ZenHabits Top 20 Motivation Hacks

#1 - Always think positive. Squash all negative thoughts.
#2 - Make a big public commitment. Be fully committed.
#3 - Create a friendly, mutually-supportive competition.
#4  -   Keep a daily journal of your goal.
#5 - Visualize your goal clearly, on a daily basis, for at least 5-10 minutes.
#6 - Make it a rule never to skip two days in a row.
#7  -   Become aware of your urges to quit, and be prepared for them.
#8 - Have powerful reasons. Write them down.
#9 - Get a coach or take a class.
#10 - Find inspiration, on a daily basis.
#11 - Reward yourself. Often.
#12 - Break it into smaller, mini goals.
#13  -  Give it time, be patient.

#14  -   Make it a pleasure.
#15 - Just get started.
#16 - Get a workout partner or goal buddy.
#17  -   Post a picture of your goal someplace visible — near your desk or on your refrigerator, for example.
#18 - Join an online (or off-line) group to help keep you focused and motivated.
#19  -   Hold Yourself Back
#20 - Chart Your Progress.




http://zenhabits.net/the-ultimate-guide-to-motivation-how-to-achieve-any-goal/

Eric Ries: Lean Startup

Web 2.0 Expo SF 2010: Eric Ries, "The Lean Startup: Innovation Through Experimentation. ..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i65PaoTlVKg

• Lean Startup: Human institution designed to create something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty.
• Pivot: change direction but stay grounded in what we've learned
• Zig-zag from initial idea to eventual success
• Need to reduce time between pivots
• Unit of progress is validated learning (not line of code (Agile) or SDLC stage (Waterfall))
• Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop
• Build -> code -> Measure -> data -> Learn -> ideas -> Build
• Does this change minimise the total time through the feedback loop? Or does it sub-optimise by helping us do only our narrow job function well?
• What helped me is the insight from the Theory of Constraints that in a dynamic system anything that optimizes the sub-parts tends to sub-optimize the whole. Which is a fancy way of saying: focus on total time through the loop, not on the time of any individual activity. [blog]
• One full turn through loop = Pivot
• Techniques that operate at different stages of loop but have effect of helping minimise total time through feedback loop - stop wasting people's time:

http://blogs.reuters.com/small-business/2010/04/27/top-5-myths-about-the-lean-startup/

• Myth 1: Lean means cheap. Lean startups try to spend as little money as possible.
• Myth 2: The Lean Startup methodology is only for Web 2.0, Internet and consumer software companies 
• Myth 3: Lean Startups are bootstrapped startupsMyth 4: Lean Startups are very small companies
• Myth 5: Lean Startups replace vision with data or customer feedback

http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2008/09/new-version-of-joel-test-draft.html