PNTV: The Progress Principle by Steven Kramer and Teresa Amabile

You're listening to the Optimize with Brian Johnson podcast. Unlock the full Optimize experience and join over 10,000 premium members at Optimize Me. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another episode of Philosopher's Notes. TV today. You guessed it, another great book, the Progress Principle by Theresa Amabiel. The Progress Principle by again, Theresa Amabile and her husband Steven Kramer. Subtitle Using small wins to ignite joy, engagement and creativity at work. So it's impossible to read a book on productivity at work, creativity, engagement, et cetera, without running into Teresa Amabile and her research. She is the head of research at the Harvard Business School and and is quoted by everyone. It's a fantastic book. It's also based on or related to a Harvard Business School article called the Power of Small Wins. Check that out as well. As always, we've got this book and we have this Philosopher's Note with a bunch of big ideas. Five of my favorites here. Let's jump in. The progress principle. Well, that starts with our inner work life. So Theresa Amabile has done a ton of research over decades and the studies that she used for this book related to surveys that she did with hundreds of employees at a number of companies. And she collected 12,000 diary entries, so daily reports by these employees in these different organizations to try to understand what led to higher levels of productivity and engagement, creativity, well being, et cetera. What she found was, is that the inner work life of the individuals at their jobs was the greatest predictor of their productivity. So whether or not they had positive emotions and a sense of connection with their colleagues, et cetera, that was the driving force in how well they did and how much they enjoyed it. That's our first simple idea. So that begs the question, what created the most positive inner work life and experience that resulted in higher levels of productivity? Well, the answer is very simple. Small wins progress, no matter how small, on very important caveat, something that's meaningful. Meaningful projects, meaningful tasks. So it's not enough to just to go through the day and check off this and this and this and this and this and be super busy. If it's lacking meaning, you're going to feel burned out and frustrated at the end of that day. But if you're making progress on a meaningful goal, you're going to tend to feel great. You're going to have an inner work life that's positive. Right? And then we'll just jump straight to the third one here. What you're going to create in that process is a progress Loop. She calls it a virtuous loop, where the more you have a positive inner work life, the more you're likely to create progress. And the more progress you make, the more positive your inner work life is. And it supports one another in a compounding positive function. And that's a very, very good thing. So we want to find ways to create small wins. Again, they don't need to be huge things. Huge things by definition happen infrequently. But we can create daily little things that create the progress that creates the inner work life that creates this upward momentum. Now, important note, you can also go this way. You can have setbacks which are the opposite to progress in any. She says non trivial project is going to have setbacks. That's just a given. So it's not like we're going to eliminate those, but we just need to have the inner work life be predominantly filled with these positive, progress oriented experiences. Right. Now, we didn't talk about it in our PNTV on the art of learning, but one of the ideas we covered in the philosopher's note on it by Josh Waitzkin was this idea that we need to get really good at stopping this. We need to stop the vicious loop because the same thing feeds on itself this way and down and up. So we need to get good at stopping it. And one of the things that Josh Waitzkin, the extraordinary child prodigy chess player who then taught some kids how to play chess, right, One of the things he taught them was you need to know how to handle making a mistake. So when you make a mistake, that first mistake is rarely catastrophic. It's the mistake that unsettles you, that leads to the next mistake, which leads to the next mistake in this negative loop that leads to the problems. So you need to get really good, and we need to get really good and at noticing when we just slid off and then not allowing it to go all the way down, getting good at that and knowing what our sirens are, right? Those little kryptonites that are coming into our lives that can kind of derail us. Stop that and create this positive loop again. But again, the irony is that if you want to get here, one of the most important things you need to get good at is not allowing this downward loop. The more stressed you are, the more. The more committed you are to the protocol. As we talked about in a plus one on emotional stamina. So that's our progress loop. Small wins that are meaningful, et cetera. Another way to influence the inner work life, there's the progress principle. Which she saw by far was the best way to boost the wellbeing mentally and emotionally of the individuals was to make progress. Then she had two other factors. The factors were catalysts and nourishers. So catalysts, she has a list of, I think seven of them, which we have in the note. One of them, the number 1 1, was goals. So if you want to create a catalyst to creating a more positive inner work life, the number one thing you can do is to have clear and specific goals. When you have a goal that creates tension, which creates an opportunity for progress, you don't have goals. It's hard to have progress. If you have have a target you're aiming at, how do you know you're making progress toward it? So a catalyst is to have specific goals. Again, we come back to this theme again and again and again. Because science is unequivocal, clear, specific goals are essential to optimizing and actualizing. So, for example, today I'm making a lot of progress. I'm creating new systems for my productivity. And one of the things is Mondays. I'm recording this on a Monday. Mondays are studio day. Get into the studio and create content, whether that's these episodes or the optimal living masterclasses or the plus ones, et cetera. Now, my goal for today is 10 of these PNTV episodes. It's going to take me better part of the day to do 10 of these. My prep over the last couple of days was getting ready to film 10 of these episodes. That's a very specific goal which has created progress for me over the last couple days and and is creating progress today. She also makes the point that you want to make sure you have enough time for your goals, but not too much. So you don't want to have that snap goal where it's always a rush and you never have enough time. But you also don't want to have too much spaciousness. You need to challenge