📣 Don't announce your goals: Why? ⋆ 🐦 Resurgence of the Takahē bird ⋆ Promote your work

We shuffle the order a bit today. Starting with an evergreen, continuing with good news about an extinct animal (say what?), and sprinkling some words of encouragement at the end. ✨

Thing 1 - Don't announce your goals

Sharing your goals feels good when friends and family cheer you on. But guess what? Their support can feel like a reward in itself and it can sap your motivation to get started and see your goal through.

💡 Do this instead

1. Find Your Tribe: Connect with those already on a similar journey!
   There’s this cool thing called the social facilitation effect. It’s a performance booster that activates when you're with like-minded folks.
   (Works with easy or well-learned tasks, be careful with difficult or novel tasks)
2. Turn Up the Accountability: Find those who won’t just pat you on the back, but will give you that nudge (or shove) when you need it. Set real deadlines and let them keep you on your toes.
3. Celebrate Milestones, Boost Dopamine: Break down that big goal. Celebrate the little wins. Each one gives you a sweet dopamine kick, making the journey even more exhilarating.
   (Use non-addictive rewards such as social praise, music, nature, or physical activity)

(source 1, source 2, source 3, h/t Dr. Andrew Huberman)

Thing 2 - Takahē reverse Uno card to extinction

Some good news among the 10,000-100,000 extinctions a year...

Meet the Takahē, New Zealand's dazzling gem! This flightless bird was once thought to be lost forever and declared extinct in 1898.
It left a void in the Māori culture and the Ngāi Tahu tribe.

Takahē birds image by Kathrin & Stefan Marks / Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

But in a twist straight out of a fairy tale, they were rediscovered in 1948, hidden away in the Murchison Mountains. And now? Thanks to relentless conservation, their numbers have soared to ~500!

In 2023, these birds strutted back into their ancestral home, the Lake Whakatipu Waimāori Valley.

Thing 3 - Promote your work

All great careers, to some degree, become sales jobs. You have to evangelize your plans to customers, prospective employees, the press, investors, etc. This requires an inspiring vision, strong communication skills, some degree of charisma, and evidence of execution ability.

- Sam Altman

✏️ Consider this:
If you're working hard on something that you know will help people, you're doing them a disservice by not telling them about it.

So, it's your duty to tell them about it, so they get the information they can act on - to improve their lives. 🫶

Cheers, Zvonimir