The Motivation Myth: How High Achievers Really Set Themselves Up to Win

by Jeff Haden

GENERALISTS TRUMP SPECIALISTS IN TODAY’S PROFESSIONAL LANDSCAPE In fact, the pursuit of perfection is the enemy. That’s even true on a professional level. The current professional landscape values generalists over specialists. Change occurs quickly. Skills that are valued today are obsolete tomorrow. Managers can’t just be good at managing a certain function; they need to be good leaders. Employees can’t just be good at performing a certain function; they need to embrace an entrepreneurial mind-set and constantly reinvent themselves. When specific knowledge is more and more a commodity—and it is, because information is more widely available than ever—the people who can synthesize and blend and apply a broad base of skills to a variety of functions and problems are the people who are most valued. (More on that in a moment.)

Even if five to seven years are required to accomplish each goal, you have enough time to become a serial achiever: a person who accomplishes this, then that, then that, then that . . . all while working hard to succeed and advance in your career. That means you can become an “and”: a person who is this, and this, and this, and this.

To most people, professional “specialization” indicates accomplishment and success, when in fact the opposite is true. You, me, all of us—we’re too good to specialize. Venus is too good to specialize. She is capable of more than tennis. She’s too good to be just one thing. None of us should be just one thing. We all possess, or can possess, a variety of skills—including skills we aren’t using. Don’t say, “I can’t afford to spend the extra time on an ‘and.’” You can’t afford not to spend the time. If your “and” is professional, then you create a buffer against downturns, shifts in market conditions, or the loss of a job. If your “and” is personal, you get to add a little more fun to your life. And don’t say, “I don’t know where to start because I don’t know where I want to end up.” One of the biggest reasons people don’t start doing, well, anything is that they think the first step must be a component in a comprehensive grand plan, one where every step is charted and every milestone identified . . . and because they don’t have that plan, they don’t start.

Eagles guitarist (and eminent philosopher) Joe Walsh says in the documentary History of the Eagles, “As you live your life, it appears to be anarchy and chaos, and random events, nonrelated events, smashing into each other and causing this situation or that situation, and then this happens, and it’s overwhelming, and it just looks like, what in the world is going on? And later, when you look back at it, it looks like a finely crafted novel. But at the time, it don’t [sic].”*

Success is inevitable only in hindsight. Success is never assured. Plans are never perfect. Only in hindsight does it appear that way. What really happens is that people do things, try things, succeed at things, fail at things, learn from those failures, learn from those successes . . . and along the way they seize—and create—opportunities to advance themselves so they can live the life that makes them happy. So go ahead. Be a professional serial achiever. Embrace your “and.” Take the steps that let you include an “and” in the way you describe yourself professionally. Think about what you do well, or would like to do well, and, most important, would really enjoy doing. Don’t choose an “and” you feel you should choose. Pick a side hustle your inner twenty-year-old will love. Being a serial achiever is a chance to explore, to delve, to expand, even to indulge—but with a purpose.

Pick something you want to do and try it. As Seth Godin says, once you had to wait: to be accepted, to be promoted, to be selected . . . to somehow be “discovered.” Not anymore. Access is nearly unlimited; you can connect with almost anyone through social media. You can publish your own work, distribute your own music, create your own products, or attract your own funding.

SERIAL ACHIEVEMENT MAKES YOU UNCONTAINABLE, UNPREDICTABLE, AND UNDEFINABLE The beauty of serial achievement is that over time you become more than one thing. You can be a Web designer and a musician and an athlete . . . and then you can become something else as well, knowing that when you have achieved a certain level of skill or experience you can work to achieve something else.

Except for unusual skills—like tech skills, which are constantly on the verge of becoming obsolete even for full-time programmers and developers—the skills you gain will stay in your tool kit. While over time you will naturally lose some degree of proficiency, you will always retain the core skill and will be able to quickly tune yourself up again if necessary. Think of it this way: Strength is hard to build the first time, but regaining strength lost is much easier. And even if you do lose a significant amount of skill, that’s okay: The confidence and fulfillment you gain from all your hard work and dedication will in themselves make your effort worthwhile. You will always be able to look back and think, “I did that.” A moment of accomplishment may be fleeting, but satisfaction lasts forever.

