If you decide the goal is worth pursuing, here is some more motivation-related information  to consider: some great researchers (Drs. Edward Deci and Richard Ryan) have found a link between intrinsic motivation and three factors: perceived competence, autonomy and relatedness.  The more one has of these three factors, the more likely it is that one will regularly feel motivated to do something.  Here are some practical things to do to increase your competence, autonomy and relatedness in relation to goals that you would like to experience more motivation for:

• Competence: goal set in a way that challenges you, but does not overwhelm you.  If you find yourself overwhelmed, you may wish to set smaller goals until you feel more competent.  When smaller goals are too easy, move to larger goals.  For example, if finishing one large task feels like it is too much, you may wish to goal-set to finish 1/10 of the task every day until it is completed.
• Autonomy: give yourself as many choices as possible.  If you are feeling “locked in” to certain goals, goal-set in ways that provide you with more freedom.  For example, if you goal-set to run 5 miles every week, you may wish to increase autonomy by goal-setting to run, bike or swim every week.  That way, you have a choice regarding your weekly fitness-related goal.
• Relatedness: surround yourself with people who support your goals.  If your goals connect you to important others in your life, you are more likely to feel motivation to achieve them.  You may wish to seek out people who will support your goal and/or will pursue that goal with you.  For example, if you want to become a better leader, you may wish to recruit a group of people who you feel will genuinely support you in this endeavor.

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For example, the goal “Talk with John for one hour a week” could be changed to: “Talk with John for between 15-60 minutes per week depending on my time constraints.”  This way, you will be more likely to be able to achieve the goal even if you only have 15 minutes instead of the normal 60 minutes during a given week.

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For example, the goal “Complete an important project” could be broken down to: “Place project-related materials close to my desk” and “Read one chapter a week on how to complete this project in high quality ways.”  This way, you will have more access to materials and information related to your goals, making them more likely to be achieved.

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If enjoyment is lacking for any desired activity, you can do many things to increase enjoyment, including:

• cutting large goals into smaller ones,
• listening to enjoyable music while pursuing goals,
• pursuing goals in more enjoyable environments,
• asking enjoyable others to pursue goals with you, or
• change things up from time to time.

For example, the goal “Complete an important project” could be modified for enjoyment like this: “Work on this important project for 1 hour a day in the park with my good friend John.  If John is unavailable, listen to my favorite music while working.”

The more enjoyable components you add to goal-pursuit, the more likely it is you will experience high-quality achievement (and increased life satisfaction in general - a very nice additional perk!).

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1. Identifying which sorts of support you want for different sorts of goals (and what sort of social interaction you do not want as well). There are many types of social support, including actual physical/financial assistance, specific advice, emotional support and a feeling of being involved in a common mission with others.
2. Asking people for the specific kinds of support that you want for specific goals (and to avoid social interactions that drain energy that could be used for achievement).  It may be helpful to ask for specific advice for one goal, emotional support for another and ask others to actually participate in another goal with you.  On the other hand, it may be helpful to ask others to avoid doing so with other goals (and to minimize time with people who do not honor your social support requests as much as possible).

For example: the goal “Complete an important project” could be modified for increased effective social support like this: “Ask John for advice on how to complete my project, then complete the project using the portions of his advice that I deem helpful.”  Or (if John regularly gives you advice that is not helpful or drains you in some way) you might set a Social Support goal like this: “Work on my project weekly in an area where I am not likely to be interrupted.”

The more effective types of social support you utilize (and the more you minimize unhelpful social interactions), the more likely it is you will experience high-quality achievement (and in some cases, strengthened relationships with others).

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My team and I spent about 2 years researching the difference between wishing and doing. During our investigation, it became apparent that no one is either a doer or a wisher. During the course of almost every day, all of us do some things we want to do and all of us also spend some time simply wishing we could do other things. Even if it is only eating when hungry or using the restroom when necessary, everyone does something on a regular basis. On the other hand, we did not encounter one person who did not have something that they wished they did more often; some wised they were more efficient at work or that they were better at doing things related to leadership excellence - others wished they exercised more or spent more time with loved ones.

