PRODUCTIVITY
The Virtuous Pump: 5 Ways to Feel a Sense of Progress in Your Day
The secret sauce for productivity and happiness at work
Want to be more productive and happy at work? Just make sure you get a sense of progress during your day. Teresa Amabile, writer of “The progress principle” found it was the number one predictor for success in her studies on the most creative companies.
When you get a sense of progress, you are smiling, you are relaxed and confident, and you have more creative ideas. On the contrary, when you have the impression that you are behind and that you are losing ground, it gets much more difficult to motivate yourself. You get tense, you tend to avoid alternative pathways to fix your problem (which reduces creativity), and you start to lose hope.
Even more interesting, there’s a consolidating effect happening here. More progress at work causes more happiness and motivation at work, which causes more progress at work. I like to call this the “virtuous pump”. Unfortunately, it can also spiral down into a vicious circle: setbacks result in a bad mood, bad stress, and hopelessness, which causes more setbacks.
How to prime the virtuous pump in your personal and work life? Here are some examples that have worked well for me:
1) Waking up early
Waking up early is probably one of the best ways to get the impression you have a head start in your day. When you start doing something meaningful early in the day, you feel great, and it can improve your mood for the rest of your day, which gives you more courage to do even greater achievements.
I don’t necessarily mean you need to wake up very early, like 4 or 5am, and sacrifice your sleep. That would be counterproductive. But having at least some gap between your waking up time and your obligations can really help prime the virtuous pump.
2) Consolidating a good habit
Consolidating a good habit is another great way to feel a sense of progress in your day. You probably know these calendars where you put a check on the days where you are successful in achieving something, like doing exercise for example? I’m one of those guys fond of checking days on a calendar.
When you do something positive for a number of consecutive days, it slowly becomes an incredible achievement. There’s a sense of “positive personal reputation” happening here. When you have built a positive personal reputation for achieving something for a number of consecutive days, it becomes impossible to give up.
This does not need to be perfect, you can give yourself a joker if you get a lapse. But make sure you get back to your habit as soon as you can.
3) Supporting and being supported
Supporting and being supported by a friend or co-worker is another incredible way of feeling a sense of progress. One easy way to do it in your personal life is to have a short 15-minutes check-in call each morning with an accountability partner. Sometimes, you will feel like skipping it, but do it anyway, as you will be happy you’ve done it after all. And it is also helpful to motivate you to wake up early.
In your work, it’s also crucial to have supporting co-workers. In the current company I work for, I especially love how we are each committed to help each other make progress during our day. I am used to asking questions, even silly ones, and receiving great support and feedback. And I also try to be as reactive as I can when someone needs my help.
4) Lessons learned and retrospectives
Learning something new always feels great. And the lesson is even more valuable when you struggled to learn it. To help you benefit the most from them in the long run, it’s a good idea to take notes. What stood in the way of your progress, or facilitated it?
Personally, I use Logseq to take notes for work. And now, I have a big knowledge base of recipes I can use when I am stuck on a variety of problems.
It’s also nice to make retrospective meetings with your co-workers on what you learned for a particular project. Psychological safety is paramount here, as you must be able to talk about your setbacks in a candid way.
5) Cleansing actions
Last but not least, I’m a fan of “cleansing actions”. During your day, you will sometimes feel bad about yourself. Maybe you procrastinated a bit on a challenging task, and you feel guilty about it. Or maybe you felt embarrassed for something awkward you said during a meeting. If you don’t take action in a timely manner, it can easily spiral down into a vicious cycle.
To help you move on to more positive grounds, you can simply use a cleansing action. It looks silly but “washing your hand” has proven effects on your mind. Other cleansing actions include “sorting out your desk” or “rebooting your computer” for example. These small actions will help you feel good about yourself and get a more constructive mindset to prime the virtuous pump.
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Feeling a sense of progress is one of the most powerful ways to be productive and happy at work. It’s especially crucial for creativity, as you are much more creative when you are in a good mood.
There’s also a “virtuous pump” involved here. The more progress you make, the more productive and happy you are, and the more likely you are to progress even more.
Today, I gave you 5 ways to cultivate this sense of progress. I hope you got inspired by those. Please feel free to give your favorite “progress recipes” in the comments if you want to contribute!
On February 1st, 2022, I’ve embarked on a 100 days writing challenge. This is post number 67.
