KF# 37. Drives Vision and Purpose Archives - Page 2 of 4 - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis
Bryan, welcome to the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Bryan Gillette
Well, it’s nice to be on the show, Pete. It’s good to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to talk to you about epic performance and one epic achievement I have to ask about right away. So, you ran eight marathons back-to-back within a 76-hour window, sleeping for less than two hours during this feat. First of all, is that accurate?

Bryan Gillette
It is accurate. Yeah, it’s 205 miles around Lake Tahoe. So, Lake Tahoe is one of the premiere high-elevation lakes in the Sierra mountains, and there’s a 200-mile race around it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, you did that. Well, congratulations.

Bryan Gillette
Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
That is astounding, almost unbelievable so I had to confirm that we’re getting the claim correct, first of all.

Bryan Gillette
You’ve got your information correct.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I guess we’re going to get into some of the core principles for how such epic achievements unfold. But, maybe for this specific tale, could you share with us a key thing you did before or during this event that you think made all the difference for you?

Bryan Gillette
There were a number of things, but if we just focus on one thing, it’s making sure I’m training well and I’m prepared. People often ask what’s the hardest part of running 200 miles, and they’ll think, “Oh, the hardest part is getting to the finish line.” In this case, the hardest part is getting to the start line. Getting to the start line prepared, getting to the start line healthy and injury-free. It’s the nine months leading up to an event like that that’s the hard part.

Pete Mockaitis
It only takes nine months to prep for that?

Bryan Gillette
Well, it takes a lot longer when I started. So, nine months prior to it, I had completed a 100-mile run in 24 hours so I was in pretty good shape when I started my training. So, for the nine months leading up to it, I started that in really good shape, so I started out with a really good base. And then I spent the next nine months really focusing on that one run.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, this is not a running or fitness podcast, but I just got to ask. How does one remain injury-free? Because it seems like I’ve always got something that acts up. Even when I start cranking about five miles every other day for a few months, something happens, “Oh, my IT band is doing whatever,” and it’s I’ll just like disappear for weeks or months. So, how is that even done?

Bryan Gillette
I wish I had the magic answer to that one and could clearly say, “This is how you stay injury-free.” I can tell you what I have done for all of my events, mainly all of my running events because I’m also a cyclist as well, is if all I did was run in order to prepare for the 200-mile run, I would not have been able to stay injury-free. So, I ran, I bicycled, and so I would mix it up a little bit.

And when I would notice something was starting to hurt, I would kind of assess, “What’s going on? Do I need a new a pair of shoes?” because you’re going through shoes quite quickly in something like that, and really understanding your body well. And I think it applies to everything. Do you understand kind of what’s working, what’s not working? How do you tweak things? And if you’ve got an injury, how do you stop and try to do something different so you don’t over-injure it even more?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, thank you. Well, now, let’s get into some broader lessons.

Bryan Gillette
All right.

Pete Mockaitis
Your book EPIC Performance: Lessons from 100 Executives and Endurance Athletes on Reaching Your Peak, ooh, that’s exactly the sort of thing we love to hear. There’s a lot of lessons but could you kick us off with a particularly shocking, surprising, fascinating, counterintuitive, dopamine-releasing discovery that you unearthed when you dug into this research quest?

Bryan Gillette
So, I spoke to a hundred people, and most of them were C-level folks, and about 75% were C-level folks, and then about 25% were ultra-distance endurance athletes, so somebody that has done an IRONMAN or equivalent, but people that…and, in many cases, the ultra-distance athletes were C-level folks.

Pete Mockaitis
And you don’t mean Cs in academic performance. You mean chief information officer, chief operating officer, chief executive officer.

Bryan Gillette
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, I’m with you.

Bryan Gillette
Yes, thank you for clarifying that, Pete. Yeah, these were CIOs, CHROs, CEOs, all that C-level work. And what surprised me the most was how humble they were. These were some very accomplished people but I thought, at some point when I identified that I want to reach, talk to a hundred people, I thought, “How many people am I going to have to ask in order to get a hundred interviews?”

And what surprised me is I only had to ask a 102 people. Only two people said no and everybody else, was they were so willing to do it, spend the time. I spent a minimum of an hour with everybody, and it was something like, “Yeah, I’ll do it.” And when I would ask them, I’d start the interview, they would often start off and, it’s like, “Why are you interviewing me, Bryan?”

And it was that humbleness that really surprised me the most. But then the other thing along those lines was that all but two people said yes. If you don’t ask somebody, if you want something and you don’t ask, the answer is going to be no. But if at least you go out and ask, and that reinforced that concept even more in my head. If you at least ask, there’s a greater possibility of you getting a yes than if you don’t ask.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now there’s maybe a whole another podcast episode here about cold outreach because I’m imagining you probably got a number of ghost replies as in no reply whatsoever as opposed to a clear no or a clear yes.

Bryan Gillette
Surprisingly, so when I went out to people, a bunch of the people I knew personally, and so I could call them up, I could send them an email, and they all responded. And then at the end of any interview, I would ask one question, it’s like, “Is there anybody else who you think I should talk to?” And they would say, “Oh, yeah, you got to talk to Marilyn.” I said, “Can you do make a connection with me? And here are some information you can send to her and make that connection,” and so, I didn’t get those ghosts.

So, I literally sent out 102 requests or called 102 people, and only the two people, of the two, one of them said, “There’s a lot of family issues I’m going through. Now is not the best time.” I said, “Okay, I get it.” And then the other person, I actually never heard from.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that is mighty impressive. And then I suppose it’s also kind of fun. It was flattering, it was like, “I wanted to figure out how one becomes an epic high-performer like you,” so that’s just…

Bryan Gillette
I mean, I agree. I teach a graduate course at the university on leadership, and one of the things that often the students will come up and we’ll be talking about career and career advice, and they’re asking me questions. And what I’ll often tell them is, “Do some informational interviews. If you’re interested in, if you want to work in nonprofit, go out and do some informational interviews.”

And most people, when you say, “Hey, Pete, can I interview you on what it means to be a podcast host?” chances are you’re going to say yes because it is very flattering to the person. So, ask people, and it’s flattering to be asked, and chances are you’re going to get a yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. Now, onto EPIC performance. Let’s hear the scoop. What is kind of the core thesis, message, big idea we should take away from this?

Bryan Gillette
Yes. So, EPIC performance, there’s five behaviors of EPIC performance. And EPIC stands for, E is what are the big things in life you envision? How do you envision those things that you want to accomplish? Not just one or two years out, but three, four, or 30, 40 years out. That’s E as envision. P is, “How do you put a plan in place in order to accomplish those big ideas?

I is, “How do you iterate to that plan so you don’t start off running 200 miles, you don’t start off running a marathon?” You start off running two miles or four miles. You don’t start off at the CEO of a company. You start off a much lower level. So, that’s iterate, “How do you work your way up?” The C is, “How do you collaborate with somebody who’s done this before?”