It quickly became apparent that, since we all do and wish from time to time, the trick is not to become a “doer.”  Instead, it may make more sense to (a) identify the factors that influence us to do the things we want to do more often, then (b) become more skilled at putting these factors to work for us (and others in our lives) on a daily basis. At the end of our 2 year-long study, we feel as though we were able to shed some light on how to do this.  Five factors that strongly differentiate between wishing and doing are listed below along with some brief explanations:

1. Perception of enough time to do what we wish to do. We tend to only attempt to do what we believe we have time to do - and find all kinds of ways to avoid what we do not think we will have time to do.  Ironically, many people report that they often find between 20-40 hours every week that they could have used to do more of what they wanted to do.  Clearly, perception of time availability is not always reality.  We normally have much more time than we perceive to do what we wish - if we are willing to stop doing certain things we do not want to do as much! Doing fewer less important things increases our time perception - and doing levels go up as our perception of time increases.  Click here for ideas on how to increase time perception.
2. Motivation to do what we wish to do. Wishing without doing is often associated with an inability to perceive powerful pay-offs for doing certain things on a consistent basis.  When individuals are trained in the art of internalizing more of their motivation, they often find themselves actually doing many more things than they used to only wish they could do.  This is because internal motivation is the only kind of motivation that is completely under our control - if we depend completely on outside influences to motivate us, our doing is under the control of these sources.  This often leaves people in a state of “wishing” that someone else would come to motivate them to “do” more.  Click here for ideas on how to increase motivation.
3. Accessibility to necessary materials and training. Wishing is also associated with having less access to information and materials related to activities we wish we would do than one has for the activities that tend to get done in our lives.  People who become more skilled at attaining these resources (rather than simply wishing they had them or that someone else would provide them) often find themselves moving from wishing to doing more and more frequently.  Click here for ideas on how to increase accessibility.
4. Enjoyment of the process (not just the outcome) of doing what we wish to do. Doing is linked with a certain level of enjoyment for getting the small things on the path to achievement done, while wishing is associated with dreading these small things (and wishing that they were already done for us).  Many people are surprised to find out that enjoyment is often more under their control than they realize - most activities can be enjoyed more by putting enjoyment-enhancing mechanisms into play.  For example, the book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience is an excellent resource for some ideas on how to enjoy activities more.  Click here for ideas on how to increase enjoyment.
5. Social support for consistently doing what we wish to do. The more that the important people in our lives encourage us to do what we wish, the more we do. On the other hand, we tend to wish more and do less if these individuals are not supportive of our doing.  A key here is becoming aware of the different types of social support and how to consistently recruit our favorite kinds of support into our lives (and minimizing our time with those who do not provide us with our favorite types of support).  Click here for ideas on how to increase social support.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Since completing this research, we have moved on to investigating Wishing Vs. Doing at a team and organizational level.  To be a part of this research  (and to find out what frequently blocks teams from crossing the “Wishing-Doing Gap”), click here and fill out our free 7-item Execution Excellence Audit.

I hope this article was interesting to you.  If it was, please feel free to leave a comment below this article or forward it along to others who may find it of use.  I look forward to hearing from you!

Indeed.

Another of my favorite thinkers, Rick Maurer, recently posted on this same topic after reading an article in the Washington Post about “Fat School”. Rick is another national consultant with some outstanding ideas. He’s also, like me, influenced strongly by Gestalt principle of change. If you haven’t checked out Rick’s blog Change Management News: Change Without Migraines ™ you should. Here’s Rick’s post:

The article in The Washington Post (5/20/08) titled Fat School got me thinking. The story profiles a residential program for overweight children. The cost: $6250 a month with a four-month minimum stay.

Although the school presents high short-term success rates, and a few anecdotal reports of kids who kept the weight off for longer periods, there is no research to indicate that this approach does a better job than anything else in helping young people keep weight off. And at $6250 a month, it seems like that might be a good thing to do.

That got me thinking about change in organizations. It does strike me how easy it is to invest in something without any real indication that it works simply because the need is so great. Are parents willingness to invest so much in the lives and health of their children any different from leaders who spend millions on Business Process Reengineering when the success rate of such projects is so low? But, I’ll save that rant for another day.

I am most interested in the lack of support for these kids after the program ends. As Anjali Jain, a pediatrician at Children’s National Medical Center said in the article, “If their families don’t change, [students] are going to be back to their old ways of doing things” once they return home.

What many changes fail to take into account is what it will take to support these changes once the program goes live. Here are a few questions that I think are worth considering. What current programs and practices will vie for attention and resources of this new initiative? And what are we going to do about that? How will we support people as they take on the new tasks? (e.g. rewards, clear directions, training). And speaking of people, change brings shifts in power. How are we going to deal with potential turf wars? How will our customers and suppliers react to these changes? How will we make the transition easier for them? And the list goes on.

