me from staying up until some crazy-late hour to complete what I set out to do.
Creating a binding agreement with yourself seems like just another way to say set goals for yourself. Although a different way of approaching the idea of setting goals for yourself everyday, it seems that creating a binding agreement with yourself would be a great way to motivate yourself but also slightly problematic. It seems like a problem with this would be if someone decided to use it but knew that at the end of the day there wasn't any real consequence to breaking their agreement. I try to set goals for myself everyday and most days I am able to complete everything I set to do. I wonder how different modifications to this idea helps other people and how successful people have been using it.
This is interesting because actually writing out your goals and responsibilities is much different from simply thinking about the standards you want to hold yourself to. It’s great because when you do that, you’re physically acknowledging your own value, because you’re holding yourself accountable and making it about what you can do for YOU. This really speaks to me because I often procrastinate on things that are only time-sensitive for me, both in my personal and professional life. However, as soon as other people are counting on me to turn out a product, I do it quickly, efficiently and as early as I can, and that’s because I don’t want to let down the people I’m working with and risk affecting the process in a negative way. So why is it that I can’t do that for myself? Why do I value other people’s expectations so much more than I value mine? While I haven’t quite worked out the answer yet, this idea of writing out a binding agreement with myself is definitely a step in the right direction in getting work done and achieving my goals even when the only person affected by it is me.
What an extremely powerful article. I agree with the author, complacency is a huge problem, and often I find myself plagued with this. There are too many times when I have something to get done in a few days, and have nothing to do at the moment, but I still don't do it because there's always tomorrow, I tell myself. Too often I see myself struggling to find the motivation to get things done ahead of time and to defeat this sense of complacency. It is something that I work on every day, and I know that if I keep trying and pushing and working, I will get to where I want to be.
This is what I've needed for this year. I agree with Camille, in that I often pump out tasks when it is needed for another person, but when it has only to do with me, I take my time. This often leads to procrastination of homework assignments that could have been done in little bits at a time over the course of a week, but instead are done all at one time on a night that I would rather go on a walk with my husband. Why do we do this to ourselves? I am terrified of this kind of complacency when I don't have school to keep me on my toes and I think an agreement with myself like this will truly help to avoid that sort of patience towards my own personal bucket list. I particularly appreciate that this guy says to adjust yours to be something that really gets you going. Sometimes just thinking about what you'd like to agree with yourself on shows you what you're most enthusiastic to embrace in life.
What a chump. I really can't stand taking the advice of people who's self-made job is to give people advice about how to be better. "Be more like me!" they seem to say. No thank you. If I ever need a self-binding agreement to get the most out of my time or capabilities, that's the day I will hang up whatever I'm doing and go do something else. And somehow I doubt that Mr. Matt Mayberry of Matt Mayberry Enterprises, Speaker and Maximum Performance Strategist, has any kind of binding agreement with himself. The very idea of "Maximum Performance" or 100% productivity makes me cringe, and smacks of a crucial misunderstanding of work. The American obsession with productivity, growth, and maximization is what is wrong with our economic landscape, and largely serves only a very few people at the very top. Hawkers of the myth of Personal Motivation are the unich keepers of the temple of Capitalism, and should be mistrusted if not excommunicated. Let's see Mr. Mayberry keep that smarmy smile on his face and see how close to Perfect Performance he can get working a day job at Walmart and a night shift at the local Diner, like so many Americans must in this time of Part-Time-Nickel-And-Dime.
This is a different method of motivating and pushing yourself. I've never thought about creating an agreement with myself like this. Unfortunately I know for experience how hard it can be to get and keep motivation, how easy it is to lose it. I can see this idea or method working very well for some people, while for others it would probably make no difference. But that just comes down to the individual. Overall, it is a decent suggestion that can work, but isn't always the most effective
Putting out my best work has always been my number one goal in just about everything I do. That being said everything is easier said than done. I feel this approach is how we should be tackling life. It abides by the idea of an efficient you only live once concept so you better make the most of it. And as a young and optimistic student I have lots of goals I want to achieve on the long term but its the short everyday tasks that I'm always seeming to trip over. It always most difficult to find motivation for the everyday tasks, but by creating this contract with myself it becomes a promise that I will dig deep inside myself to find the motivation to be at my most efficient. Motivation is the key that drives urgency, without it the world would be a different place.
This isnt a particularly ground breaking idea. Ultimately what this comes down to is setting goals for yourself, and working to achieve them, often with a reward or something. I've been doing this since I was 5. I mean, dont get me wrong. I think this is a great idea and its worked really well for me throughout my life, but I dont think this is worth writing an article about. In addition to that, the whole "contract" notion seems a little ridiculous. In understand the justification, but in reality it seems pretty dumb, and like something that doesnt really add to the process.
On the one hand, this feels like a good exercise. Kind of like the HIIT of motivation and productivity. On the other, I don't really like his tone, that things like a salary and health insurance make people complacent. The author seems to believe, but fall just short of saying, that job security=mediocrity, and the only way for people to be their "best selves" is to feel constantly on the edge of failure or loss. Anecdotally, I've worked for bosses like that (on the short term), their turnover was much higher, and their employees were neither complacent nor achieving their potential, because they felt constantly on the edge of burning out.
I think the line between "how inspiring!" and "shut up you heartless asshole" lays between whether you're asking this of yourself or of someone else. If you are personally motivated by this strategy, then that's awesome, and I give you my congratulations. But, if you're expecting this of each of your employees, and feel as though they don't deserve parts of their compensation package because they aren't performing to the best of their ability 1000000% of the time, you're being a jerk, and trying to lead from behind.
This is such a weird article for entrepreneur.com. I guess I understand why they have personal motivation articles, but one of the most important things to understand about being a business owner is the concept that your employees, by default, are and should be less invested in the success or failure of your business. That's not to say they aren't loyal, hardworking, exceptional employees, but the second a business owner starts to believe that his employees "owe" him anything other than producing the agreed upon quality of work in the agreed upon timeframe for paying them is the second that he's lost control of his business.
What a bunch of crap. Really. This article is all about perception of your work ethic and essentially doing some weird touchy feely, motivational nonsense to be better at follow through. Well, it's frankly not something that a contract with yourself, is going to accomplish. You need to think about your priorities and work hard. I don't see the difference in what this guys "binding contract" is and a to-do list. All your missing is some hallmark lifetime fluff to tag on to it. If you want to be better, than do it! Personal motivation is absolutely important, and I think that everyone should spend time self analyzing and reflecting. But the fact is, at the end of the day, this useless contract isn't going to get your work done, YOU are.
I like this exercise, is helps one feel worth something and reminds one that we must all have goals otherwise we will begin to question what we are worth in the world. I did not expect an article as powerful as this to be on this blog. creating an agreement with yourself is much stronger i believe because it makes one feel like the only person you're disappointing is yourself. No one is requiring you to follow through. In a program like CMU i think this is a great way to remind ourselves that we all came here for a reason and that we want to accomplish something here that we couldn't anywhere else.
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