I'll Take Motivation for $200, Alex.

When Conor was 8, maybe 9, he tried out for a new travel soccer team. He’d played at least 7 seasons of rec soccer by then and had shown some promise so we thought he might appreciate higher caliber competition. But, by day two of the required three day tryout, it was clear that Conor was not bringing his A game. On the drive home, Brian asked Conor why he was clearly dogging it. I can still hear the indignation in his high-pitched voice as he said, “I don’t like these coaches, the drills are stupid and none of my friends are playing. I mean, where’s my motivation!” Where indeed.

One of my favorite books is Drive: The Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink. I read it ages ago but it just made so much sense to me then and has stuck with me (even as I’ve forgotten so many books I read more recently). In it he posits that motivation comes from a combination of Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose. So simple to understand and, applying it to Conor’s soccer experience, he was 0 for 3: the coaches weren’t giving him any autonomy, he felt he’d mastered the drills already and, at 8, his purpose was to have fun with his friends. These three also align easily for me when I think about what I loved about my last job and my current efforts in writing and podcasting. It’s also very similar to Adam Grant’s TedTalk that I wrote about on Halloween. Both include autonomy and mastery in their core three, but is what Pink calls purpose the same thing Grant is categorizing as mattering? In part, I think it’s the same need to know WHY you are doing something. But while I feel like I understand my purpose — producing creative ways to inspire children of all ages to be curious and confident learners and decision makers — I mentioned that I struggle with what it means for an action to matter. I think where I get stuck is that I need it to matter for others and not just to me. And isn’t that what we all want? My writing matters to me because I enjoy the process and it feeds my inner creative but I want it to matter to other people as well because that makes it worthwhile on a whole other level.

Where do you plug in to find energy, purpose & joy?

I mention this because last weekend I offered Ready, Regan? as a free ebook download for four days. And almost one thousand people (955 to be exact) took me up on my offer. It was very fun to check the downloads frequently throughout the weekend and find a new, larger number every single time. But I honestly have no idea how or why. My social media reach is small so something else was at work beyond my Instagram & Facebook posts. I know the Amazon algorithm kicks in at some point but what started the surge? Several were downloaded before I even mentioned it publicly. Not sure I’ll ever figure it out, but it was fun while it lasted. On Saturday morning, I gleefully shared with Brian that I was listed on an Amazon Best Seller List in the #1 spot. It was the children’s chapter book free ebook category which is fairly niche but seeing my book under a Best Seller banner was still a pretty big thrill. To keep me humble, on Monday morning when the promotion ended, and I was back competing against all ebooks, it immediately dropped to about 1,000 but I’ve got the screenshot to prove it was there for two and a half days. All fame is fleeting after all.

Brian’s normal person response was along the lines of “That’s great. You seem happy. What does it mean in terms of your future?” I didn’t have a ready answer. I love putting the growth mindset toolkit out into the world to help kids and on one level that’s absolutely enough. The more kids that read the book, the more that may develop skills and habits that will serve them well for a long time. But is that all I’m trying to do? Scatter growth mindset seeds in hopes that they’ll find a place to flourish? Maybe? If one thousand new kids get the message is that enough? Or am I serious about a third act as an author of many books and a podcast? Because let’s be clear, I didn’t earn a single penny from those downloads and generating income is certainly one way our work matters and one marker that distinguishes a career from a hobby.

As a college advisor, I often recommended students who weren’t clear about their future start with an assessment like Myers Briggs, Strengths Finders, The Strong Interest Inventory, etc. I don’t believe any of them can capture everything accurately but they are a great place to start a conversation. “What rings true? What surprised you? How do those who know you well respond to the outcomes? Let’s dig a little deeper.” It’s often in refuting the results that a light bulb goes off and they start thinking “oh yeah, that IS kind of me. Huh.” I’ve always (re)learned something about myself with every assessment I’ve ever taken and they allow us to see ourselves from an entirely different perspective. The way we see ourselves is nothing if not complicated and students in particular are often fighting against their true nature in order to fit that which they think they SHOULD do to be successful. But my very favorite assessment came from a book called, “What Motivates Me?” I don’t remember how I even found it but I think I was looking to get a little more granular after reading Drive. Pink’s big three all resonated but also seemed a bit nonspecific and I wanted details. So I took this assessment because it ranked 24 different motivational factors. To my surprise and Brian’s dismay, #24 was money. Which explains so much about my career arc and my reluctance to embrace being an entrepreneur right now. The writing feels easy. The work it takes to actually make money feels hard. My top seven motivators, however, were all on point: Creativity, Learning, Impact, Variety, Family, Teamwork & Fun. I’ve mentioned missing having a team but the one that stands out from this list is Impact. The description of this motivator says “those who are highly impact driven want to know they are doing work that is important…that they are supposed to do something that will create positive change in the world.” That sounds very grand and suggests work being done on a big stage with dramatic impact but I have always been a firm believer in the butterfly effect of small changes. I know I made a difference in the lives of more than a few students when I worked as an advisor, but I was always frustrated that we couldn’t reach more. I’m having the same feelings now related to my writing and the podcast. I think I had hoped one or both would sort of organically take off in a big way. You know, I get to plant a few seeds and all of a sudden a garden grows. Turns out I may have written a fairytale for myself.

So the question for me now is, how much work am I willing to do to have a small but meaningful impact? Because publishing and podcasting are a lot of work. I’ll be wrestling with that for awhile. But in terms of action, I’m taking the interest in the ebook as a sign that it’s a good little story and having a couple more in the series can only be a good thing. So I’ve been working on a couple sequels and focusing on the creativity and the fun. And I’m reminding myself that, as is so often the case with everything we do (including parenting), the impact may not be immediately visible but it’s out there.