While organizations are willing to invest a lot in the front end of a change, they often don’t put money and time in supporting the roll-out. They’re willing to pay $6250 a month for tuition, but don’t want to actually change their own habits once the kids return to the land of Ho Hos.

It seems 2000 years after Artistole, we’re still in the habit of making the same mistakes — ignoring habit. Thanks to Rick for continuing to be a voice of real change. If only there were a system designed to help support the habits of success, day-in and day-out, so we get the most out of these investments in training (after great consultants like Rick help us make change, something that will help us keep it)…. ohh wait, there is one… and it costs a lot less than $6k a month.

Do you own a swiss army knife or know someone who does?  They’re a great tool, because they can do lots and lots of things.  Check out this swiss army kife. How neat is this?!#@  It’s fun just thinking about all the things this can do.  I love the newest electronic inventions and cool contraptions.   My wife would tell you the name Brian Mistler may actually be Latin “lover-of-gadgets”.  Maybe you share my affection for new toys and power tools.   And maybe, if you had a chance to pick up one of these, you would jump at it, and throw your little 9 feature knife away in a heartbeat…?  But, that could be a big a mistake.

Imagine having the “perfect tool” for any problem that could possible arrive.  You’d be the hero in the office, and the savior around home…. whatever comes up, you’re prepared.NOW…. imagine what that tool would look like, and imagine carrying this thing around in your pocket all day.  There’s no way, right? I mean… I suppose there IS  a way.  All those success seminars taught me to respond to “that’s impossible” with “anything is possible”.  In fact, sometimes I see really well trained success-seminar graduates respond “anything is possible” without thinking.  But, it’s not a question of possibility… it’s a question of desirability.  Sure I can, but do I want to?

Purposeful Doing requires Purposeful Choosing

I was about to write pages about all the implications of and kinds of “purposeful choosing” there is — about all the decisions in life where it’s important to make a purposeful decision. But, I decided against it for a reason — I purposefully chose not to. My reason is that if I had listed 100 examples you probably wouldn’t read them all… and you might even get overwhelmed and not read any (if I’m wrong, e-mail me and I’ll send you a few more examples!). Or, going for a 100, I may never have finished it. An article in the hand is worth 10 great half-finished ones on my hard-drive. Here’s another cliché I love, “killing two Birds with one stone.” It’s a great idea. Killing 100 Birds with one stone isn’t a cliché for good reason — because the stone would have to be SO huge, it becomes impractical. Or, the moment so perfect, you and I will never see it.

Don’t Diworsify

I believe it was mutual fund manager Peter Lynch who used to talk about portfolio “Diworsification”. People get so excited by so many different things — or so afraid of risk — that they add more and more things to their portfolio until all of their knowledge and insight has been diluted. Mathematically this is almost certain to end in regression to the mean — that is, in mediocrity in the middle. By all means, try them out, and make sure you know what you’re getting! This is purposeful choosing. And, when you’re ready, buy one. When I buy a 7 feature pocket knife, I’m saying, “THESE are the 7 features that are important to me,” and at the same time “all these others are less important”. This is purposeful choosing — both deciding AND BUYING AND PUTTING IN MY POCKET (or your purse if you prefer). You see, if had said, “these 7 are important… but, so are those 10… and that other knife that does a different 7 things”…. I would either have ended up leaving them all in the store because I couldn’t pick one “the paralysis of analysis” Dr. King used to call it, OR, I would have bought them all… if I buy them all, I can’t carry them all everyday unless I want to be EXHAUSTED (and I know many leaders who are exhausted for this reason). So, I pick one one day and one another. When I problem comes up, I hope I have the right one in my pocket… but, I have to remember which one I have and probably remember how to use it, and chances are I’ll have the wrong one the wrong day, etc. etc. You get my point? You’ve got to pick a knife, buy it, and put it in your pocket. This is commitment.

Commitment: Rethinking Won’t and Can’t

Once it’s in your pocket, amazing things start to happen. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said, “at the moment of commitment, the universe conspires to assist you.” And, this is not too hard to understand. You’ve got one knife that you’ve chosen well. It can’t do everything, but what it does do it does well. And, you’ve made friends with it — you’ve committed to carrying it each day, and so when it’s needed you’re ready. You’re an expert at its use, and you’re full of energy because you don’t have a pocket full of metal.

