{"id":404,"date":"2010-11-01T22:55:29","date_gmt":"2010-11-02T05:55:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/?p=404"},"modified":"2010-11-01T22:55:29","modified_gmt":"2010-11-02T05:55:29","slug":"understanding-motivation-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2010\/11\/01\/understanding-motivation-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding motivation – part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

My younger brother called me today to let me know about his LSAT score. He studied pretty much non-stop from mid-May through mid-October for this test. It’s on the margin where test scores make a difference, and based on a chart of law school acceptance scores found here<\/a>, the difference between #1 and #10 is pretty significant. The results are really great for both him and our family in that he’s opened the doors to any school he wants to go to with his test result.<\/p>\n

Really, the win there more than anything else is that there’s something to being surrounded by the kind of people who appreciate and \u00c2\u00a0live on the margin between #1 and #10. Being surrounded by people like that is a very strong form of motivation. It was this section that I found the most appealing from Newcomb’s blog post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Super A = a(a), a=a, super B=c(c), b=c and c=0<\/em><\/strong> – Various sources but probably mostly Peter Thiel and a little bit of Luke Nosek.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There really is something to being surrounded by the all-stars of your trade. The question I have though is how to do so outside of the crowding that happens at large companies that seem to swallow talent. My friend Jordan O’Mara told me the other day that he’s the worst on his team, which he considers one of the best inside of Red Hat corporate. Fantastic! He’s going to learn like crazy, and he’s going to be a LOT better for it. That said, there has to be a way to get that talent out of the door, and into the proverbial garage.<\/p>\n

Having thought about this all day, I think the answer is quite simple actually.<\/p>\n

Create, or be part of creating, something that is in and of itself such a cutting edge idea that you become the attraction to the top-level talent.<\/p>\n

I think that’s the key indicator that there is a lack of truly great ideas coming out of the Valley of late. The fact that everyone wants to go to Facebook instead of building their own says something. The great ideas are missing.<\/p>\n

And so I’ve come down to the idea that there needs to be a great idea, a sense of control to the journey and a community of the best with which to make it all happen. There’s a lot of motivation in all of that, but I still think it’s missing something big. That I’ll speak to tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My younger brother called me today to let me know about his LSAT score. He studied pretty much non-stop from mid-May through mid-October for this test. It’s on the margin where test scores make a difference, and based on a chart of law school acceptance scores found here, the difference between #1 and #10 is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQyAq-6w","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":400,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2010\/11\/01\/understanding-motivation-part-1\/","url_meta":{"origin":404,"position":0},"title":"Understanding motivation - part 1","date":"November 1, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm not convinced that motivations are well understood, least of all by me. You see, I was taught in economics that perfectly rational people will respond to a set of incentives in a perfectly rational way.\u00c2\u00a0While I'm sure that that makes sense in a textbook, and of course for the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "just thinking out loud"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":458,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2011\/07\/03\/hustling\/","url_meta":{"origin":404,"position":1},"title":"Hustling","date":"July 3, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I can't quite put my finger on why, but Friday was an amazing day. A lot of pretty large projects finally came together, and I really feel like came to a conclusion. Finish lines are too damn difficult to find in their own right, but when you cross two or\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Becoming a PM"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":411,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2010\/11\/16\/understanding-motivation-part-3\/","url_meta":{"origin":404,"position":2},"title":"Understanding motivation \u00e2\u20ac\u201c part 3","date":"November 16, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"So the proverbial tomorrow of blog writing has finally arrived, and here is the last of my three part series on motivation. I can finally speak to the final piece, the keystone as it were, of the motivation puzzle in my mind. Simply put, it comes down to validation. From\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "just thinking out loud"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1720,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2016\/09\/01\/fixing-the-elephant-chart-is-our-generations-imperative\/","url_meta":{"origin":404,"position":3},"title":"Fixing the elephant chart is our generation's imperative","date":"September 1, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"First, go read this blog post. Or if you're not going to do that, then just refer to this chart here: It's called the \"Elephant Chart\" because of its shape. And there's a big problem there that we need to fix. We need to start talking about how we can\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "just thinking out loud"","img":{"alt_text":"The Elephant Chart documenting the distribution of income due to globalization (Source: http:\/\/voxeu.org\/article\/greatest-reshuffle-individual-incomes-industrial-revolution)","src":"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/milanovicfig1.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":746,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2014\/01\/07\/astrophotography-is-gonna-be-hard\/","url_meta":{"origin":404,"position":4},"title":"Astrophotography is gonna be hard...","date":"January 7, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Note: This blog was started on the 7th, and therefore I'm back dating the publish date. I'll work on publishing on time moving forward :-) One of my New Year's resolutions is to read one book per month. One of the books I've started this month is titled, \"Astrophotography -\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "New Year Resolutions"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1626,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2015\/07\/02\/mid-year-review\/","url_meta":{"origin":404,"position":5},"title":"Mid-year review","date":"July 2, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I posted my resolutions for 2015 in January, and since we're at the halfway point I thought I'd give an update. Lose 30 pounds Well pictures don't lie: \u00a0 I'm very solidly in the 180s now thanks to Ramadan. If I get back into the habit of exetcising after work\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "New Year Resolutions"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}