We can try to compartmentalize all we want, but business success, family and friends, personal pursuits, no single aspect of our lives can ever be truly separated from the others. Each is a permanent part of a whole, so putting more focus on one area automatically reduces the focus on another.

You can’t have it all . . . but you can have a lot. But first you must know what you really want. Be honest with yourself. What do you want to achieve for yourself and your family? What do you most value spiritually, emotionally, or materially? What do you most want to do? In what setting, or what pursuit, are you happiest?

As Marlo from The Wire would say, “You want it to be one way . . . but it’s the other way.”

If you’re not happy, rethink your definition of success. The one you have is not working for you. You can’t have it all. You shouldn’t want to have it all because that’s the best way to wind up unhappy and unfulfilled. But you can have a lot more than you currently do, whether what you want more of is professional or personal success. So start pursuing the goals that will make you happy.

We all need to be healthy. We all need to maintain solid family relationships. And we all need a level of income sufficient to our needs. (Not wants, needs.) Those things are nonnegotiable. And that’s why this logical leap isn’t a leap at all: If you currently aren’t healthy, don’t feel good about your primary relationships (or the people with whom you are in those relationships don’t feel good about you), and aren’t making enough money, then you have no business taking on any goal that does not make one of those areas of your life better. It’s impossible to feel fulfilled and happy if you aren’t taking care of your basic needs. And it’s impossible to actively pursue a goal that doesn’t take care of a basic need that is lacking, because you will always feel guilty about spending time on it.

That’s another thing no one tells you about goals. You may want it to be one way—the way that lets you pursue anything you want without regard to money or health or relationships—but it’s the other way. And it always will be. Just ask anyone who ignored the basics in his life (it’s almost always men) to pursue a goal . . . only to feel empty and hollow because the “trophy” on the mantel came at too high a cost. Happiness requires evenly balancing your multiple nonnegotiable goals, blending in a negotiable goal where appropriate . . . and never, ever forgetting to self-evaluate along the way to ensure the balance never gets out of whack. For brief periods of time it’s okay if that balance is off, but do that for long, and everything falls apart: your motivation, your confidence, your small successes—and ultimately, your happiness. Because success isn’t truly success . . . unless you’re happy.

1. The best goals make Maslow (and therefore you) happy. To make it simple, answer these two questions. Are You Comfortable Financially?

Want to build an amazing network? Don’t think in terms of building a network. Build a list of key individual contacts. Think about every key area your business depends on: supplies, products, professional services, marketing, media, etc. Then work hard to build a strong relationship with one person in each of those areas. Build a connection with a lawyer. An accountant. The shipping clerk at your supplier’s warehouse. Your FedEx driver. An influential analyst. Make it your goal to establish a key contact in each area of your business—with a person who won’t just return your calls but will also enjoy hearing from you—and you’ll naturally build an amazing network. When your goal benefits you in only one way, it’s much easier to quit, especially when the goal you set is something you want but do not need to do. When your goal benefits you in only one way, you get far fewer daily jolts of motivation from small successes.

The best goals are binary: They’re so specific you can’t help but know whether you have achieved them or not. They’re also based on an activity, not a hard-to-quantify state of mind or state of being. “Better shape” means nothing; “run the D.C. Marathon” means not just running any marathon—easier or harder—but running the Marine Corps Marathon held in Washington, D.C. Fuzzy goals are meaningless. The best goals are goals you can see and taste and visualize in great detail, because they’re based on a real accomplishment and not a vague statement of intent.

Step 1: Let everyone know you won’t be available. Interruptions are productivity killers, so letting people know you’re doing something special and will be out of reach for a day is an absolute must. At a minimum, tell coworkers and family, but don’t forget to tell important clients or other people who normally expect you to respond to them. Send an e-mail a couple days before your EPD. Explain that you will be tied up on that day and you’ll respond to their calls, e-mails, etc. first thing the following morning.

