I’m inordinately proud of my new ability to do pull-ups from a dead hang. It’s taken me over three years of strength training to go from zero to one to two, and currently to three without a break in-between reps. It reminded me of how, maybe eight years ago, I went from zero push-ups to five push-ups after over a year of daily calisthenics.
Why am I spending time thinking about this, much less telling anyone else? It’s because it made me think about intrinsic motivation, especially self-motivation. Many people I know are motivated by fulfilling a landmark achievement — running the Chicago Marathon, hiking up to Machu Picchu, or completing a full Ironman Triathlon. They train for months to get ready for the moment, and then they achieve! But then what? Hopefully they celebrate the accomplishment, but is it then gone? Do they have to find a new mountain to climb? For some, this is incredibly motivating and they thrive on the cycle of train and achieve.
That cycle is also pervasive in the workplace. Think about any large project that you’ve worked on or knew about. Lots of work and stress over a long period of time, building up to a big launch, release, or opening. High fives all around, and then… find a new large project? It strikes me that this approach has a few challenges in a professional context:
- Our professional worth is tied up in these “Big Bang” achievements, so we might start inventing them just for the rush of doing them. But the organization might not need all those projects.
- It crowds out tightening up operations, documenting previous work for future reference, and other “dot the ‘i’s, cross the ‘t’s” activities, because nothing, NOTHING is as exciting as the start of a big project.
- It prioritizes “new” over “better”, even if “better” would have more impact.
The last one has been on my mind the most of late. A friend and former supervisor loaned me Atul Gawande’s book Better several years ago and it really resonated with me professionally and personally. In the book, Gawande describes situations where attempting to solve problems can obscure the opportunity to incrementally improve, making the situation better in a shorter timeframe than the problem can be solved. More recently, I became a fan of Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH), the co-founders of Basecamp, and their mindset and values on running a business and leading an organization. In particular, Fried wrote about goals (or not having them):
“When you shift from 1st to 2nd, 1st is behind you. Then from 2nd to 3rd, 2nd is behind you. I approach things continuously, not in stops. I just want to keep going — whatever happens along the way is just what happens.”
That’s not to say they don’t identify and pursue improvement — that’s what they’re doing most of the time. They’re simply not looking for the “Big Bang” that will transform the world or their company. Rather, they’re constantly improving their product and their workplace to make many people’s work lives a little better, a little more effective. As DHH puts it, they’re putting a dent in the universe, not trying to own it.
That approach inspires me. I've spent much of the past couple of years in the “messy middle” of a long-term organizational improvement, but it won’t have a launch or even a moment where we say we’re done. Its entire underpinning is a mindset that focuses at least some of our attention on “better” through clarity, transparency, and reflection. And we’ll be able to see the results — not all in one moment, but every few weeks and months as we get better at what we do and how we do it. Those kinds of results, and our recognition of them, gets me up every Monday morning ready to keep moving.