When someone asks for a flip out size 3 light bulb remover, or a Russian to Pilipino currency converter, you say “I don’t have that — I can’t”. And, you go back to the business of doing what you do have — what you love, what you’re good at, and what you have energy for. Not being able to do certain things is the flip side of commitment (just as, in marriage, restrictions on outside dating come with the vows). If you’re married, and someone asks you on a date, you say, “I can’t”. I can’t is “I won’t” taken to the level of commitment.

For people who are stuck, mindlessly caught in a commitment they need to get out of, helping them to go from “I can’t” to “I won’t” (realizing it’s a choice) frees them up. For people caught in diworsification — in under commitment and frenzied doing, “I can’t” can offer the same freedom. I can’t can be a sign of purposeful choice.

Commitment, Creativity, and Flexibility

I’ve seen mission statements that have way too many implicit objectives. When an employees asks, which do I work on?”, the leader says, “do it all”. That’s unreasonable, I think, and I’ve never seen it work. I can’t give you a magic number (here my commitment to accuracy prevents me from saying X # of core objectives is IDEAL). You see, that number varies for people, and depending on how much the objectives overlap. A knife that has a beer bottle opener and a soda bottle opener is easier to manage than one that has a wine opener and a shovel. Dr.

Brian Higley and often suggest leaders start with 1-5 objectives, then move on to 1-5 more when the first 1-5 are going well. This seems like a reasonable number to start with to me. The bottom-line secret is to choose — set a clear mission statement and objectives (so you’re not playing whack-a-mole the whole time — see this article), commit to it, and then develop goals aligned with those objectives (see this article) your team can agree on, and then execute goals according to your priorities. Sure you can be ready for change. But, change is half of it. The key to preparedness for change is stability. In order to be ready for change, you have to have clear priorities about what you want to keep the same. Be creative in implementation, but don’t sacrifice commitment.

The 1000 feature knife represents a classic dream for many people — in many ways it’s part of The American Dream — having it all! I want a boat in the Virgin Islands, and an apartment in New York… I’d also like a house in Maine, and maybe a cottage in Northern Itlay…  who doesn’t, right? But, once I’ve got all these things, where will I spend my holiday? I might be able to have it all, but I can’t have it all right now. I’ve got to prioritize.   And, when values are at odds, I’ve got to get the priorities right.   Of course, I can’t tell you what your priorities should be… I don’t always know what mine are.  But, when I take the time to get clear about by priorities, and make sure my goals and actions are in alignment with my priorities, things work best.   You can have almost ANYTHING you want. You just can’t have EVERYTHING you want. Prioritize.   Be purposeful. Pick the tool (and the career, and the life) you love, execute with excellence, and get BAD at all the other stuff.   You can pick more than one thing for sure, but you can’t pick TOO many things. Multi-function tools are great because they offer flexibility and creativity.  And, they’re an even BETTER tool because they CAN’T do everything. That’s right, CAN’T is more than a 4 letter word… developing priorities, and committing to them is the secret of filling your pockets with money and success instead of oversized multi-function tools.

I was reading about a theory of life satisfaction that made the claim that, in essence, all people want 3 things from life: (1) to be, (2) to know and (3) to enjoy.  As I thought about all of the journal articles I’ve read, experts I’ve spoken with, and experiences I’ve had in my 15 years in this field, this sounded like a pretty reasonable claim to me.  So, I began to think a lot about these three categories and how they might relate to not only a better life, but also a better team and/or business.

