I wanted to share a personal experience with status updates. We have a Campfire chat room and then wire almost every activity to send notifications to the chat room. When there's a commit, the chat room gets notified. When I'm playing phone guy, my updates to Highrise (CRM) show up in Campfire. So our status is usually represented well throughout the day.
Most people focus on the information sharing aspect of status, but I've found that the steady stream of accomplishments gives me more momentum. It creates some pressure since I don't want to be seen as slacking. More importantly, it feels like a small reward for completing a task since I know there's a slight bit of recognition of the accomplishment. It's like clicker-training a dog. With every positive step I take throughout the day, I get a reward.
Most people focus on the information sharing aspect of status, but I've found that the steady stream of accomplishments gives me more momentum. It creates some pressure since I don't want to be seen as slacking. More importantly, it feels like a small reward for completing a task since I know there's a slight bit of recognition of the accomplishment. It's like clicker-training a dog. With every positive step I take throughout the day, I get a reward.