The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work

Sophie felt little sense of direction and even less autonomy in her work. She began to lose her motivation to continue

Having clear goals orients people as they approach any job, from the most self-contained task to the broadest-scope project

Tim’s team had something that Sophie’s lacked: clear goals about where they were heading. When you don’t know what you should be doing, it’s tough to feel good about doing it.

The progress principle describes the most important influence on inner work life, but progress and setbacks are not the only work events that matter

When people make progress toward, or actually meet, personally meaningful goals, the good match between their expectations and their reading of reality allows them to feel good, grow their positive self-efficacy, get even more revved up to tackle the next job, and mentally move on to something else.13 Progress motivates people to accept difficult challenges more readily and to persist longer.

Nonetheless, setbacks on personally important projects can cause uncertainty, doubt, or confusion in people’s sense of themselves and lower their motivation for the work.
The strong need for self-efficacy explains why everyday work progress stands out as the key event stimulating positive inner work life. It also explains why everyday work setbacks are particularly harmful. A

goals.6 It begins to develop very early in life; in fact, the need for self-efficacy drives children to explore and learn about their world. This need continues and even grows throughout the lifespan as people compare their achievements with those of their peers as well as their own “personal bests.

One of the most basic human drives is toward self-efficacy—a person’s belief that he or she is individually capable of planning and executing the tasks required to achieve desired goals

making progress is so central to good inner work life and high-level performance over time.

The different forms of motivation can coexist in the same person, at the same time, for the same work. In fact, nearly al intrinsical y motivated tasks on the job have some extrinsic motivators attached. For example, you can be intrinsical y motivated by the chal enge of creating a marketing strategy for a new service, while stil driven by next week’s deadline for presenting the strategy to the board—an extrinsic motivator.