So, if I wanted to start my own podcast, I’d call you up and say, “Pete, what does it take to start a podcast?” And then the last one is, “How do you go out and perform it?” That’s EPIC performance. So, the performance is, “How do you deal with the hard times? How do you you get from the start line to the finish line? How do you deal with those challenges?” And then, once you’ve accomplished, you’ve reached kind of that peak, how do you think about what’s next?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, could you share with us a story of someone who did just that in terms of pushing beyond their limits, achieving something epic, and, ideally, in the professional or work context? Kind of walk us through their steps and the result they saw.

Bryan Gillette
Yeah. So, I’ve an assessment where people can assess how well they are at the five different areas. And, generally, what I found is somebody is probably really good at two of the five areas, and they know how to compensate for the other ones. So, for example, there’s a gentleman I work with, he’s one of my clients, and he’s also the CEO of this fairly decent-sized economic development arm here in California.

And he is phenomenal at envisioning things, and he can see stuff, and he works really hard to go and kind of get it accomplished. He’s not necessarily the best person to put the plan together, and he’s not necessarily the best person to iterate, but he can collaborate well and he can perform well. And so, part of it is understanding, “Where are you good at?”

And so, as I was talking about the envision part and trying to understand, you know, part of envision is understanding your why, understanding your purpose and how you can see that future. And as he’s building this business, I asked him, I said, “How do you deal with the challenges? How are you able to kind of see that future and then overcome some of the many obstacles you’ve come with?”

And he talked about, he goes, “I’m very clear on my why. I’m very clear on the purpose,” and that’s what envision is. And I said, “Where does that come from?” He goes, “Part of what I want to do with this organization is I want to be able to build up the economic arm of these 15 to 20 cities that make up this region.”

“And the reason I want to do that is because when I was a kid, I saw my dad lose his job because the economy wasn’t doing well, and the city that we were in, it was depressed. I saw him lose his job and I saw him lose that luster for life, and I never want that to happen to me or to other kids, and so that’s why I know that why really well.”

And so, that’s what that envision is, knowing that why, knowing your purpose, and being able to kind of stay focused, so when it really does get hard, you can go back to those types of situations. So, that’s one example of when somebody really understand kind of that vision and their purpose.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, then let’s walk through the whole picture then. So, envision, plan, iterate, collaborate, performance. Can we hear a little bit about the definition and some best practices within them?

Bryan Gillette
Yeah. So, envision, it’s being able to think out. Most of the time, and when I work with companies, it’s thinking about one, two, three years out. And so, what I want people to do and kind of help people get to is, “How do you think in 10, 20, 30 years out?” a little bit further. And part of that is being clear, we just chatted about the vision part, being clear about that, being clear about what your purpose is, but then also looking out, “What do you want to accomplish in 30 years instead of just looking out a couple of years?”

And often what holds people back is we think, “Oh, I can’t think out 30 years because we can’t do that. And the problem is we can’t do that today.” So, the iterate part is, “What do you have to do in order to get to that point where you can drive to that bigger goal?” So, for example, if you just go back to our marathon example, you don’t start off running a marathon.

And so, a lot of people, if you ask them, “Hey, could you run a marathon?” they would say, “No, I can’t do it.” I was like, “Okay. So, what is it you could do today to move you closer to being able to run that marathon next year or the following year?” Well, today, you can run two miles or three miles. And then next week, maybe you can run four miles. So, that’s what the iterate is.

The plan is once you know what that long-term goal is, if it is to run the marathon, “What are the steps you need to put in place in order to get there?” And then the collaborate is, “Who are the different people? Who could you learn from?” Now, you think about a lot of times, people say, “Oh, what I’m doing, somebody has never done before.”

And I talked to a lot of CEOs who started up their own company, and they never said, “Oh, what I’m doing, somebody has never done before,” because somebody has started up their own company, somebody started up and done something in a similar space. It may not be exactly what you’re doing, but learn from what they did, learn from those people’s successes, learn from their failures.

And then, lastly, is the perform, how do you go out and you do it. And that’s all about how do you persevere through the difficult times. How do you stay focused on your goal is what you’re trying to do.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, can we hear another example of a professional who achieved some awesome things, and walk us through each of those steps, how they envisioned, they planned, they iterated, they collaborated, they performed?

Bryan Gillette
So, another example on the professional side is there was a CEO who I was talking to, and early on in his career, kind of as he was coming out of college, one of the things that he wanted to do in life is he wanted to run a hunting lodge. And so, that was what he wanted his career to do.

And so, he started, and this is kind of that iterate side, he started to go out and work for hunting lodges. And as he was working for one, so it was hunting and fishing was kind of where his passions were. And so, he went and he was working for one company, and he knew that, “In order to do this, I’ve got get better at finance.” And the CEO of the company brought him in, got him involved in some of the financial aspects of the business, so he started to learn finance.

And then he started to learn kind of that customer, that front-of-the-house type of management, how do you manage the customers. So, he was building up those skills that were all going to be important when he ran his own hunting and fishing lodge. Now, what happened is he started to get into that, started to learn about finance, started to learn about marketing, started to learn about the customers and what their needs were, and he realized, “I didn’t really like managing the hunting or fishing lodges.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Bryan Gillette
And so, he had to pivot a little bit, but still, hunting and fishing, really, fishing is at his core, so he figured out, “Okay, what do I have to do differently?” Then he went to work for a large fishing manufacturer, a large outdoor kind of company that focused on fishing equipment and fishing gear, and he worked his way up in different areas, in marketing and sales. And, eventually, he became the CEO of several well-known kind of outdoor apparel companies.

So, it starts off where you start off where it’s like, “My goal is I want to do something in my career around fishing,” because that’s what was his passion, and he got into it, and he realized, “I don’t like some of these aspects but I still want to stay in the industry,” and he kind of learned the different parts of what it took to run a business and, eventually, the CEO.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that’s cool. So, there I’m hearing the iterate loud and clear with regard to, “Oh, I guess this doesn’t quite exactly the thing,” in terms of when we look at the realities of that. I’m thinking about a lot of people in their careers, they think they want to do something and then they realized that, “Oh, the reality of that is actually different than what I imagined.” Like, law is an example, “Oh, I want to be in the courtroom like the TV shows, doing dramatic persuasion of a judge or a jury,” and then they realize, “Oh, shoot, most lawyers are primarily creating documents. Huh, well.”

Bryan Gillette
Right. It’s the iterate part of that, Pete, as well as the collaborate part of that. Because if you’re going to be…if you want to be a lawyer and you’re thinking about going into law school, go out and talk to a bunch of lawyers. There are different types of law. There’s family law, there’s business law, there’s contracts, and so there are differences there, so go out and talk to those people.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely.

