Category: motivation
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365 Ways To Persuade And Motivate: #4 Give People Autonomy
In the previous blog post in this series I wrote that one of the best ways to motivate people is to stimulate a desire for mastery – and that breaking things into small pieces and showing progress through the pieces encourages the desire for mastery. Another tip for stimulating the desire for mastery is to…
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365 Ways To Persuade And Motivate: #3 Small Steps
One of the best ways to motivate people is to stimulate a desire for mastery. People are naturally curious and this curiosity helps people master their environment. People want to learn, improve, and master skills and knowledge. One of the things you can do to stimulate this sense of mastery is to break things into…
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365 Ways To Persuade & Motivate: #2 Use The Word “Because”
In the first blog post of this new “365” series I cited new research on eye contact. But sometimes I think it’s important to go back to “foundational” (i.e. old!) research. So #2 in the series comes from research conducted in 1978. Ellen Langer (Professor of Psychology at Harvard) published a research study about the…
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New Series: 365 Ways To Persuade & Motivate
If you’ve been following my blog posts for a while you probably know that a few years ago I did a series called “100 Things You Need To About People”. It was a popular series that finished in April of 2011. Since then I’ve been writing individual blog posts, and wondering if I could/should come…
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How To Get People To Do Stuff
Are you good with people? Do you know how to get them to do stuff? Are you using tips and techniques you picked up from others or experimented with? If so, I bet that sometimes your strategies work and other times they don’t. There are 7 basic drivers of human motivation. And if you understand…
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How To Get People To Do Stuff: #1 — Use Nouns Instead Of Verbs
This blog post is the first of a new series called “How To Get People To Do Stuff”. It features nuggets from the book I am writing by the same name due out in March of 2013. I’m also starting a new format of doing video blogs. So first is the video, and then below…
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100 Things You Should Know About People: #85 — More People = Less Desire To Compete
Did you take standardized tests to get into college? Like the SAT and ACT? How many people were in the room when you took the test? Does it matter? Research by Stephen Garcia and Avishalom Tor shows that it may matter a lot. Less people = higher scores — Garcia and Tor first compared SAT…
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100 Things You Should You Know About People: #82 — People Are Motivated By Progress And Mastery
Why do people donate their time and creative thought process to Wikipedia? Or the open source movement? When you stop and think about it you realize that there are many activities that people engage in, even over a long period of time, that require high expertise, and yet are of no monetary or even career…
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100 Things You Should Know About People: #81 — Intrinsic Rewards Trump Extrinsic Rewards
Let’s say you are an art teacher, and you want to encourage your students to spend more time practicing their drawing. You create a “Good Drawing Certificate” to give to your students. If your goal is to have them draw more, and for them to stick with it, how should you give them the certificate?…
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100 Things You Should Know About People: #38 — Even The Illusion Of Progress Is Motivating
You are given a frequent buyer card for your local coffeeshop. Each time you buy a cup of coffee you get a stamp on your card. When the card is filled you get a free cup of coffee. Here are two different scenarios: Card A: The card has 10 boxes for the stamps, and when…
