Below, David talks about motivation. Excerpted from Episode #26 of the 37signals Podcast (listen or read the transcript).

I have a very hard to impossible time forcing myself to do things that I don’t want to do.

When I feel that lack of motivation, there’s always a reason. I instinctually know whatever I’m working on is not actually worth it — that all this effort I’m about to put in is not going to pay off. Or maybe I’m just not good at what I’m trying to do. Either way, it feels like a waste of time.

Plus, I find it hard to have a wide array of things that I’m interested in at the same time. I usually pick one thing and I get really interested in solving that. Any other task that doesn’t fall under that banner has a hard time capturing my imagination and getting done. I just put that on the back burner until whatever I’m naturally interested in gets completed or my motivation runs out.

When you have a natural interest in something, your productivity goes through the roof. Even though whatever I’m naturally interested in might not, from an objective point of view, be the most important thing to work on at that time, it is the most important thing to work on because of the productivity gains I get out of just being super fired-up about it. I have to get that out of my system. And I wind up doing things really quickly.

When you’re not working on something you’re inspired by, your efficiency is so much lower. You find more moments in the day to let yourself be distracted by email or reading on the Web or something else. That’s usually the key smell I detect when I’m working on something I don’t really want to be working on: I check email much more frequently and I engage in chats about things that aren’t related to what I should be working on.

On the flip side, when I’m working on something I’m really fired up about, I couldn’t care less about new posts on Twitter or whatever. Instead, I get whatever I’m working on done right away.

Transcript for Episode #26 of the 37signals Podcast, Q&A with Jason and David, is now online. You can also listen to it. Below is an excerpt.

David: Something that matters when you’re trying to pick a business partner is that it can’t just be about the craft. If all I was interested in doing was programming, then I don’t think I would have been a good fit for a business partner. If you want to be a partner in a business, you have to be willing to wear many more hats than just that of your craft. You have to dive into all sorts of issues: personnel, building a company, finance, marketing. There are so many other things than just the technical aspect of it.

Jason: I also think it’s important to make sure that you’ve worked with this person for a while. I get emails occasionally from people starting businesses looking for business partners. They’re like, “Hey, I just met this guy who’s a programmer. Should we go 50/50 on something?” It’s like a marriage. You should date for a while. You have to work with somebody and get to know them. You’ve got to make sure you can get along and you can stand someone for a long period of time. It’s important to work with somebody first before you link up in legal terms, because a business is a legal entity and it can be messy if things don’t work out.

David: I’ve seen it not work out a couple of times for people. It’s incredibly painful. Once you’ve split things up into equity and somebody owns a part of your company, it is incredibly painful to divorce yourself from that person. You really have to be sure that it’s a good fit.

In October of 2007, social news site Newsvine was acquired by msnbc.com. It was msnbc.com’s first acquisition in its history.

Newsvine announced the acquisition and answered this question: “Why would a young, efficient independent news startup become part of a large organization?”

It’s all about growing the community and spreading the idea of participatory news as far and wide as possible. Although going from zero to over a million users a month in less than two years is heartening, msnbc.com operates on another scale entirely. While Newsvine may be well known in early adopter circles, we want every college student, every farmer, every weekend journalist, and every household to have their own branch on the ‘Vine. In order to spread this idea further, we could have gone out and raised a lot of money, quadrupled our staff, and gone it alone, but when one of the finest news organizations in the world is headquartered right across Lake Washington, the potential of partnering with such a great team is dramatic.

Meanwhile, Charlie Tillinghast, president of MSNBC Interactive News, offered this take on the deal:

Tillinghast said msnbc.com was racing to foster a community among its readers and to exploit the power of unmoderated user commentary and ranking of the news. Ideally, he said in an interview, the site would design and build its own tools, but Newsvine, a small, lean company headquartered in downtown Seattle a few minutes from msnbc.com’s newsroom, “is just a great fit.”

“Newsvine is local, small, nimble — they don’t come with a lot of things you don’t want,” he said, such as complicated partnerships and contracts. “There isn’t a lot to rearrange.”

So what’s happened since then? Newsvine CEO Mike Davidson (shown below) is still with msnbc.com today. Here’s what he had to say about what’s happened post-acquisition:

Do you still work with the product?
Most of the Newsvine team (including myself) is still here. In addition to maintaining Newsvine.com, our team’s technology runs all MSNBC, TodayShow, and other brand family blogs (about 25 of them and counting) as well as many of the interactive features within the company’s core sites (global registration, live votes, inline comment threads, Facebook/Twitter integration, etc.).

Because our team does not have end-to-end creative control over these other projects, they are generally less satisfying than working on our own product. But at the same time, they are more satisfying from a financial standpoint. A 10% increase in Newsvine’s traffic doesn’t move the needle much for the company’s bottom line, but a 5% increase in overall msnbc.com traffic means millions of dollars, and since we’re a private company with profit sharing, that’s real money for all ~275 employees every year.

What impact did the sale have on customers?
When we were acquired, the growth wave that ensued — about 450% over the next few years — brought criticisms. Not only had the user base become much bigger, we were now associated with a mainstream media company; a development that some users appreciated and others felt uncomfortable with.

On the bright side, we’ve been able to get some of our best users on TV and send them to political events like the RNC and DNC, but on the down side, some users wrote on Newsvine specifically because they didn’t see eye-to-eye with mainstream media.