Bryan Gillette
And so, you may not like litigation but maybe you like contract law. And so, understanding, and then that’s all what collaborate is, go out and talk to those people, “What do they like? What do they don’t like?” And it’s also talk to the people that were successful, but talk to the people who may have had some failures to understand what they did or what they didn’t do.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I like these particular tips in terms of the do’s and don’ts when it comes to iterating and collaborating. Could you give us a few of those for each of the steps? What does great envisioning look, sound, feel like versus what are some common pitfalls and so forth within each of the steps?

Bryan Gillette
Yeah. So, great envisioning is you’re clear on what your purpose is. At the end of the day, you know what your purpose is. You’re also clear on what your values are. You’ve got to understand what’s important to you. Those people that know this, they know what’s important to them, they know where to say yes but they also know where to say no.

Great at envisioning is being able to put yourself into situations where you may be uncomfortable. And so, “How do you stretch yourself a little bit further?” is what you’re trying to accomplish. And one of the ways you know that is if you’re looking to try something new, does it make you nervous? It’s that nervous quotient I always like to focus on.

So, the way you know you’re thinking bigger, the way you know you’re pushing yourself, is because before you do it, you get nervous. And it’s not that nervous that stops you from doing anything. It’s that nervous that’s like, “Okay,” and you just kind of hold back a little bit, but, still, nervousness is a good indication that you’re stretching yourself.

Another key part of envisioning is, “Do you have some sort of strategy that allows you to write those big ideas down and you come back to that every once in a while?” So, I’m sure you’ve gotten, or your listeners have gotten ideas of, “Oh, I’d love to do X.” Do you have a place where you write that down and then maybe come back to it in a year, because maybe you’re not ready to do X?

I was talking to my kids the other day, and I said, “What are some of the things you want to do?” and one of my kids said, “I want to go on the Vomit Comet.” And if you’re not familiar with the Vomit Comet, it’s that airplane that goes up and it does a parabolic flight, and then for a short amount of time, you are experiencing weightlessness.

And I said, “Just write that down somewhere. You may not be able to do it today, but maybe in 10 years you can come back to it.” I keep a list of all the places that I want to go, all the places I want to travel. And every year, we go back and we look at that list. So, those are a couple of things for envision.

For plan, often we wait to put this big plan together before we get started, and I think the biggest thing is if you have this idea of something you want do that’s big, just do one thing no matter how small it is that moves you forward. Just do one thing in the next 72 hours, and that’s one of the things I’d encourage the guests to do. If there’s something big you’re thinking about, what one thing can you do in the next 72 hours that will move you forward with that idea? And then do something else.

We often wait to build the full-out plan before we get started, and you don’t have to. Just start moving forward now. And then, also, start to assess what obstacles and risks may be in your way. Look at the risks, write them down, figure out how you can break them down even smaller and understand that. One of the executives I talked to, he invests in a lot of the real estate in the San Francisco Bay Area where a million dollars is not going to buy you much of the house, so it’s really expensive, and at one point, he was 90% leveraged.

A lot of risks that he had going. And what he did is he took that risk and broke it down into smaller segments, and he kind of broke it down to, like, “What if I lose my job? What if I lose a tenant? Or, what if I need to do a major remodel?” He broke each of those down, or he broke those down into three components.

And that breaks the risk down into smaller components, and then you can break it down even further to understand, “Okay, how much risk is there? Where can I better manage?” Because when you think about the big picture, sometimes that’s daunting, but if you break it down into smaller chunks, you can manage it a little bit better.

With iterate, I always look at, “How do you practice with intention? How are you very focused on where you’re going to spend your time and where you’re not going to spend your time?” There was one of the executives I talked to, he’s a CHRO, so chief human resources officer, he’s also an IRONMAN, so he’s extremely busy, and he goes, “When I am looking to train for an event, I know I need about 11 hours out of the week because I can find 11 hours out of a week, and that means I have to say no to some things.”

And so, how are you looking at your calendar? How are you looking? Where are you spending your time and really assessing that, and then putting a plan in place that makes you very intentional on how you’re going to go about iterating to that? And how are you looking at data? What’s the data you need to know? If you’re doing a sports event, you’re probably looking at speed or time. If you’re looking at a business, then what are the financial data elements you ought to look at? And you don’t have to look at everything but find out those key datapoints that will indicate that you’re being successful, or indicate you’re moving in the right direction, and identify those.

With collaborate, find a few mentors, find a couple people that you can talk to, bounce ideas off, will push you. And I always like to ask folks, “Who are the mentors in your life? And do they offer a different perspective?” One of the assignments I have for folks in my class is I say, “Write down who are all the people, the mentors in your group, and then look at where they’re different. Are they different in gender? Are they different in ethnicity? Are they different in maybe marital preferences or sexual preferences? Are they different in some like business, some like education?”

Think about how different they are because you want to get different perspectives and learn from those different perspectives. And then, lastly, when we look at perform, is, “How are you really focusing on what your goal is?” And so, that takes you back to the envision, “Do you know what that goal is? Do you know what that peak is? And when the times get tough, how are you focusing on that goal and being very clear on what that goal is?”

Pete Mockaitis
And are there some best practices for refocusing on that goal?

Bryan Gillette
Yeah, it’s, first of all, you should have it written down somewhere. Have that goal written down where you can look at it, and constantly go back and evaluate, “Are we on track?” Now, I like to put some objectivity to a goal. When you think of it, we’ve often, most of us have probably heard the smart goals, “Is it specific? Is it measurable? Is it obtainable? Is it relevant? And is there time bound to it?”

And that helps put some objectiveness to your goals, and it also helps you to evaluate whether, “I’m on track or I’m not on track.” And so, the more objective, the more specific you can be with those goals, then it’s going to be easier to evaluate with whether you’re on track or you’re not on track.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Bryan, I’d love to get your take on when it comes to objectification, quantification of goals. It seems that some are far easier to do than others with regard to sales, or finance, or wealth, or lifting weights, or achieving feats of distance, or speed. I’m curious if you have any pro tips on how we might go about objectifying, quantifying goals that can feel fuzzy at the start, like, “I want to be happier,” or healthier, or more energetic, or in a better mood, or more present.

I think these are aspirations many listeners have, and I’m motivated by quantification and seeing progress, for sure, but some goals fall into a tricky zone there. Have you seen some clever approaches to quantifying them?

Bryan Gillette
Well, I think you have to continue to ask that question. So, if you say, “I want to be happier,” the question I would pose is, “All right, what would happy look like for you? Because what happy looks like for you and what happy looks like for me are different. So, what would happy look like for you?” And continuing to ask kind of a question until you get to something that’s a quantifiable.

You know, I was talking to a client yesterday, and they want me to facilitate one of their executive retreats. And one of the questions I often ask is, “What would success look like? So, if we were highly successful in this retreat, what would it look like?” And often they’ll say something that’s a little bit fuzzy, and then I’ll kind of ask, “Okay, what would that look like?” So, take your example, so, what would, for you, what does happiness look like?

