ESPN's Bill Simmons recently exchanged a number of emails with The New Yorker's Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink and The Tipping Point, as part of Simmons' ongoing series of interviews with public figures from beyond the world of sports. Gladwell's insights can usually be applied to a wide range of subjects, so I was curious to see what Simmons (aka "The Sports Guy") would elicit from him. The most interesting thread from Part One of their correspondence relates to motivation--here are a few excerpts:
Simmons: [H]ow did you learn to...write so well?
Gladwell: ...I'm not sure I can
answer that...except to say that I really love writing, in a
totally uncomplicated way. When I was in high school, I ran track and
in the beginning I thought of training as a kind of necessary evil on
the way to racing. But then, the more I ran, the more I realized that
what I loved was running, and it didn't much matter to me whether it
came in the training form or the racing form. I feel the same way about
writing... They say that Wayne
Gretzky, as a 2-year-old, would cry when the Saturday night hockey game
on TV was over, because it seemed to him at that age unbearably sad
that something he loved so much had to come to end, and I've always
thought that was the simplest explanation for why Gretzky was Gretzky...(snip)Simmons: ...I think there's a certain amount of professionalism that needs to be
there, as well, because there will always be days when you don't feel
like doing your job, and those are always the true tests. Halberstam
has a great quote about this: "Being a professional is doing your job
on the days you don't feel like doing it." I love that quote and mutter
it to myself every time I don't feel like writing because my allergies
are bothering me, or my back hurts, or my head hurts, or there's some
random dog barking, or any of the other excuses I use when I'm
procrastinating from pumping out something. So how easy is the writing
process for you?...Gladwell: This is actually a question I'm obsessed with: Why don't people work
hard when it's in their best interest to do so?...The (short) answer
is that it's really risky to work hard, because then if you fail you
can no longer say that you failed because you didn't work hard. It's a
form of self-protection... Most of
the psychological research on this is focused on why some kids don't
study for tests -- which is a much more serious version of the same
problem. If you get drunk the night before an exam instead of studying
and you fail, then the problem is that you got drunk. If you do study
and you fail, the problem is that you're stupid -- and stupid, for a
student, is a death sentence. The point is that it is far more
psychologically dangerous and difficult to prepare for a task than not
to prepare.
These two concepts seem inextricably intertwined: A) In addition to the many external obstacles we encounter that keep us from doing our best work, we may also have a tendency to sabotage ourselves by not even doing our best to begin with. B) To insure against this tendency, we need to love what we're doing, and we need to love it so passionately that the intrinsic rewards of the experience itself are sufficient--because the extrinsic rewards (for achieving success as well as for avoiding failure) may never be enough.
This resonates deeply with me. I'm not indifferent to extrinsic factors--I want to enjoy a high standard of living, win praise for my efforts, avoid criticism for failure--all the things we expect to come from doing good work. But if I'm not in love with the work itself, none of that is enough to keep me going indefinitely. As Simmons rightly notes, a sense of professionalism--which I see as a combination of duty and pride--is essential to get through the rough spots. I've drawn from that well plenty of times--enough to know it's not bottomless. All of these forces factor into our motivation, but at the center there has to be a passion for the work.
I've been a little harsh on Simmons over the years (and he can be bad--don't ever read him on the New England Patriots), but he deserves a lot of credit for showing us another side of Gladwell. Well done--I'm looking forward to Part Two tomorrow.
tags: malcolm gladwell bill simmons espn blink tipping point motivation