The 30-day accountability experiment has finished on a high note for me.

I went the entire month of June without wasting time in aimless surfing during the weekday evenings. In addition, not a single drop of alcohol passed my lips.

And so that Guinness I enjoyed on Thu 1 July was all the sweeter for being well-earned!

Aside from the productive time gained each week – an extra 10 hours – it was also gratifying to know that a new habit can be programmed in about a month or so with the aid of ’spotlighting’ and some degree of public commitment. (However, your mileage may vary as there’s some research evidence out there, the link escapes me just now, that suggests people who make their goals public tend to underachieve. Oh dear! All I can say is… it depends!)

By the way, this time around I did not use the ‘MotivAider’ gizmo to automatically remind me of my intention. I suspect that the (almost) daily comments I added to the 3-day accountability blog post acted as their own reminder and helped keep things on track. It was all rather effortless (after the first few days!)

To your habitual success!

- Mark McClure

Here’s a conversation that recently took place in our household:

“You’re almost fifty, getting shorter and just don’t understand how FaceBook and multi-party video chats help with our studies.”

“Now, just a minute, don’t you know it’s taking all evening to finish?”

“That’s because we mix online socializing with study. You guys don’t have a clue.”

OK, I’m paraphrasing what was actually said (mine’s the middle sentence of the three above) but if you’ve got a teenage son or daughter with Internet access, I’ll bet you can probably relate.

Like many others, as a parent and teacher I’ve mixed feelings about the potential for FaceBook and other social media tools to interfere with study and academic achievement.

However, my fears are probably unfounded and what’s really happening is that a new generation is freely exploring the communication possibilities such technology is enabling.

And if I’m really honest with myself, what my teen daughter and her friends are doing is remarkably similar to what happens every day in organizations worldwide. That is, people are voice, video and chat conferencing in small, geographically-dispersed project teams in order to find solutions to problems and opportunities.

Of course, there’s a subtle but important difference between a group of teens on a video conference and a group of employees. Now, I know what many of you are thinking at this point – the difference is that the teens are the only ones enjoying themselves! That’s often true but is not the one I’ve got in mind.

Try this – “time is money.”

To my mind, if there’s one ‘weakness’ in the social media skills that teens have mastered, it’s that many often have little concept of the time and effort expended in their use for a particular return.

But perhaps that’s as it should be. They’re young and still have time to learn from mistakes, and far be it for me to impose the checks and controls of behavioral conditioning so beloved by those examples of benevolent dictatorships we know as ‘corporations’. They’ll meet that colossus soon enough…

Overall, I’m optimistic about how young people will rise to the challenge of applying online social media’s potential for creativity and effective communication in the next ten years or so.

How about you?

Do you see, as I do, the world of work (I nearly typed ‘world of Warcraft’ here by mistake!) being radically altered by large numbers of online-savvy young people moving into the mid and higher ranks of business?

- Mark McClure

PS – the reference to me becoming “shorter” at the top of this post is because my height measured 1 cm less than a few years ago at a recent health check. A source of much mirth at my expense haha!

This Dan Pink video, billed as the surprising science of motivation, is from a TEDGlobal 2009 conference.

If you’ve been employer or employee, and well died (!) in the “stick and carrot” styles of management, then what Dan has to say may make you feel uncomfortable.

Good!

That feeling suggests you’re closer than you think to (re)discovering which of your talents really fire your soul.

The challenge, of course – especially in a world where many are losing jobs and others are fearful of being next in line – is to find and then keep doing work that both puts food on the table and feeds the desire to leave the world a better place than you found it.

I don’t profess to have all the answers to that time/space puzzle because there are billions of permutations, lifestyle choices and socioeconomic influences at work.

But my experience so far suggests that what (intrinsically) motivates me is to seek and enjoy opportunities that “reinforce as well as I can the strength and abilities of others.”

Your mileage may vary.

Anyway, I recommend the video to you. It’s approx 18 minutes.

- Mark McClure