And it may be, “I come back from my job and, four days out of the week, I just feel jazzed.” And so, how you do put some objectivity to that situation, is really what we’re trying to do. So, let’s get the fuzziness out of it as much as you can.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes. Well, I’d love to play with that demonstration a little bit more. So, four to five days, we feel jazzed, I think, so, we have a number four out of five, a fraction, 80%. Cool. So, then how do we put that into the system with regard to further eliminating fuzziness and getting numbers? Like, I suppose we have to define jazzed.

Bryan Gillette
You do.

Pete Mockaitis
Lay it on us, Bryan. What does jazzed mean in this example?

Bryan Gillette
Yeah, and that would be the question I’d ask. So, what would ‘jazzed’ look like? We know when we come home whether we’ve had a good day or a bad day. And it could be just as easy as, all right, when you come home from work, because there are some people that they want to…we’re going to put a quantity to everything.

And some people that, “You don’t have to have actually a number of 3.67,” but when you come home from work, can you check off that this was a good day, this was a great day, this was a bad day? And just put in a check mark on a whiteboard, on a piece of paper that said, “Great day!” And then the next day you come home, it’s like, “Eh, this was a good day. Good day.”

And so, if part of your goal is, “I want four of the five days to be great,” then what I would do is like, “Okay, for how long? Let’s see, first of all, where are we? Right now, let’s look over the next couple of weeks, and where are you now?” If that’s what’s important to you, just track it. And then, so look, after doing it a couple of weeks, and you find out that, “You know, right now, I come home and only three of the days, or only two of the days I can mark off as a great day. Okay, what’s going to get us to mark off three days? What do we have to do differently? What do you have to do in your job?”

So, it’s really, you have to, when you find a fuzzy word, ask yourself, “What could make it less fuzzy?” And how do you further kind of de-fuzzify that word?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now, I want to get your take on when it comes to EPIC. Some might think about hustling, working super hard, digging deep, pushing it. How do we think about the exerting effort versus resting domain of this? Can we overdo it? And what are the telltale signs that we might be overdoing it or some rules of thumb, safety guidelines, to say, “Oh, watch out. This might be too much”?

Bryan Gillette
Can we overdo it? Yeah, we can overdo it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Bryan Gillette
It goes back to kind of what your values are. There are times in my life where it’s like, “Okay.” I’m a cyclist at my core, and, “Okay, I did a hundred miles. Now, let’s do 200 miles. Now, let’s do 300 miles.” And you can continue to push it. And you have to understand, “Is that what you’re trying to do?” And for a period of time, that’s what I was trying to do.

You have to get to the point where you understand where some of your limits are. And what I often say is you can probably go a little bit further if you want to go a little bit further. So, if we go back and use that marathon example, there’s a lot of people that will say, “I could never run a marathon.” And my view is, “Do you want to run the marathon?” Because if you say yes, then I’m going to argue, “You probably could.” If you say no, then I’m going to say, “Don’t do it and go find out what you want to do.”

So, it’s being able to get to that point to understand kind of what is it that you really want to do, what’s most important to you. I don’t know that I’ve got a great answer on, “How do you know when you’re pushing it too far?” On sports, it’s much easier. On work, “Are you succeeding in what you’re doing? Or, are you failing? And if you’re consistently failing, maybe you need to kind of back off a little bit and really assess that. And then, all right, maybe you kind of go back and iterate at a lower level.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now what is it for sports? I’m imagining you’re going to drop some, “Well, when your heart rate variability drops by over 31%…” like, what is it on the sports domain?

Bryan Gillette
No, I think if you find yourself injured.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, there you go.

Bryan Gillette
I mean, we talked about that earlier. If you find yourself, you’re injured too much, then you’re pushing it too hard and you have to go back and reevaluate what’s going on. If you find yourself in a hospital, you’ve probably gone too far. How do you learn from that one?

Pete Mockaitis
“Call Bryan Gillette.” Okay. Well, any other guidelines? So, failing a lot, hospitalization, injuries, too far. Anything else?

Bryan Gillette
Well, it goes back to understanding to what is your criteria for success. And do you have those three or four measurable criteria that’s going to show you’re driving forward? And if you’re consistently not getting to that point, then you have to figure out, “Why am I not getting to that point?” And then kind of reevaluate what you need to do differently, or maybe you need to lower the bar, or you need to adjust some things.

So, I do think it’s good to have some data elements, and you don’t have to have a hundred, but what are three, four, five things you’re working at? And even as former vice president in the human resources, and it’s hard to measure success, people often have a challenge, “How do you measure success on the HR side?” And there were times we would measure turnover, and there were times we wouldn’t measure turnover, depending on what was important at the course of the maturity of the business or what we were trying to accomplish.

There were times when we would measure leadership, and we’d had to define what that look like. And so, again, it goes back to figuring out, “What are those measurable things that you see as success?” So, if I were to ask you, “What does success look like?” I’m going to continue to ask until we can get to something that is we can hold in our hands and is a little bit measurable.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Any particularly clever measurements you’ve seen in your day?

Bryan Gillette
One of them was it was a woman I was talking to, and she wanted to work for a highly successful kind of growth company, and she wanted to be seen as the key leader, this is in human resources. She wanted to be seen as a respected leader in the human resources for that company, and she put a measurement of, “Being able to work for a company where I could be involved in ringing the bell at one of the stock exchanges,” whether it’s NASDAQ or New York Stock Exchange.

And it wasn’t because she wanted to ring the bell, but it showed that she was working for the type of company, she was seen by the executives as the type of person that she wanted to be. And so, I just loved that. That’s what her measurement was. It’s like, “Okay, I’m ringing the bell at the New York Stock Exchange.”

Pete Mockaitis
I really do appreciate that example because we take something fuzzy, “What do you mean by like a high-growth or cool company?” “Oh, okay, the kind that goes public. All right.” And then, “What do you mean by a key leader?” Like, you’re in, I’m thinking about the pictures I’ve seen in this, that you don’t get 80 people up there during the bell, it’s a smaller crew. So, I think that’s a cool example of going from fuzzy to un-fuzzy. And it sounds like, Bryan, that could take some real reflective time and not something you might be able to come up within five or ten minutes. Is that fair to say?

Bryan Gillette
It’s very fair, Pete. And it’s also not something that’s going to happen overnight. She had been working at that for years in order to do that. And it takes her to realize it, okay, when she went from one company to the other, it’s like, “All right, I was working at this public company, chances are I’m not going to be ringing the bell anytime soon.” And so, it starts to identify what’s important to her, the type of company she should focus on, so that was one that I really liked.

Another one that I liked that is less work-related but it was a colleague of mine who wants to hike all of the 14,000-foot peaks in Colorado. And I forget how many there are. And so, he has a picture of all of the peaks, kind of on his wall, and so it’s got a listing of all the peaks. And every time he hikes one, he’ll go and he’ll put a pin in each of the peaks. And so, it’s a visual representation that sits on his wall above his desk, and he can look up and see, “Okay, I’ve done 10 so far,” “I’ve done 11 so far.”

