figure – From the desk of Adam Thomas

Think about the incentives in your life

Yesterday, we talked about incentives, and why they are important.

Today, let’s introduce how to look for incentives, and the questions to ask to figure out just what they are.

It’s important to understand the incentives we have because they lead us to execute actions that affect people other than ourselves.

Our actions have consequences.

A good question to start with is: _______ is important to me because _________

Write down something that you do in the first blank – i.e. work

In the second blank, write that the first few things on your mind. Getting past the first few is important.

E.x. Work is important because of my paycheck, habit, family, social status, projects.

Those things indicate incentive. As a result, you are beginning to see some of the incentives in your life.

For now, do this exercise a few times to see if there are any patterns.

Tomorrow we are going to discuss the primary incentive, and why that’s important.

Writing every day is a chore.

As much fun as it is to get this out of my head, some days I sit down, and I can’t get this blog post going. There is a fear associated with this. Every time I write an excellent post, one that people like, there is always another one that doesn’t get the love I want it to or sits there hanging in the wind.

This uncertainty builds fear that follows me writing this stuff. Sometimes it isn’t fun, and sometimes, it even gets scary.

But I know that through writing every post, I get the chance to write again tomorrow, and each post helps me do better than I did before.

The momentum helps

Every time I write, I feel like I am working out. And like working out, going to the gym, whether it is a lucky day or not, at least keeps you in shape. There is no downside to cranking out a blog post every day. I get better with showing up.

This place helps me define my thinking. This has spread to other parts of my life, like my social networks. If you look at my Instagram, book reviews. Those were born from writing about books here, in a small way, not a big way. My LinkedIn has leadership posts, that came from the blog, and gave me the confidence to tell better stories to connect. My YouTube is a video blog. I didn’t know how to shoot video, but writing here gave them ability to synthesize ideas to put them on video.

Growth matter

Your brain isn’t a thing that grows based on what school you went to or who your parents are. It becomes better, like any other muscle, by using it. You use it by doing things or thinking deeply about the world around you. Neither of these things is passive, and both, when applied, take a ton of brain muscle to do.

Every day I post here, its growth. The material, good and bad, allow me to work longer and do better. It gives me a scratch pad, a place to learn something different. Good content builds on good content. It’s the gym, and it gives me the opportunity to turn in better and better work.