Fast feedback, at the gym and the office

Last week, Jeff Cavaliere, my favorite gym trainer, wrote a post about the importance of fast-cycle feedback.

In short, he argued that people who judge their progress at the gym by looking in the mirror are more likely to quit, because visible changes can take months. But those who look for feedback by checking whether they can lift heavier weights, or by noticing small improvements in their movement patterns, can see progress within 2–3 weeks and are therefore more likely to stick with it.

This is an important principle:

1. If you’re a leader, motivation is not something you generate with year-end bonuses. Like visible progress in the mirror, bonuses help sustain long-term motivation, but do little to generate it in the first place: no one would keep working hard, at the gym or at the office, for more than a year or two without something tangible to show for it. Instead, you generate motivation by finding some form of feedback that demonstrates early on that the effort your people are putting in isn’t going to waste.
2. Likewise, in your personal life, one of the most effective ways to generate motivation is to look for evidence that your efforts are paying off that can emerge within two weeks, rather than evidence that takes years to appear. Some examples: if you’re writing a book, post excerpts as tweets to demonstrate to yourself that your writing resonates, without having to wait until the book is finished; or, if you’re learning to boulder, notice how climbing becomes less tiring as you learn the basics of efficient movement, rather than checking whether you can complete harder routes.

Motivation requires early evidence that your efforts are paying off, and that must be found somewhere other than where the big results show.