So, that’s another important thing, is, “How do you make your goal somewhat a visual representation so you see it every time you walk in your office, or walk in the room, whatever it is?” One of the examples I had is I wanted to travel around the world, and I wanted to take an extended period of time off, and so I bought this world map, I put it up on my wall, and it was one where I could write on with a dry erase pen.

And so, I would circle countries I was interested in, so every time I walked into my office, I would see that map and it would remind me of what my bigger goal was. And so, how do you have some visual representation of what that goal is that makes it really easy and it reminds you every single day?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, beautiful. Bryan, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Bryan Gillette
No, I’m looking forward to the favorite things.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, can you tell us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Bryan Gillette
Yeah, one of my favorite quotes is, “There’s nothing more rewarding than completing something you were too crazy to start in the first place.”

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Bryan Gillette
I like reading about how people push themselves, whether it’s the study of the brain. I just read an article called “Train your brain to make you faster,” and it was in a swimming magazine. And it’s how do you stress the brain out in normal times so when you are going and doing something, your brain is prepared for that stress. And they were talking about swimming but it also talks about in the corporate world as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Now, Bryan, I have to ask, how does one stress one’s brain? The first thing that came to mind was Wim Hof breathing. That’s insane and fun. But what do they recommend?

Bryan Gillette
Well, there are different puzzles that you’re kind of doing while you’re working on something.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, okay.

Bryan Gillette
So, if you’re working on one thing, you’ve got these puzzles that you’re trying to test your brain in, and so that forces you to use your brain while doing something else. So, that’s one way you just stress the brain out a little bit.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I’m thinking about chess checkmate in three puzzles while also running or walking briskly at an inclined on a treadmill. Is that the kind of idea we’re talking here?

Bryan Gillette
Yeah, could be.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. All right.

Bryan Gillette
Yeah, good example.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Bryan Gillette
I love autobiographies or biographies. So, I think three books that came to mind, and I know you asked for a favorite book, but I love Endurance, which is the Shackleton story. Ernest Shackleton went down to Antarctica. Unbroken, which is about Louis Zamperini’s story, Laura Hillenbrand is the author. He’s a World War II veteran. And then, most recently, Liftoff, which is about Elon Musk. A lot of people that can complain about him but he’s wicked smart. And so, it’s how he was able to build up SpaceX.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And could you share a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Bryan Gillette
A favorite tool. I was thinking more of a habit. I think one of the tools that I use, I use OneNote all the time. Microsoft OneNote just to track ideas, keep track of conversations I’ve had. And, realistically, I have a bucket list that I keep on OneNote, and I go back and use it all the time.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Bryan Gillette
A favorite habit? So, this is not work-related but every time my wife and I go somewhere, where if she’s going off to the store and I’m staying home or we split apart, we always kiss each other. And it just keeps us together.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back often to you?

Bryan Gillette
Yeah, one of the things I often hear is we don’t all deserve a trophy. And there’s this view that everybody deserves a trophy, and I’m not of the view that we all deserve a trophy in everything. But find those things that you’re good enough to deserve a trophy.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Bryan Gillette
So, they can go to my website, they can to EpicPerformances.com. They can go on LinkedIn and connect up with me, but EpicPerformances.com is probably the best way.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Bryan Gillette
Yeah. So, I do have the EPIC Performance assessment where if you go to EpicPerformances.com, there is an assessment, and you can evaluate how well you do each of the five different behaviors: envision, plan, iterate, collaborate, and perform. And if they type in…so they go to the assessment, and you can do it for free. It’s going to ask you for a company code, just type in AWESOME, and that will be the company code that allow you, it’ll generate some results. Send it to me and I will send you back your report.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool. Thank you. All right. Well, Bryan, this has been a treat. I wish you lots of fun and epic performances.

Bryan Gillette
I appreciate you having me on the show, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Ayelet, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Ayelet Fishbach
Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, I’m excited to talk about motivation with you. First though, I need to hear about your nine-year old calls you an expert on how to fail. Tell us about this.

Ayelet Fishbach
Yeah. So, I’ll share the story with you. Doing my own things at home and my son is playing video games, and this is not when you usually expect parents to do anything, like this is what we let our kids do so that we can do something else. So, he’s playing these video games, and the monster keeps killing him, and he’s getting frustrated. As you know, this monster, they’re terrible. They’re just killing those innocent kids in the video game.

And I can see that he almost has tears in his eyes, so we asked him, like the entire family, like, “Do you want someone to be there with you?” And then my daughter suggested that she will sit with him so that he can better cope with those monsters, and he replied saying that he wants mom to sit with him because I know how to fail better than anybody else. I was proud.

Pete Mockaitis
So, with him in the failure zone, he’s like you were sort of the expert to assist in that territory. Is that the vibe?

Ayelet Fishbach
Yes, I have a lot of experience with learning from failure, and I think I take it to heart but not as much as he does. So, he realizes that if I’m around, we’re probably going to make fun of this and not take it too much to heart.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is kind words and something to remember maybe when in tough times. So, I’m excited to talk about motivation and your book Get It Done: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation. And maybe to kick us off, one of my favorite questions is to hear, when you’re researching a topic for many years, what’s among the most surprising and fascinating discoveries you’ve made about human motivation?

Ayelet Fishbach
We found that giving advice is more motivating than getting great advice from the expert.

Pete Mockaitis
So, if I give advice, I’ll be motivated more so than if I receive advice.

Ayelet Fishbach
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Ayelet Fishbach
And that was kind of cool to us. We predicted that but still it was nice to see that it doesn’t matter what is the domain, whether it’s controlling your finance, or finding a job, or controlling your weight, or studying, those who are struggling are more motivated by giving someone advice than by getting advice back, which was nice.

We found that what predicts adherents to basically any goal, in particular, now we’re looking at New Year’s Resolutions because it’s soon, is how much people are enthusiastic about doing the thing, how much they enjoy doing the thing, and not how important it is, which was surprising for us because you do something, you set a resolution because it is important, not because it is fun to do. Nevertheless, how important that is for you can predict so much.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, that’s juicy. And Katy Milkman, we had on the show, in her book How to Change, we talked a little bit about some of those principles in terms of being enjoyable, and that’s sort of like old-fashioned exercise advice, “What’s the best exercise? The one you enjoy and you stick with.” It’s like, “Okay, no, but seriously, what’s going to give me faster or big muscles,” or kind of whatever your outcome you’re shooting for, or lose weight, you name it. But there’s something to it, the adherence, you’re telling me that that’s the top variable you found for tracking adherence is how much you enjoy doing the thing?

Ayelet Fishbach
Yes. And I basically think about it as immediate rewards. And it’s interesting that you mentioned Katy Milkman because we did our research independently and we did get to similar conclusions. Yes, it’s how much you get some immediate feedback that this is working, that this is enjoyable, that you are in it. It’s not just enjoyment. It could be something else that is immediate, like, “It immediately makes me feel proud.”