yourself. So for me to create 10 of these in one part of a day is obviously a significant challenge. It forces me to step up and to have clarity on what I'm going to do. And what that does is it catalyzes me to create progress, which feels great. And I'm also in flow, which also feels great. So catalysts, if you want to create progress, know what your wildly important goal is. Me doing this today is also connected to my wildly important goal. It's also connected to my lead measure of deep work engagement time. So know what your important goal is. Know what you're going to do. Specifically, the next day. Which leads us to our fifth idea. Here is, which is the checklist. So in the note, I end with a quote that she has on Atul Gawande's the Checklist Manifesto, which right after I wrote the note, I went into our library, pulled out the Checklist Manifesto that we have in our house. I bought this book years ago and read it. So the next episode is actually going to be on the Checklist Manifesto. She talks about Atul Gawande's research and his extraordinary analysis of the fact Atul is a surgeon. And he basically came up with, in his book, the Checklist Manifesto, he talks about a checklist that he uses for surgeons. Super basic. He calls it ridiculous and almost silly in how basic the things are on this checklist. Super highly trained surgeons who know how to do some pretty extraordinary, complex things. But what he did was he instituted these checklists where they had to do things like introduce themselves to the rest of the operating staff. They had to do things like check a box saying that they confirmed which side of the body the surgery is going to be performed on. Literally almost absurd things. They had a few different things they had to check off at a few different phases of the surgery. Very basic fundamentals. And what happened was mortality rates in those surgeries that were performed with the checklist, that didn't teach them anything new. It was the basic fundamentals. The mortality rate dropped by 47%. And Theresa Amabile says that's astonishing. Simply looking at the basic fundamentals and doing them consistently reduces mortality in surgeries by 47%. So, of course, my connection to our lives is if we want to create masterpiece days, which is the aspect we need to shine a light on if we want to create a masterpiece life one day at a time, we need to create a checklist of our basic fundamentals, which is why I'm always talking about eating, moving, sleeping, focusing your mind. We're talking more and more about breathing now properly. But what are your basic fundamentals? Create a checklist where you master those. We're going to talk about it more in the next PNTV on the Checklist Manifesto. But think right now, what do you do when you're on, when you have your absolute best days? What are you doing? Make a list of it. Well, I do that. I do that and I do that. Fantastic. Do that on a consistent basis. Reduce the mortality rates of your masterpiece days by 47%. One of the things I talk about in this, and the other note is I have my simple thing on my Wall calendar, which I talked about in my Journaling 101 class, which we just released. I brought my wall calendar off of the wall and I shared the fact that every single night when I finish the day, I write on the next day at the bottom of my little big wall calendar, on the day I put 1 plus 10 plus 100 plus 1000 plus 10,000, right? So I do one sun salutation every day. I do 10 pull ups every day. I do 100 burpees every day. A thousand meters of rowing and 10,000 steps every day. This is basic, basic stuff for me. Now I've been doing this for years and I don't need to keep track of this anymore. I just do it. But every single morning, I start my day after meditation and a little bit of movement and I do one sun salutation and I literally dried an X and. And I put a big old smiley face there. What did I just do? I created progress. It's a small win, a micro win on a meaningful goal, which is me optimizing my energy, doing the things I say are important to me. Then I go and I do a set of burpees. I do 10 burpees at a time. I do 11 sets, so I actually do 122 burpees. I actually do 11 burpees, not 10, which is a whole other conversation. But each time I do a set of burpees and I do them. When my little timer goes off every thousand seconds, I'm reminded to stand up, shake out my body. So I'm not sedentary all day long. I do a little hash mark there, right? Little Roman numeral. I do five. I'm pretty happy about that. I do a little smiley face, right? I go on my trail run. I bang out my 10 pull ups on a little bar out there, or whatever you call it, a piece of wood on a little stand out there on the trail. Boom. I come back, little smiley face. I bang out my other burpees and now I'm done with 100. Smiley face. Middle of the day, I rode my kit, 1K. I'm pretty happy about that. Smiley face, 10K by the end of the day, smiley face, I've done it. One plus 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000. Super mundane, basic stuff. My little checklist on the fundamentals which allows me to create progress all day, every day. Then every time I'm doing something creatively. Oh, I finished reading a book. Boom, check. I finished a philosopher's note. Boom, check. I finished one of these. I get a little mark And a little happy face. Progress, micro wins. There's an astonishing amount of power in it, so we want to create it. What are your basic fundamentals? How do you create a checklist? And again, in some ways, the sillier the better. Know what you do when you're on. Do those things, not particularly complicated, but do them consistently. As you do that, you will enjoy, hopefully lots of smiles. You will embrace the catalyst for your inner work life. Right? Most specifically, create a goal that creates that tension that forces you to take action. Create a progress loop that's positive, kind of lost it there. And know how to stop it so it doesn't get into the vicious cycle you want the virtuous cycle. Again, small wins that are meaningful, connected to a wildly important goal, not just stuff you're going through the motions on that can create frustration and burnout. And then again, we have the inner work life. How you are feeling emotionally in your connection to your work and to others is what's going to drive your productivity and your engagement and progress is the principle that drives the show. So get on that. Think about whatever idea we talked about today that landed the most. Figure out how you move from theory to practice. Just 1% better today. Plus 1 plus 1 plus 1 and make today another awesome day. See you.

Isn't it a bit odd that we went from math to science to history, but somehow missed the class on how to live? For some wacky reason, optimal living 101 never made the schedule.

Of course it's too late to go.

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Asterisks and mark all up?

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