The Grind Needs a Guide
Month five of an eight-month project can be a little miserable.
Nothing is wrong. There's no crisis to rise to, nobody to rescue, no adrenaline anywhere in sight. Just the same work again today, another day grinding with three months left on the clock.
I've spent a good deal of my life in the middle of the project. My method was always the same: grit the teeth, put the head down, push through. Which works well, right up until the mornings it doesn't, and then you're sitting there at seven o'clock wondering what has my life come to!!
Turns out I was looking for fuel in the wrong place.
The five-minute study
Adam Grant looked at a university call centre. Cold calls all day, asking alumni for money, getting hung up on. About as grinding as work gets.
The money paid for student scholarships. The callers had never met a student. Never once.
So Grant walked one in. Five minutes, sitting with the team, telling them what the scholarship had done for him. Then he left and everyone went back to work.
A month later that group was on the phone 142% longer and raising 171% more. Same script, same lists, same money, same desks.
Here's my favourite part, and nobody ever mentions it. In this line of research, telling people what they personally got out of the job — the pay, the skills, the experience — moved the needle not at all. Nothing. Flat line.
So there are two ways to motivate a human being, and one of them has been quietly failing for years.
You can push yourself a long way on discipline. You'll go considerably further carrying somebody.
Don't look for a purpose. Look for a person.
Fair objection: grand, but scholarships are easy. You're restructuring a book. Nobody's writing you a thank-you letter.
Right — so don't go hunting for a noble cause. You won't find one, and you'll feel daft looking. Find a person instead. There's nearly always one, and usually closer than you'd think.
The analyst who'll run this on her own next year because you're doing it properly now. The client whose retirement is riding on you not fudging it. The three people who keep their seats if this lands.
Or your family, if that's the honest answer. It usually is, and there's no shame in it. Say it out loud rather than pretending the work is its own reward. The work is not its own reward. It's Tuesday.
Then do the bit that actually makes it stick: put yourself in front of them. Five minutes was enough in the study. A phone call, a coffee, a visit. A face beats a reminder on a Post-it every time.
And it's the other thing too
One more thing and I'll let you get on.
The same move that gets you through month five is the one that stops the whole career feeling hollow at the end of it. People who organise thirty years around what they're getting tend to arrive at the top feeling oddly flat. More of it doesn't help. Wrong tank.
Same work. Same hours. Same Tuesday. The only difference is who you were thinking of while you did it.
The journey is your goal — and it's a far easier walk when you know why you're on it.
Four things to try this week
One name. For the worst thing on your desk, write down the person on the other end of it. A name, not a category.
Go and see them. Five minutes. A call will do. Contact beats thinking about contact.
Do it for your team. They're further from the beneficiary than you are. Bring the client in and let them hear it first-hand.
Stop selling the perks. To them or to yourself. The evidence says it doesn't work.
Nobody gets through month five on discipline alone. Find out who you're doing it for, and go and look at them.
Sources: Grant, Campbell, Chen, Cottone, Lapedis & Lee, “Impact and the art of motivation maintenance,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes (2007) — 142% greater persistence and 171% greater performance a month after a five-minute meeting with one beneficiary; related field work by Grant on task significance, including the lifeguard studies (2008), where information about personal benefits produced no significant change. Effects vary by person and setting — take them as directional.
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