We recently published a paper that found that even if there’s a slight discomfort, if it’s immediate, then that’s better than nothing. So, realizing that, “This is working because I feel like I’m slightly struggling is good. It motivates.”

Pete Mockaitis
Right. As opposed to, I’m thinking about supplements, it’s like even if it feels a little weird, it’s like, “Okay. Well, it’s doing something as opposed to just nothing,” so that maybe gives you a dash of hope. And what’s funny, what comes to mind now is, as we speak, I just happen to be in one of my best ever weightlifting grooves of my life, and I think that’s exactly what’s going on here, is that because we got some structural and environmental things working in my favor so I have some consistency, and I’ve got a really lovely app called RepCount, which makes it so easy to track what I’m doing, it’s so exciting, rewarding, fun to see, “Oh, I bench-pressed as much as I could last time, and I could do this weight four times. Oh, but this time, I could do it five times.” So, it’s like, “I am stronger than I’ve ever been before. Yes.” And it just feels fantastic.

And then, of course, exercise in its own endorphin-y, positive, biochemically way does what it does, but then I’ve got that immediate reward. So, I really do, it gets me coming back again and again and again because I want to keep breaking records and feeling awesome each time I do, which, at this stage in the game, thankfully, is almost every time. So, I’m into it. And, yeah, my adherence is high because my immediate positive enjoyable feedback is high.

Ayelet Fishbach
Yeah. You actually mentioned out a bunch of things that all contribute to motivation.

Pete Mockaitis
Ooh, unpack it for me.

Ayelet Fishbach
So, the one thing that you mentioned is that this is immediate, like you do this and you immediately get the feedback that this is working, that you just broke a record. And we know that whatever is immediate is much more motivating than some delayed outcomes that will happen in a week or a month or in a year.

Then another thing that I like about your example is that you looked back, and you say, “Well, I only did three last week, and four earlier this week, and now I can do five.” And looking back is often the way to keep yourself going. If you always look forward then you might never quite be where you want to be, so that might be hard. We often tell people, like, “Look back. Look at how much you have achieved. That will increase your commitment.”

In studies, like students that look back were more motivated to study in particular when they were unsure whether they want to do the thing. Customers standing in line, when they look back, they appreciated more the thing that they’re waiting for. So, looking back is good. And then the last thing that you mentioned is having a miracle target, like, “I want to be at five or at six,” which is also a very good strategy to motivate yourself. So, you just found a combo.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. Well, it’s working because sometimes I find myself daydreaming, like it’s Tuesday evening as we speak, I was like, “Oh, boy, Wednesday is a day away. I’m already excited for tomorrow morning to go to the gym.” And I find other times in my life where that was not at all the situation with regard to thinking about the gym.

Well, cool. So, we kind of got a little bit of hodgepodge of fun discoveries and practice how they’re working. So, maybe you could share with us sort of the core thesis of your book “Get It Done” and any key principles that we haven’t hit yet?

Ayelet Fishbach
All right, yes. And so, when I looked at the field of motivation, and I’ve been a motivational scientist for a long time, I feel that what is common to all the interventions, all the strategies that we developed is that they change the situation in order to change the behavior. And so, basically, if we wanted to change someone else’s behavior, we would change their situation, we would change how we present the information to them, or whom they’re going to do the thing, or we are going to give them certain incentives to behave in one way, or a punishment for behaving in another way.

We can apply this to ourselves. We can be the person that shapes our own behavior if we systematically think about the situation in which we put ourselves and how we think about these situations. And I started with this, and then I looked at all the strategies that we have been studying for many years, and thinking that they really fall into four buckets.

And so, when we think about changing our situation in order to motivate ourselves, first bucket or first element is setting a goal. How do we set a goal? Is it a motivating goal? Is it a “do” goal as opposed to a “do not” goal, which might seem urgent but is not fun to pursue? Is it an intrinsic goal? Everything on that. The second element is “How do we monitor progress?” Do we get feedback? Do we look back? Do we look forward? How do we learn from setbacks, from negative feedback? So, all these interventions.

The third element is, “What do we do with everything else?” “I might plan to exercise but I also plan for other things for this early hour in the morning when I thought I would exercise, so that doesn’t work.” How people design their environment for everything else. And then the last element is social support and all the interventions that get people to find other people that will help them.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. So, that’s a nice menu there, bits there to work with. And so, boy, it seems like we talked a good bit about the monitoring of progress in our earlier example. Let’s talk a little bit about setting a goal such that it is a motivating one. I’m thinking we recently interviewed Michal Bungay Stanier who was talking about making goals really juicy and epic that get you going or worthy. What does the research suggest makes a goal more motivating versus less motivating?

Ayelet Fishbach
So, yes, I agree that juicy is good, a goal that is enticing. We find that goals that are intrinsic, that feel good to pursue are motivating. We find that goals that are challenging are more motivating. And so, ideally, you should think about setting a goal that you have maybe 80% chance of achieving on a daily basis. You will not always be successful but you will also not be so unsuccessful that you will give up. The error can be on both sides, and the study shows that when people are in this zone, where they are not sure that they can do it, but if they work hard, they will. In this uncertain zone, this is where you see the energy level picks up.

We want people to set “do” goals more than “do not” goals, or approach goals not avoidance. The early research on this actually looked at thought suppression and Wiseman described that the study seemed intuitive. It’s much easier to ask people to think about something than not to think about something.

I can ask you to think about brown bears. You can do this. If I asked you not to think about white bears, that’s impossible. I can ask you to think about your current partner. You can do this. If I asked you not to think about your ex, you think about your ex, I think. It’s really hard not to do that. And, indeed, do-not goals are harder. They seem urgent, so if you want to do something immediately, then avoidance goals are maybe a good fit, but usually try to avoid them.

Pete Mockaitis
Avoiding avoidance goals.

Ayelet Fishbach
And a number, put a number on it is something that is pulling you toward it. One of the nice studies on that looked at marathon runners. A marathon runner tried to run the marathon under four hours, and so there are many more people that finished the marathon in three hours and 59 minutes than in four hours and one minute.

Pete Mockaitis
I bet, yeah.

Ayelet Fishbach
Right? Because it’s just like you really want to do this under four hours, so you just try to push very hard toward the end. It’s such a nice demonstration of the power of goals.

Pete Mockaitis
So, you mentioned four key principles there. One is sort of what do we do with the other stuff, like in the morning example, like there’s other stuff that happens in the morning. What are some of the best practices there?

Ayelet Fishbach
So, we never just want one thing. I would say that, to begin with, we need to realize that we want several things simultaneously. And we can think about identifying activities that achieve several things simultaneously. And so, a good way to pursue a goal is such that you also get something else out of doing it. If you bike to work, you get your commute and your exercise and saving money at the same time.