How is Newsvine doing now?
Traffic-wise, the product is about 400% more popular than it was, but feature-wise, it unfortunately hasn’t changed much in the last few years. A lot of this is due to the fact that our team has remained small (8 people now) and we’ve been working on many other projects within msnbc.com alongside our Newsvine duties. Currently, over 25 million uniques a month are hosted on Newsvine technology via the various projects we power around the company, and we’d like to think we’re a contributor to the extremely profitable business our parent operates.

As for things we wish went differently, it’s tough to say because we were acquired literally the week the market peaked in 2007, and things went downhill for the economy directly after that. Because of the downturn, many media companies (including msnbc.com) cut back their budgets and dug in a bit for a long winter. We stayed at 6 people for a very long time, and as our responsibilities expanded outside of the Newsvine brand, our attention to Newsvine.com itself diminished. Thankfully the nature of the site has always been for users to essentially run it, so this worked out ok, but it’s definitely the reason you don’t read as much about Newsvine in the tech press as you did a few years ago. When you don’t reinvent yourself every year or two, there just isn’t much of a tech story to tell.

The problem with the “follow your passion” chorus: We can’t all love the products we work with. Someone has to do the jobs and sell the things that don’t seem sexy but make the world go round.

It’s something we’ve seen in our Bootstrapped, Profitable, and Proud series. Braintree processes credit cards. You won’t meet too many people who claim to “love” credit card processing. Even Braintree’s Bryan Johnson admits, “I’m not particularly passionate about payments, but I am passionate about trying to build a good company.” Johnson gets satisfaction from making customers happy, creating a workplace that employees enjoy, and improving “an unscrupulous and broken industry.”
InsuranceAgents.com sells insurance. Again, it’s tough to find anyone with a “passion” for insurance. Seth Kravitz of InsuranceAgents.com says, “Insurance is not an exciting industry, but that doesn’t mean the work can’t be meaningful. We had to find ways to make the work more fun, make the environment more family like, and show people the positive impact of what they do.”
Both these companies have succeeded by dropping the “follow your passion” idea and focusing instead on process.

The problems with passion

Part of this is recognizing that, despite its wonders, there are also problems with passion. For one thing, most people’s passions aren’t that unique. That’s why it’s so hard to succeed in the restaurant business or as a professional dancer; You’re competing against everyone else with that same dream.

Also, turning a passion into a business is a good way to kill the passion. You might love music. But become a music critic and you’re going to have to listen to hundreds of albums every month. Including a lot of stuff you hate. By the end of it, you might just discover that you can’t stand the thing you used to love. Kravitz says, “I love reading books, but I would hate to be a book reviewer. What you love to do in your personal life, many times doesn’t translate well into a business.”

How not what

So does this mean we’re all doomed to a life of ditch digging drudgery? No. It’s about redefining passion. Instead of working with a thing you love, think about how to work in a way you love.

It’s something Amy Hoy talks about in Don’t Follow Your Passion. Here’s her take on The Cute Little Café Syndrome:

If you want to run a successful café — and enjoy it — you need to love a lot more than coffee. You’ve also gotta get some kind of pleasure, even grim satisfaction, out of the daily grind. (Ha ha.) Which means, of course, interacting with customers, hiring & managing wait staff, handling the day-to-day necessities like ordering supplies, cleaning, paying rent, marketing your butt off, and dealing with customers who want to squat on your valuable tables all day for just $2 of brew.

Take your cues from this “daily grind” example and how companies like Braintree and InsuranceAgents.com succeed. Find meaning in what you’re doing. Work to improve your industry. Get joy from making a customer’s day. Surround yourself with the kinds of people and environment that keep you engaged. Figure out the details and day-to-day process that keep you stimulated. Focus on how you execute and making continual improvements. Get off on how you sell, not what you sell.
It might not be the romantic ideal of “passion.” But if it provides you with sustainable joy and profit that you can count on, you’ll still be way ahead of the curve (and have extra resources and free time to spend doing whatever you want).

Sortfolio, our visual directory of web designers, has been helping companies find web design firms (and helping web design firms find clients) since October of 2009.

Sortfolio works

It’s been working quite well for people. In a recent survey we conducted, 45% generated new business through Sortfolio, and 64% said leads were moderate to high quality.

We believe in Sortfolio. It’s still the best way to browse web design firms. It beats Google, text directories, or hiring your friend’s cousin. Browsing by visual portfolio, budget range, and location is the most perfect combination we’ve found to hone in on the right fit for your web design project.

Sortfolio deserves a better home

However, we haven’t been able to dedicate many resources towards improving it or promoting it. Our efforts are focused on our products and our Job Board. We believe Sortfolio deserves to thrive, but 37signals is no longer the best home. So we’re looking to sell it to a company that can give Sortfolio — and its customers — the love and attention they deserve.

Revenues and business model

Sortfolio has been holding steady between $17,000-$20,000/month for quite some time now. Paying customers are billed $99/monthly. They can cancel at any time. Free listings are available for all. Currently there are just under 10,000 total accounts, 195 of those are Pro accounts. We’re sure a dedicated sales person could upsell quite a few people.

Futher, the Sortfolio model could expand into a variety of other verticals including photographers, wedding planning, catering, illustrators, artists, etc. I’d love to see a Sortfolio for calligraphy or hand lettering.

Make us an offer

If you’re interested, make us an offer. We’re open to anything as long as it’s cash. We’re not interested in equity. Maybe it’s all cash, maybe it’s cash + royalties on future sales. Who knows. Come at us with something serious and we’ll consider it.

If you’re interested, or have any other questions, please email jason@37signals… We expect to receive a lot of offers, so we won’t be responding to anything we don’t consider a serious offer. We’re serious about selling so please be serious about buying. We’ll help get the word out whenever you are ready to relaunch.