The above quote is from an excellent post on how incentives – both their creation and manipulation – negatively influence motivation towards a goal.
Feels like part of this phenomenon is covered by Goodhart’s Law (“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”) and part of it about defining non-distracting success metrics.
Also related:
I’ve mentioned in numerous, offline conversations about my output patterns: “I can either build stuff, or I can write about stuff, I can’t do both simultaneously.”
If you build stuff that I can read, then you are writing stuff which is also building stuff which is, I believe, simultaneous.
Become a writer young man. The pay isn’t good but it gives me something to do.
Jim – you are so write.
I’m a master in un motivating my self, so this post sounds logical to me especially that one less blogging and more …..