What: USA Weekend article on using email to motivate someone
Posts to which it is related: Using Virtual Worlds for Leadership Development, The Leading Virtually Digest April 25, 2008 (see the last item), The Mind Has a Body of Its Own
Bottom line: How do I motivate someone over email? This is a question that leaders of virtual teams often ask. This article from today’s USA Weekend provides a possible answer. The article briefly describes a study done at Clayton State University in Georgia in which researchers sent persuasive messages every other day to sedentary college students (you can also see a more descriptive article here). According to Matthew Parrott, the lead researcher, “Positively framed messages paired with pictures that displayed an attainable physique produced the best results. People reported about two workouts a week more than before.” The students were shown images that matched their gender, age and race. The bottom line here is that to motivate someone over email, craft a persuasive email and include a visual that indicates an achievable future state. This research seems to be related to research on virtual worlds conducted at Stanford (and which we have reported in an earlier post and digest). Researchers at Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab conducted a study in which subjects did one of three things: they watched their avatar (i.e., their digital representation of themselves) running on a treadmill, they watched their avatar doing nothing, or they watched another person jogging. Those who watched their avatar jogging spent an hour more exercising within a 24-hour period compared to subjects in the other two conditions! Apparently, visualization motivates individuals to more clearly see what they could become by doing a certain thing, thereby preparing them mentally for that act and increasing their commitment to it. Mirror neurons may also have a role to play in the effects observed by the Clayton State University and Stanford University researchers by getting individuals fired up, as if they are already doing a certain act.

What: Computerworld article on a new Lenovo ThinkPad with two screens
Posts to which it is related: None
Bottom Line: Anyone who has worked with two or more computer monitors loves the productivity boost that comes with such an arrangement. We usually have such a setup on our desktops and miss it when we are mobile and are relying on our laptop. Now Lenovo offers a novel solution: two screens on a laptop. How is this possible? Visit the article to see a picture of how the two screens are arranged within a single laptop (or click here for the picture). Essentially, there is a smaller screen behind the main screen that you pull out for a dual monitor setup. The downside: a laptop that weighs 11 lbs!