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The Progress Principle

Here are articles discussing Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer's study on motivation at work, The Progress Principle.

It turns out that 95% of managers are wrong about what motivates people at work. It's not financial incentive or stress--rather, the most powerful motivator at work is the sense that you're making progress towards a meaningful goal.

Embracing Life’s Challenges

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Like accolades ought to be, the fulfilled life is a consequence, a gratifying byproduct. It’s what happens when you’re thinking about more important things. Climb the mountain not to plant your flag, but to embrace the challenge, enjoy the air and behold the view. Climb it so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.

English teacher David McCullough Jr. delivered a rousing commencement speech at Wellesley High School, advising the graduating class to reach for achieving something good and genuine rather than for accolades.

The entire speech is worth a read, or watch the video:

(Source:  https://www.youtube.com/)

Alexis Grant on Motivation

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Motivation and inspiration can go a long way toward helping you get where you want to be. Sometimes blogs and books and in-person meetings give me that push or ah-ha moment I need to get moving. But when it comes to creating something awesome, whether that’s a book or a business or some other exciting project, you have to step away from all those sources of energy and create.

Alexis Grant writes about how the way to kick your butt into gear isn’t by doing other things, no matter how helpful they seem.

Step away from the push itself and get stuff done!

John Tierney on Stress

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Years ago, when I was researching an article on research into stress, one social scientist passed on a simple tip: “At some point every day, you have to say, ‘No more work.’” No matter how many tasks remain undone, you have to relax at some point and enjoy the evening.

John Tierney, NY Times columnist and co-author of Willpower:  Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, in an interview with Gretchen Rubin.

Confronting the Brutal Facts of Your Startup’s Reality

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“This is a very important lesson.  You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

– Admiral James Stockdale [1]

Fundraising is distracting because much of it is about framing facts about your reality rather than confronting the brutal facts of your reality.  For us, that meant coming up with a plausible story for not sucking when we did mostly suck. [2]

Some startups try to handle this by juggling two different stories: the one they tell investors and the one they know to be true.  That sounds easy enough, but it can get very confusing and that confusion results in friction.

Continue Reading

Grit vs. Talent in Progress

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Grit vs. Talent in Progress

“Very often when we talk about the skill of ‘productivity’ what we are really talking about is ‘self-control’ — the disciplined ability to choose to do one thing at the cost of not doing another (perhaps more tempting thing).”

As the nature of work changes to more flexible design, we must learn when not to exercise our freedom.

via The 99 Percent

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