On the “progress principle,” how we measure meaning, and the second hand in motion
December 20, 2018
Dear Eva,
Who are you without the doing? This was the premise of a podcast I stumbled upon recently, and I have been pondering it ever since. There is certainly a lot packed into that question that hits right at home for me. As you and I have talked about, there is an emphasis on DOING that runs in my blood. My maternal grandmother was so task-oriented that she would literally hang up on people on the phone once she had covered whatever topic she called them to cover. To this day, my own mother rarely sits down without a notebook and pen to write lists or brainstorm, even when friends or family are sitting there with her. I am not quite so extreme, but I get a lot of meaning in life from what I do with my time.
This week I finished a business book called The Progress Principle that confirmed that my family and I are not alone in this. The authors, who are both business school professors, did a massive research project tracking the mindset of employees at a wide variety of organizations over an extended period of time. They found that the single most important factor in employee motivation and emotional wellbeing was whether they felt like they were making a valuable contribution to something meaningful. Interestingly, the definition of meaningful for these employees was extremely broad. It didn’t mean they were necessarily working on endeavors that were changing the world. In fact, most of them were not. It basically just meant they were making steady progress toward clearly defined goals.
This reminded me again of Jonah learning to play the piano. Small, steady progress at something — anything! — can be so meaningful to humans. This must be what motivates so many of us to run marathons. It must be why there is nothing more steadying than a course syllabus to mark the time while you’re in school. It is surely why so many of us write something on a to-do list even after we accomplished it, just so we get the pleasure of crossing it off. (Don’t tell me you haven’t done that!)
It is funny and even a little inspiring to think maybe that is all it really takes for us to feel motivated and engaged in our work. I guess it also helps explain how so many smart, good people can spend their entire careers doing jobs that are designed to do the the moral equivalent of selling more widgets. The Progress Principle was written with this context in mind: it is trying to advise managers in traditional companies how to help their subordinates feel like they are making progress at their work in order to make them happier, and therefore more productive, employees. But as the notion of a single J-O-B becomes increasingly less common in our economy, it is interesting to think about how the “progress principle” applies to our lives. I have a single, traditional job myself, but working remotely from my home makes me realize very viscerally that my time spent working during the day is really just time in my life. I guess what I am getting at is — I wonder how much this notion of making progress at something is tied to how fulfilled we are in our lives more generally?
This brings me back to who we are without the doing. I can see why we should not define our entire identities by what we do versus who we are. But is it really wrong to measure the meaning in our lives by whether we fill the bulk of the time within it by making a contribution to something or moving something forward or changing something in some way?
Until next week,
Yours,
Sarah
Dear Sarah,
As I was thinking on my letter to you for this week I looked back at our exchange from last week, and it felt like there was a third person with us, Eva-from-last-week. I feel, if not completely different, much more settled and serene this week. What is the story? Seven days, a wisp of time in many ways. It made me think about how one of the things I love most about writing, and about writing letters with you, is the feeling of getting things out of my system and onto the page. It’s like a science experiment, or the removal of some curious vestigial organ, or, on some days, like a bit of a throw-up, and when it’s out you feel better, if a bit sweaty, and you can call a spade a spade and get on with it.
I also spent some time thinking about how last week I really did need a snack, and it really did make a difference. Then I started to think about other changeable or moody body moments. I’ve learned not to press myself to think too hard about anything for the first 30 minutes or so when I wake up, because at that time everything external feels like an intrusion, an offense, a bad idea, an impossibility. Be kind to your waking self, coming out of the cocoon of night. It is just trying to protect you (it) from harm. I will let myself look at words, magazines and the like, but it’s mean to look at email right away. Better to capture the last floating sleep thoughts and bits of song and look at the weather for a moment.
Another body moment — if you’re foggy or having trouble deciding, go out for a walk, no matter the weather, or just stand up. I’d say we’re on the same page about this. The body in motion knows different things than the contemplative sitting body. As I was thinking earlier today about the ways it feels different to be alive all the time depending on different foods or moods or sleep or relative humidity or level of hydration — I started humming a tune and then I was thinking about the tune, and it was Tina Turner singing “What’s love got to do with it?” and I was thinking about the next line, which always struck me as the most important bit: “What’s love but a second hand in motion?” Those are almost the lyrics — I think I didn’t understand what a “second-hand emotion” might be, and maybe I still don’t, and so it didn’t occur to me that those were the real lyrics — but as I interpreted it I thought the song was spot-on about something. A second hand in motion, always ticking on, moving on, moving around the face of the clock, never in one place for long, always on the move, changing literally one moment to the next. I also don’t think this is exactly how I perceive love — but it made perfect sense as a way that one could think about love. Even when you love someone deeply there can be changing moments of feeling, little highs and lows and neutrals and tiny ticks and clicks along the way. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Another way of looking at it could be like when you’re looking at wave forms, the lines representing wave forms, and the waves might occupy the same space but never intersect, or they might criss-cross back and forth over each other, or they might loop back and forth like a flat view of DNA, ballooning and cinching. So, the idea of the second hand made good sense. Things are always moving and changing, moods are up and down and hydrated and dehydrated, and the second hand ticks through like a thread binding it all together. Thanks, Tina.
Looking back on your letter and thinking about Pico Iyer’s definition of happiness as absorption, forgetting yourself, I think too about the good side to seeing yourself and knowing yourself, remembering yourself. I feel pleased when I realize that what seems like a bigger problem is just my body needing something, a bit of fresh air or a glass of water. You want to see yourself some of the time, and not look right at yourself at the other times, in the middle of a performance or a joke or the recitation of an idea. I wonder if I’m circling back too much on myself, what I’ve already written? Funny enough, if we sent these letters to each other in the mail I would only have yours and never mine, and I wouldn’t be able to recall or reference what I’d said the last time around, only the essences. Now, instead, I can see what we both wrote last week, and I can carry the thread, or worry back over the beads of the thing, turning them in my hands as I look again.
So, it’s a more peaceful week for me, even in the midst of a busy time. Listen to the body, get things onto the page, follow the second hand in motion.
Your friend,
Eva