What motivates you to move out of your comfort zone?
Johnny Harris (from Vox fame) talks about this concept called 'Excited Accountability'. How does it work? Apply for things before you're ready. You'll get a Super Mario boost when the request is accepted.
When @totalBarca wanted to hire a Twitter Community specialist back in 2012. I didn’t have any social media or writing experience. But I applied without hesitation.
For the application, I learnt how to live-tweet a football match. I managed to do well on the assignment and in 2 years, I became the Head of Social Media, took the account to 50K followers and had a lot of memorable moments in 2 years.
The second example was when ATB and @abhimanyu were looking to get a football writer for their magazine. @adityapandya shared the request with the team. I hadn't written many articles for totalBarca at the time. But I applied and then I sharpened my writing skills by writing more articles on the website. Had a great time writing articles for ATB. Really enjoyed working with great people.
Cut to today, a similar situation occurred with Product Craft. They were looking for contributing writers for their website. I came to know about this opportunity through Twitter. I had written a few Medium articles till then, which I showed as proof-of-work. I applied and they selected me and I wrote this article on Psychology of Onboarding.
The external push has to be credible enough. It can't be too passive. For e.g. you cant have a follower get added, and then think that will motivate you substantially. It has to be a real connect with a person who bring about that accountability.
Link to Excited Accountability video.
Follow me on Twitter @kavirkaycee
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