[barik]

> which is to motivate me to do something today which I will be able to talk about tomorrow.

I've actually wondered about this, ever since finding inconsistencies in the psychology literature about this subject, particularly those which echo my own experiences.

For example, Ordóñez and colleagues' 2009 paper, "Goals Gone Wild: The Systematic Side Effects of Overprescribing Goal Setting", identifies some of the negative effects: "narrow focus that neglects nongoal areas, distorted risk preferences, a rise in unethical behavior, inhibited learning, corrosion of organizational culture, and reduced intrinsic motivation."

Other work related (Sivers, McGonigal, etc.) to this effect has also argued that announcing your goals make you less motivated to accomplish them. There's yet other work, by Brown (in the book Daring Greatly) that shows that for certain personalities, these types of environments have a very opposite effect to enhancing motivation: instead, they generate anxiety, guilt, embarrassment, humiliation, and even shame.

I'm not doubting your experience, but my experience is more aligned with the items I've just mentioned. So it'd be interesting to try to tease out why some people experience the benefits you outlined, while others don't, even within the same scrum team. At one point, I conducted an informal study within our own team on scrum experiences and the results are completely bimodal. It's perplexing.