What Drives You?

There is something that draws you onward. Some force or desire pushes you to get up every morning and keeps you working each day. What is it?

If it's just money, then you'll do anything that will get you money and the quality of a job will be determined by the amount of money it pays. But it's not just money, otherwise you'd do some illegal stuff and make a lot of cash.

If it's just power, then  you'll do anything that will get you more power. Stepping on anyone who gets in your way will be a part of the job. But, it's not just power, otherwise you'd sacrifice all your relationships in the pursuit of more power.

It's not just success, otherwise you'll drop anything that prevents you from being successful. The quality of your work will be determined on how often you win or get promoted. But it's not just success, otherwise you'd avoid all risks that might cause failure.

So, what drives you? Sure, money, power and success are all a part of the business world, but they are not an end in themselves. There's more out there, more to do and more to be than just one who follows the carrots that are dangled.

Losing Control

Often we're worried about control. We have an idea, a message, a plan and we want to see it happen. So we work, we speak, we plot to see it become a reality. But then other people get connected and hear the idea. They bring their own thoughts, words and plans to the table. If your idea is going to spread you have to give up some control.

Here's the most dangerous point in any endeavor. The point of losing control. If you're driving and you lose control the car can spin off the road and you might be injured or die. If you lose control of your idea, it might go horribly wrong and end up doing harm. If you lose control of your message it might be re-interpreted and spread by people you don't know to say things you didn't mean.

Or.

You could be driving and lose control into a skid that slides you around a corner and into a new direction smoothly. In driving it's called drifting. It's the act of losing control, on purpose. The car's tires lose traction and the vehicle slides to the side rather than going in the direction of the wheels. Check out the video below for a better explanation than I can give with words.

The point is that losing control isn't always a bad thing, if you can manage it. If you know what's happening, you can direct the loss of control and let things move in a different direction in a safe way.

How can you lose control well?

Masters of the Universe (and other Algebraic Ideas)

The picture to the right is an asymptote - a line that gets progressively closer to another line without ever touching it. I was reading Drive by Daniel Pink, and in it he talks about how mastery of a skill or set of skills is like an asymptote. We can constantly approach mastery, but never achieve it.

Think of it this way: mastery is 100% ability to do what you want to do (say it's preach with PowerPoint). You practice and learn and you go from 0% ability to 50% ability with PowerPoint in short order. That's a huge accomplishment and your preaching shows marked improvement. Now you practice some more and your ability jumps again from 50% to 75% - you're on a roll! You'll have this done in no time. But the next cycle you only get to 87.5% and then 93.75% and then 96.875. You keep getting so close to 100%, but you can never quite get there.

For some of us, that will be frustrating and cause us to want to give up. But for others, we will be endlessly motivated to keep improving. It's so close, so tangible. We can almost get there. We just want to keep getting better.

Which type of person are you?