Some activities help some goals but interfere with other goals. If I make my lunch at home, well, I will be eating healthily and I will save money, but this is going to interfere with my goal to get to work on time because I have a lot to do in the morning and I’m slow.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. We’re socializing when the colleagues go out to Chipotle or wherever.

Ayelet Fishbach
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like, “Oh, well, I just have this, so, sorry.”

Ayelet Fishbach
Yes. And so, thinking about the impact that your action has on multiple goals is important. So, some activities achieve several goals, and they are good. We call them multi-final. Sometimes we fare to the saying, “Feed two birds with one scone,” if you will. Think about it.

Pete Mockaitis
This is very clever. Scone, stone, wow. This is an original. I like it.

Ayelet Fishbach
Thank you. So, other activities are what we call equifinal. This is all roads lead to Rome. So, there are several activities to achieve the same thing and when you think about this superficially, it feels like, “Well, why do I need more than one path to pursue a goal? Why do I need another way of exercising?” given that you just identified this thing that works so well for you. Well, we need that as a backup plan, and we need this to increase our confidence.

And so, when people identify several ways to do the same thing, they are more confident. One of the studies that I like, found that for new gym goers, new people at the gym, learning that there many options to get their exercise increase their motivation. For those that have been there for a while, that doesn’t really matter.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like, “Yeah, I already knew that. Thanks.”

Ayelet Fishbach
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Okay.

Ayelet Fishbach
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
And then social support? I’m all about accountability groups, or people challenging and inspiring and being workout buddies, or whatever. What are some of your top do’s and don’ts when it comes to social support?

Ayelet Fishbach
So, there are a few ways in which we should think about social support. There are some goals that we are doing with others, and many of the important things that we do, we do with others. I do my research with others. I raise children with my spouse. I work with colleagues. We do things with other people. And then we should think about, “How do we make sure that we are efficient in our division of labor, how to combat social loafing?”

And many of the strategies that motivation scientists think about are meant to combat social loafing. How do we make sure that, when several of us are doing something together, we are not doing less? The classic studies found that when you put a few people and ask them to do something, either to pull a rope or just make a lot of noise, more people, less work that everybody is doing. And so, we think about how to make contribution identifiable, how to increase the identity of a person as a group member so that the presence of other people will not make them work less hard.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. You know, this brings me back to thinking about band in high school because I was pretty mediocre as a saxophonist, not the best, not the worst. But then, boy, when there were times when each person had to individually go into the room and play the piece for the director, the practicing really happened because there was no hiding in the crowd as to the sound. It’s like he knew what you could do and what you couldn’t do, not that he was going to scream at you but you just didn’t want to be the guy who didn’t know how to play the stuff. That’s just not a pleasant feeling.

Ayelet Fishbach
Yes, as long as you remember that you need to listen to these kids individually sometimes, then you could keep the motivation high. If it’s hard to identify who’s doing what, then we tend to procrastinate.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes.

Ayelet Fishbach
Then the other aspect of social support is just the people that are helping you with your own goals. So, they are there, they want more of the real estate, they want you to do well. You really need those people to keep going. It is actually impossible to adhere to any goal when the people around you think this is fully so unnecessary.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so these are some great principles. And I’d love it if you could help me get creative about applying them into some career situations. I guess I’m thinking about the stuff that tends to get left behind. And maybe it’s the email inboxes that never seems to hit zero, or maybe there are some strategic thinking and things I want to run after, or maybe there are some goals that show up in my annual review and I never seem to find the time to actually advance them until it’s a bit of a scramble towards before the next annual review.

So, in these sorts of fuzzy things that might be hard to put a number on, etc., and might not even be things we are interested in intrinsically, how do we work some magic to tap into an extra level of motivation on the tricky ones?

Ayelet Fishbach
So, these are ongoing goals. The problem with email is exactly as you mentioned. It never ends.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Ayelet Fishbach
You might get to zero emails at some time in your life. It will probably last till like 30 seconds, so it’s really just keep doing it. It’s not reaching the end of it. And when goals don’t have a clear beginning or end, they are much harder to pursue. I talk in the book about the middle problem, which happens for goals that do have a beginning and end. But in the middle, motivation is not great, like, “I started the project. I was all into it. I’m about to submit the project. I’m super energized, but in the months in between, I can’t bring myself to work on that thing. This is hard.”

In our studies, we found that people relax their performance standards, they even relax their ethical standards. In one study, like, we found the people literally cut corners in the middle. That is we gave people five shapes, like drawn on paper, and a pair of scissors, and they had to cut them. And the first shape looked great. The last shape was pretty decent. In the middle, they literally cut corners. They were not good at their job.

And I think that this is a bit with like the problem with email, “It’s just that it doesn’t feel like I’m accomplishing anything. I’m just like on the treadmill, keep going.” It helps to find some markers, some beginnings, some ends, that sets your daily goal to answer a certain number of emails or address a certain aspect of the work so that you can achieve it and get to something that you can accomplish, to some end.

I also want to add that we ran a study a few years back in an advertising company where we asked people that was in Seoul, in South Korea, and we asked half of the people to reflect back on what they achieved, and the other half to reflect on what they have yet to achieve. So, either look at what you’ve done or what you still have to do.

And what we found is that those who look back were happier with their job, and those who looked ahead were more motivated to move forward. They had a higher level of aspiration. And so, yes, they were more thrusted with their current position but they were also more eager to do something else that’s even better. And I thought that that was good.

Pete Mockaitis
So, they’re both getting some good vibes. Can we recap? So, with people looking back, felt more what?

Ayelet Fishbach
Felt better about what they do. They liked what they do more.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so maybe more satisfied with where things stand. And then those who looked forward were more hungry to get after it. Is that fair to say?

Ayelet Fishbach
Yeah, they wanted to be on the next level already. They wanted to progress.

Pete Mockaitis
interesting. Well, I guess now I want to know in terms of their behaviors afterwards because, in some ways, feeling good sometimes results in us taking care of business. In other times, feeling good results in us chilling out and not pushing it as much.

Ayelet Fishbach
Exactly. And we can predict when we will see each one of them. The less committed people tend to work harder when they feel good about what they do, when they look back, and they say, “Well, I already did some,” they work harder. The fully committed people are more motivated when they get feedback on what they have not yet done. Although, in this study that I told you, we didn’t really look at commitment. Everybody was pretty committed. We really just wanted to see how high is their level of aspiration, how much they want to already be doing the next thing.

Pete Mockaitis
That is great. So, we got a lot of nice foundational fundamental principles to bear in mind as we’re designing goals and chasing after them and how we pursue them. I’m curious about sort of in the heat of battle, in the moment, it’s like, “Aah, I just don’t feel like it.” Any tips, tools, stuff to do then and there?

Ayelet Fishbach
I would ask why you feel like this.

Pete Mockaitis
“Oh, I didn’t get a great night’s sleep. Oh, I’ve just been going at it for a while. I’m just kind of tired of it.”

