Motivation

There are fewer good bookstores in this country, but if you can find one, the odds are good they will about a yard of self-help books, many dealing with motivation.

Motivation is interesting. Sometimes, it's like a spark. It can cause events to escalate and cascade and before you know it, nations are at war or economies are in crisis or people are in love.

Most of the job of an athletic coach is motivation. And that's illustrative, I think—I hope. There's some reinforcement of fundamentals, some critique of style or performance, sure. But mostly, the job involves convincing people to perform at a high level.

Fans of any sport go nuts when you reduce their passion to its essence. "It's a just a couple of guys, swatting a ball back and forth" sets tennis fans' teeth on edge. I get cranky when people tell me auto racing is "just a bunch of guys driving fast and turning left".

But, here we go. A coach's job is to tell athletes, who are very good at whatever it is they do, to go out there and do that thing, very well, for a tremendous pile of money, fame and other benefits, which you might be forgiven for thinking would be enough motivation, right there. And yet, coaches are some of the highest paid people on the team. So there must be more to it than that.

I know I should get "X" done, done quickly, and done well, and even that I should crow about it a little when it's finished. But for some reason, even though it may mean something from I-Get-To-Keep-My-Job all of the way up to I-Get-A-Raise, and all I have to do is just to do my job and do it well, there are any number of un-done "X" -jobs on my spindle. Everyone is like that, to one degree or another (I hope). Please, god, it isn't just me.

What is it that keeps us from doing things? Things we know we need to do, and often at our benefit?

Sometimes, it's just daily clutter and distraction. I need to clear out fourteen other ToDo items, before I can start work on the Really Big Task. I'm going to need a lot of room on my desk, so I'd better finish this little page, and do something about that receipt, and put away a few of these pens and other office supplies.

Sometimes it's a feeling of unpreparedness. I can't possibly do this now, without the proper training and tools and staffing and so on. So I need to schedule training, and get a hold of a good book, and maybe try one of those webinar things, but I can't afford a book right now and there are so many hoops to jump through, to get the office to buy one. And even then, it won't be like I really know this stuff, I'll just be the guy who read the book!

What I treasure are those moments when you end up "in the zone" and work seems to take over about 95% of your brain. You look up and it's 1:10pm. You start in, and the next time you look up, it's 4:52pm. It's like you've been working with a tailwind all day. It's the closest thing a fat man like myself can probably come to a Runner's High.

But I've been at work on a Web page or a report I really enjoy, doing a part of it I really enjoy doing, and left at five thinking tomorrow would be a breeze… and been disappointed in the morning. The spark is gone. It's the difference between hearing a comic tell a joke and hearing someone who saw that comic tell you about the joke. Comics telling jokes are very often funny. Telling about a joke never is.

Motivation is strange. Here's a team of world-class athletes, each one only here because they demonstrated they were better than a thousand others at their task. And yet they need a guy to point out to them that they are not operating at a hundred percent?

What hope do any of the rest of us have?