Step 2: Decide how long you will work. Don’t create a plan based on “I’ll work as long as I can” or “I’ll work as long as I feel productive.” Set a concrete target. Commit to working for twelve hours, or however long a time frame you choose.

Step 3: Totally commit to how long you decided to work. You know what happens: Once you decide a task should take four hours, it somehow ends up taking four hours, even when it should actually have taken only two hours. It’s natural to fill extra time with “stuff.”

The opposite happens when a deadline seems too aggressive: We find ways to strip out the nonessential and get things done much more quickly than we could have imagined. Don’t just set a deadline. Totally commit to hitting that deadline.

Step 4: Start your EPD at an unusual time. Have you ever taken a long car trip and left at 3:00 or 4:00 a.m.? The first few hours always fly by, because you stepped outside your norm. The same trick works for an EPD. Start at 4:00 a.m. Or indulge your inner night owl, starting at 6:00 p.m. and working through the night. Either way, those first few hours will fly by. An EPD is not a normal day. Set the stage for atypical by breaking free of your usual routine.

Whatever ways you typically tend to “treat” yourself, think of those treats as personal productivity bullets. If you use all your ammunition too early, you’ll have nothing left when you really need it. Whatever typically carries you through your workday, hold off on it for a while.

Plan to eat or snack a little earlier than normal. If you sit while you work, stand up long before your butt gets numb. If you stand, sit long before your legs start to ache. When you allow yourself to feel discomfort, your motivation and resolve will weaken—so do everything possible to keep that from happening. Speaking of food, plan meals wisely. Don’t take an hour-long lunch break. Prepare food you can eat quickly without lots of organizing or a mess. The key is to refuel, recharge . . . and keep rolling.

Pick a few productive tasks you like to perform—and gain a sense of accomplishment from—and use those for your breaks. Spending even a few minutes in the land of inactivity weakens your resolve.

Step 8: Take your breaks at a counterintuitive moment. When you take a break, don’t stop when you complete a particular task. Stop in the middle.

Within minutes, success ensures that your day—and your motivation level—is made, all because you started your day in a very fun place. If you stop after you’ve just finished something significant or major—if you stop when you feel you’ve crossed a finish line and are nearly spent—it can feel extremely difficult to move on to whatever is next, whether you need to do that minutes, hours, or even a day later.

Step 9: Don’t stop until you’re done—even if finishing takes longer than expected. Stopping short is an easy habit to form. If you quit this time, what will stop you from quitting the next time? (Answer: pretty much nothing.) Quitting is a habit. Staying the course is also a habit.

truly have nothing left in the tank, you either black out, pass out, or die. That’s it. Otherwise you have more in you. It’s all about getting past your comfort zone. We always have more gas in the tank. We just don’t think we do because no one wants to run on reserve. They don’t want to go past what they think is their limit. “Winning is a mind-set. Refusing to give up is a mind-set. When you learn that you can do more than you thought in one aspect of your life, you can apply that to every other area of your life. Get out and do things that are hard. Refuse to quit. Push past your comfort zone. Over time that ability will become a habit—and you’ll accomplish a lot more than you ever believed you could. Success is a mental game. Learn to win the mental game and you can do anything.” An EPD helps you learn to win the mental game. An EPD automatically ratchets your internal limits to a higher level. And after a few EPD—maybe even just one—you’ll perform better every “normal” day as well, because you will have unconsciously shut down that little voice in your head and raised your own performance bar. And isn’t your performance bar the only measurement that truly matters?

Step 1: Every Sunday, map out your week. Every Sunday evening Jim sits down with his list of important objectives for the month and year. Those goals inform the upcoming week and help keep him on track. While long-range goals may not be urgent, they are important, and if you aren’t careful, the important can easily be pushed aside by the urgent. Then he looks at his calendar for the week. He knows what times are blocked out by meetings, etc. Then he looks at what he wants to accomplish and slots those tasks into his to-do list. The key is to create structure and discipline for your week. Otherwise you’ll let things happen to you instead of making things happen. Otherwise you’ll let “urgent” push aside what is truly important.