Ayelet Fishbach
Yeah. Well, so you say that you didn’t get enough sleep, but the way you were, pretending to be that person that’s unmotivated, it sounded like you’re just not excited about what’s ahead of you. You look at your day and it seems kind of boring. It’s not intrinsically motivating. And if that would be my diagnosis, now, notice that I encourage people to run their own diagnosis. But in our play here, I’m diagnosing that what you do is just not exciting for you, so either you bring excitement to what you do or you do something else. You find another path to be successful at your job.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, okay, so how does one bring excitement to what you do when it’s not there naturally?

Ayelet Fishbach
Something that you can do, actually, pretty easy, you can try to listen to music while you work. You can try to make your environment more enticing, so put around you images of things that make it more fun. In one of our studies, we encouraged students in a math class to listen to music while they were working on their problems.

The teachers were unhappy with us but the students were doing more math problems. I don’t think that they were more excited about the math. They were more excited about the music, or some support, some color of pencils, so it kind of made it a party. So, you can make your office more like a party without changing the actual work that you need to do.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s true. I guess I’m thinking about there are times when I’ll take a phone call while walking, and so that’s kind of more interesting. Or, if I don’t need much brain power, like while organizing an area, a space, tidying up so it’s sort of like, “This call, I’m not looking forward to, but there is something that I can feel better about in doing that that works for me.” So, that’s cool. Thank you.

Ayelet Fishbach
And if you think about it, many people go to work to be with other people that they like, so it’s really not about the task. I’m not saying that you should not do something interesting. I think that everybody should try to find something interesting to do that the work in itself is rewarding. But in terms of an immediate change that you could do, you could do it with people that you like.

Pete Mockaitis
Sure. What colors you like, colored pencils for the math problems. I think a great pencil makes an impact. Sure. Okay. And then do you have some thoughts when it comes to when we’re motivating ourselves versus trying to motivate others? Do kind of like the same rules and principles apply or are there some distinctions and ways we want to play the game a bit differently based on the target?

Ayelet Fishbach
That’s an interesting question. The main difference is when we look at incentives. Research on incentives, it’s easier to think about how to incentivize others than to incentivize yourself. Of course, you can use the wrong incentives for others as well as for yourself. In the book, I give the story of French colonials in Hanoi. They were trying to get rid of the rats that were all over the city, which was partially because the way that the French colonials built the city but, anyways, there are rats everywhere, and they decided to have a bounty system by which they give people a cent for a dead rat, actually for the tail of the rat.

Terrible incentive systems because the way to make money is by bringing dead rats, and the way to have dead rats is by, first, having live rats, and so the residents of Hanoi were breeding rats in order to get the money from the government. So, incentives can backfire and cannot do what we intended them to do, whether we incentivize others or ourselves. But when we incentivize ourselves, that’s, in particular, hard because we often find it hard to think how will we do that. And this is where often we see people struggling, like, “What do I give myself? And how do I make sure that I don’t give it to myself when I don’t deserve it?” Not impossible, but harder. And the other end, self-control is much more when incentivizing ourselves.

Pete Mockaitis
You’re right. It’s almost sounds like you need a referee in terms of like, “I’m going to have some chocolate when I accomplish this thing.” But if you have the chocolate in the corner, it’s like, “Well, it’s right. I guess I can just have it now regardless of whether I do the thing.” So, I don’t have any clever ideas other than having a referee, a gatekeeper, holder of the chocolate or whatever, monitoring things. Are there any other tricks?

Ayelet Fishbach
I think that you are referring to having another person helping you, and absolutely having other people is always helpful. Giving gifts to yourself, a thing that you would not afford on a daily basis, like this coffee that’s way too expensive so you only give it to yourself when you feel that you have done something special, or going to the spa because you exercised a certain number of days this month, which, again, might be something that you, well, you can afford every week but is a reward. That’s harder.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, if it’s indulgent and kind of inaccessible, then that just sort of makes sense in terms of you’re less likely to say, “Well, I’m just taking a spa day here on Tuesday. Just that what’s happening.” That, of course, requires a little bit of thinking and planning in terms of like the obligations of the day and, yeah, I guess you’d feel more lame if you just took the incentive prematurely as opposed to chocolate which is something you might do anyway.

Ayelet Fishbach
Yes, exactly. Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Well, tell me, Ayelet, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Ayelet Fishbach
Gosh, so you already realized that I am thinking about many things that people can do to keep themselves motivated. I will follow your question because if you just let me talk, we are going to just like, “Aargh.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, how about a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Ayelet Fishbach
Oh, a favorite quote. Let me go with Gramsci, “History teaches but it has no pupils.” The way I take it is that there is a lot of feedback out there but we often don’t learn. And I am particularly reminded of this when I look at how much people learn from negative feedback and from setbacks. And we often think about negative feedback and setbacks as something that you should just ignore and keep going. And I say, “Well, there was some interesting important lesson there. Have you learned that? Maybe not.” So, I will go with “History teaches but it has no pupils.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And how about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Ayelet Fishbach
We did a study in which we wanted to explore people’s aversion to investing in means, like people want to invest their resources in this thing itself, not in a means to the thing.

And so, we auctioned a signed by a University of Chicago economist to some people, and they told us how much they’re willing to pay, and the highest bid is going to get the book. Then we took another group of people from the same population, and we auctioned a tote bag, actually a fancy tote bag that contained the same book.

And so, we asked these people, “How much are you willing to pay for the bag that contains this book?” People were willing to pay around $25 for the book and around $12 or $13 for the bag and the book. In economic terms, the value of the bag was negative. And so, that was a very cool illustration of how much we don’t like to invest our resources with a thing that is not the thing itself, that is a way to get there.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I’m just going to chew on that for a while. Thank you. Whew, that just makes me think about so many businesses in terms of you can buy a virtual assistant, that’s another business I run. You can pay for a virtual assistant, or you can pay for a podcast production. And that person is doing that thing, and yet how you present it can have wildly different implications for willingness to pay and such. And that’s kind of mind-blowing. Thank you. Whew!

All right. And how about a favorite book?

Ayelet Fishbach
I read a lot of novels so I would say my favorite book, anything by Elena Ferrante – how does it work? – “The Lying Life of Adults.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Ayelet Fishbach
So, that was an important question. Go to my webpage AyeletFishbach.com. Everything is there, information on my book, on my social media, on my research, my publications, my teaching, this podcast hopefully soon. Everything is on AyeletFishbach.com.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?
Ayelet Fishbach
Okay. So, how can you work better with other people? How can you bring someone to help you, bring someone who is your role model, do something in order to connect to a person? Your challenge will be to do something with another person either in order to do it better or to connect better to that person.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Ayelet, this has been a treat. I wish you much luck and motivation in all your pursuits.

Ayelet Fishbach
Thank you very much. I hope so and I very much enjoyed talking to you.