Self-Help

100 Free Motivational Posters

More junk advice to waste your time with.

I made you 100 free motivational posters, in classic Demotivator style, via fd's Flickr Toys.

These posters represent my complaint about self-help and motivational clichés. These clichés can be useful or inspiring, but usually they are:

contradictory: Endure the Pain vs. Move On
inactionable: Take Flight
questionable: Fight Back
silly: Jump for Joy
obvious: Sleep

Most commonly, we hear these clichés without advice on when to apply them. Most advice is helpful in some circumstances but harmful in others.

Sometimes you should Embrace Life’s Storms. I'm glad Gandhi didn’t.

Sometimes you should Find Beauty in Tragedy. I wish Christians wouldn't use that as an excuse for an all-good god to allow pointless suffering.

Sometimes you need to Think Fast, but sometimes it’s better to think critically.

My advice: Don’t follow these clichés. Be careful with bloggers who list every possible tip they find, rather than carefully considering what actually works.

Why did I make 100 posters of advice I don't recommend? Because I want to raise awareness. Be wary of self-help writers. Their advice if often a waste of your time or even counter-productive.

I hope that when you see one of my posters, on the web or your PC, you will be reminded to be very suspicious of self-help advice. And maybe you'll laugh.

How to use these posters

I collected these images from all over the web, so if I have violated your copyright, please let me know and I will remove the offending poster. Readers, you may use my posters however and wherever you want.

These photos can be used as a motivational screensaver:

Download all the posters with DownThemAll.
Create a new folder under My Documents and move the downloaded posters there.
Click Start -> Control Panel -> Display.
Click Screen Saver. Choose My Pictures Slideshow as your screensaver. Click Settings.
Under Use pictures in this folder, click Browse and select the folder you created in step 2.
Adjust any other settings you like and click OK twice.

Or, rotate them on your desktop background:

Download all the posters with DownThemAll.
Download Windows Wallpaper Rotator (install the .NET framework if necessary).
Run the Wallpaper Rotator. Right-click its icon in your taskbar and click Show Window.
Click Browse and select the folder to which you downloaded the motivational posters.
Set how often you want your wallpaper rotated, then minimize the program again.

If you don’t want to use DownThemAll, you can just grab the .torrent file. (See How to use BitTorrent.)

You can see all the posters in their Zooomr set, or download my 100 free motivational wallpapers with these links: