Should I announce my plans? Or keep quiet?
Derek Sivers blog is always a great read. If you’re not already subscribed to his RSS feed or following him on Twitter then you should think about changing that. I don’t always agree with him however. His recent post Shut up! Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to finish them is a case in point. Derek argues that it’s not a good idea to announce future goals or to discuss upcoming projects with your network. He goes on to describe the phenomenon of ’symbolic self-completion’ ie. that announcing your plans to others satisfies your self-identity just enough that you’re actually less motivated to do the hard work needed.
Turning this argument over in my head made me think about two of my own projects that I announced this year.
Firstly, I resolved in January to try and help raise more money for charity than I earn in a year. Admittedly I am kind of regretting announcing this. Although it’s still quite possible, it’s now over half way through the year and I’ve only completed one project, Twestival.fm, raising around $5000 for charity:water. But if I hadn’t announced it, I probably wouldn’t have had the self-motivation to raise that first $5000. And I wouldn’t have gotten to work or meet with some absolutely wonderful people (@stef, @amanda, @renate, @adamstrawson). Nor would I now been involved in two potentially awesome music charity projects coming up later this year (I hope I’ll be able to confirm more about those soon!).
Secondly, Music Hack Day would not be set to take place on 11/12 July. I’d been talking about the concept of doing something like this since last June. It was only once I started talking about it with lots of different people (when the idea was still quite implausible) that all the pieces started coming together earlier this year. Even then we still announced the Hack Day publicly before we had anything like a date, venue or any sponsors! Three months later and we’re setup for what should be an absolutely fantastic event (blog post coming soon).
I think there’s probably an element of truth in what Derek is saying and he does lay down evidence to make his case. But I would argue that a greater crime than announcing your plans (and risking non-completion) is to not announce any plans through fear that you won’t succeed or look like a failure..