1. To Be: One of the most common complaints I hear from clients is that they feel as though they are not allowed to be who they feel they really are or say what they really think on the job.  They believe that if their bosses heard what they really thought, they would be at best snubbed or ostracized - and at worst fired or demoted.  As a leader myself, I realize that it can sometimes be quite challenging to hear someone say they believe I am wrong - especially when they are younger or “less experienced” than I am.  However, after reading books like The 7 Habits, Good to Great and The Lexus and the Olive Tree, I became very interested in actually rewarding disagreement with me - and have found that the entire team is now “thinking with” me instead of always trying to think how to make what I say needs to happen a reality.  I feel I’ve received 3 very important payoffs for this practice: (1) more and more great ideas are generated in our meetings - many by people other than our leadership team, (2) fewer and fewer bad ideas make it into our strategic plan because in order to do so, they must stand up to the scrutiny of many individuals instead of a few leaders and (3) more people stay with our team for longer periods of time - even when they have higher-paying opportunities elsewhere.   I think it’s important to note that item 3 includes me and some of the other leaders at our organization - we have all turned down numerous (sometimes more financially lucrative) opportunities with other teams in order to keep leading our own.  I have heard some of them say that the reason for this is our strong emphasis on trying to allow them to be who they are - and plug them into jobs based on who they are/what they love to do rather than who I would like them to be.  I could not agree more, personally - it is the number 1 reason I started my own firm: to be who I am as much as possible.
2. To Know: Another common complaint I hear from clients (and had myself before I began leading my own organization) is that they often do not feel as though they know what is expected from them - or how to accomplish what is expected.  As someone who gets the opportunity to interact with hundreds of college students every year, I often enjoy lively debates with students about whether or not our eductation system is facilitating our natural enthusiasm for both gaining knowledge and asking questions that enhance one’s clarity about how to do a good job in work and life.  What these students often conclude is that our educational system sometimes falls short in this area - and often serves to deaden their natural enthusiasm for knowing.  The result?  People who get into the work force who have been convinced that knowing is actually a burden instead of a major contributor to life and job satisfaction (they often think that they are lucky to no longer “have” to read books anymore, for example).  Our firm has found that 2 things are very important to re-awaken this natural desire to know: (1) teach people how to create clarity - both from a leadership standpoint and from the employee’s perspective and (2) show them how to get back in touch with an enthusiasm for knowing how to continuously be better at what they do.  We have found that this is a strong 1-2 punch in terms of releasing individual’s natural desire to know what is expected and continuously learn how to deliver it in more and more impressive ways (instead of simply getting enough done to keep the boss off one’s back).  We’ve found that helping people to discover what they love to do and create SMART Goals related to that passion is often very helpful here - and that the need to motivate someone externally decreases the more someone is again enthusiastic about “knowing” how to do something well and what is expected of them.
3. To Enjoy: I think this one is a “no brainer.”  From the boardroom to the classroom to the living room, people often have the same complaint: I don’t enjoy my work, my courses and/or my life as much as I would like to.  On the other hand, it seems that many people are actually encouraged to feel guilty if they are enjoying themselves too much on the job or at home.  “You must not be working hard or long enough - or not be dedicated enough to this job if you are consistently enjoying yourself,” is a statement that they often believe they will hear - or even believe themselves - if they begin enjoying themselves too much on the job.  My experience and research in this area (along with many others, including Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - author of the classic book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience) has led me to 2 conclusions: (1) many of us have not been trained in how to enjoy our jobs and our lives and (2) many people are victims of being punished for showing too much enjoyment in their lives.  We think it is important to train our team members in how to make their jobs and lives more enjoyable (yes, there are many proven techniques of making things more enjoyable - I’ve found that many people are not aware of the power they have over their own enjoyment levels).  We also believe it is valuable for us to encourage them to goal-set in ways that challenge them enough to keep them energetic and useful to their team, but to avoid setting goals in ways that deaden their enjoyment levels.  It is a tough balancing act (enjoyment lies between boredom and anxiety), but one we’ve found to be critical to an energetic team that consistently looks forward to making things happen.

It is probably obvious how these three factors can improve life satisfaction, but I think it is often not as obvious how they can positively enhance one’s team or organization.  I thought a summary of my observations of how, being, knowing, and enjoying positively impact teams and businesses:

1. Encouraging others to be themselves can enhance team-wide idea-generation, motivation, confidence, trust, and loyalty.
2. Helping people to rediscover their natural love of knowing/learning can energize your team to become clearer about your expectations and more enthusiastic about discovering how to deliver these expectations in a constantly-improving way.
3. A focus on job and life enjoyment can serve to further enhance the factors discussed above and create a culture that people look forward to being a part of.

In the end, what’s the return on investment?  To me, I’ve found that a focus on these three areas allows a business to become a powerful cycle of both success and satisfaction - for leaders, employees, clients - and a small section of the world.  If team success can be linked to individual being, knowing, and enjoying, it means that your business can become a mechanism of enhancing your profits while encouraging job satisfaction and personal growth - something that everyone involved with your organization can be proud of.

Just a couple of thought I had as I read about these three life-enhancing variables - I look forward to your thoughts on this article!

So, instead of writing/talking about it more, our team has created a system to assist leaders in actually doing the things that will help them to increase their Self-Mastery. We call this the “Self-Mastery Boost Support System (SBSS).”  For a free sample of the first 15-minute assessment in this system, click here and follow the instructions carefully.

To learn more about this system, feel free to contact me at BrianH@TBB2Excellence.com.

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