Step 2: Actively block out task time. You already schedule meetings and appointments. Go a step further and block out time to complete specific tasks. Slot periods for “Write new proposal” or “Craft presentation” or “Review and approve marketing materials.” If you don’t proactively block out that time, those tasks will slip. Or those tasks will get interrupted. Or you’ll lose focus. Whatever the reason, important tasks will never be completed.

He always had more items on his to-do list than he could accomplish, and that turned his to-do list into a wish list.

Assigning realistic time frames forces you to prioritize. Assigning realistic time frames also helps you stay focused.

Step 4: Default to thirty-minute meetings. Whoever invented the one-hour default in calendar software wasted millions of people-hours. Most subjects can be handled in thirty minutes. Many can be handled in fifteen minutes—especially if everyone who attends knows ahead of time that the meeting will last only fifteen minutes.

Step 5: Stop multitasking.

Even though you’re only doing mindless stuff, still, you’re distracted. And that makes you less productive. Multitasking is a personal-productivity killer. Don’t try to do two things sort of well. Do one thing really, really well.

Step 6: Obsess about leveraging “edge” time.

Look at your day. Identify the downtimes. Then schedule productive things you can do during that time. Call it “edge time”—because using it well can create a major productivity edge.

Step 7: Track your time. Once you start tracking your time, you’ll be amazed by how much time you spend doing stuff that isn’t productive.

Step 8: Be thoughtful about lunch.

Say you take an hour for lunch each day; that’s five hours a week. Be thoughtful about how you spend all those hours. You don’t have to work, but you should make whatever you do work for you.

Step 9: Protect your family time.

Step 10: Start every day right. Jim exercises first thing in the morning, partly to stay fit but also because exercise is energizing. Research shows that moderate aerobic exercise can improve your mood for up to twelve hours—so why not exercise first thing and take advantage of being in a good mood for the rest of the day? Research also shows that exercise boosts energy; why not take advantage of a natural energy surge when you probably need it the most?

QUICK SIDETRACK: HOW TO HAVE THE MOST PRODUCTIVE MIND-SET EVER

Step 1: Stop making excuses for doing less. Norman Mailer said, “Being a real writer means being able to do the work on a bad day.”

If you want to succeed, you can’t make excuses. Forge ahead. Establishing great habits takes considerable time and effort. Success and achievement are habits, and it’s incredibly easy to instantly create a bad habit by giving in, even just once. Plus, the moment you make an excuse for doing less is the moment you stop the virtuous cycle of motivation in its tracks. Without achievement, there is no motivation. There are just excuses.

Step 2: Stop letting disapproval, or even scorn, stand in your way. Work too hard, strive too hard, appear to be too ambitious, try to stand out from the crowd . . . It’s a lot easier, and much more comfortable, to reel it in so that you fit in. Pleasing the (average-performing) crowd is something you simply can’t worry about. (You may think about it, but then you have to keep pushing forward. And yes, I know, that’s hard. I struggle with it too.) To succeed, hear the criticism, take the shots, endure the laughter or derision or even hostility—and stick to measuring yourself and your efforts by your own standards. Seemingly every successful person has faced tremendous criticism and rejection. Stephen King’s first book was rejected by thirty different publishers. Soichiro Honda flunked his interview with Toyota and decided to make scooters. Lucille Ball was told by acting teachers to try another profession. If you’re trying to do something different—if you’re trying to be different—other people will think you’re odd. That’s okay. Do what you want to do. That’s the only way to achieve what you want to achieve.

Step 3: Stop letting fear hol...

Anyone hoping to achieve great things gets nervous. Anyone trying to achieve great things gets scared. To succeed, you don’t have to be braver than other people; you just need to find the strength to keep moving forward. Fear is paralyzing, but action creates confidence and self-assurance.

Step 4: Stop waiting for inspiration.