Imagine yourself in a futuristic race inside a tube. The tube twists and turns at every point, and you try to follow it with your hovering vehicle. It seems inevitable that you will make contact with the sides. And now you really wish the tube has some soft bumpers…

Now this situation is a metaphor for any task, job or project you will attempt to deal with. The four sides of the tube – up, down, left and right – corresponds to four inefficiency catastrophes. And fortunately, every pitfall has a series of bumpers that can save you from that grisly fate.

The top bumpers will save you from burn-out, and giving up on the project. They are called white hat core drives, and go by the names of core drive 1: Epic meaning and calling, 2: Development and accomplishment and 3: Empowerment of creativity and feedback.

On the bottom are the bumpers that will save you from procrastination, and never getting started with the project. Their names are core drive 6: Scarcity and impatience, 7: Unpredicatability and curiosity, 8: Avoidance of loss. Collectively they are known as the black hat core drives.

The left side bumpers have the power of focusing your energy to the essential tasks, not wasting valuable time on useless details. Some of them has been mentioned already. Yes, some core drives can save you more than one time! They are great that way…
Core drive 2: Development and accomplishment, 4: Ownership of possession, 6: Scarcity and impatience. By the way they are “left brain” drives.

Finally the right side is for you too-efficient people, who forget to stop and think if your idea really is the best way of doing the project. Saving you from over-focusing on a single task, and let you remember the greater picture. In other words, it will broaden your mind.

On top of that, these core drives is what makes the project fun!
Their proper names are core drive 3: Empowerment of creativity and feedback, 5: Social influence and relatedness, 7: Unpredicatability and curiosity.
And… you guessed it, they are the right brain core drives.

So now that you know the cures, you should start analysing your problems. What is the problem that is limiting you in your current project? Or maybe the problem isn’t you. You are motivated and efficient. The problem is your students, your clients or your employees.
Well, same thing applies. Identify which problem is the main devastator of efficiency, and work to apply the cure.

Oh, did I forgot to explain the core drives in detail? And how to apply them to a project? Well, all of that information can be found at the main page of Octalysis, nifty link here: http://yukaichou.com/

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