How positive feedback can trigger action ?

Do you have a laundry list of things outstanding for months now ? Are you getting poked by others of your failures to deliver and you hate that ? You are indeed self driven. You might not want a plan and you don’t like it if others do it for you. And if someone directs you on things you are an expert of, you feel insulted. Does this sound relatable especially if you know you can perform but have not taken any actions lately ?

The purpose of the blog is to discuss the effect of receiving positive feedback and how it helps tackle your inertia and procrastinations. Here are some factors that motivates one to take action.

Pressure, the urge to deliver something when faced with a deadline or a mandate. Leaving the outcome, the whole idea of deadline definitely works. In fact, many self-driven leaders, impose a deadline on themselves to challenge and motivate themselves to finish something they picked. It’s a well known tactic.

Rewards, we are indeed chasing something. Money, position, status, recognition or perhaps mere experiences. A prize at the end of an action, is fascinating. Some people chase the wildest ventures to fulfill their desires, inner voice and to feel contend. It’s all about feeling rewarded at the tail end of it. Rewards provide the basic fuel for action - motivation.

Early in my career, when I was a senior software engineer in New York. I would face some recurring dry periods, filled with lack of motivation mixed with laziness. Everything seems to be going well, bi-weekly paychecks, new experiences every weekend, social activities with friends. No complaints, but I was becoming complacent every few weeks if not months. Mundane is perhaps the right word to capture that feeling, everything was dull at work and at home.

And coincidentally during one of these dry periods, the annual year end performance came by. The ratings came out and it was exceeds expectations. And then something unusual happened, unusual only because I paid attention this time. So my lack of motivation was not at work, but at home. So during weekends and nights, I dabble with filmmaking, over time it indeed became my passion. For many months, I have been waiting to produce something creative. At that point, I had directed about 5 short films. But for more than a year, I hadn’t been able to write a script because I didn’t feel creative. I was so preoccupied and not self driven. Long story short, I was not moving or taking any step on pursuing my creative side. And there was the aha moment.

I got all positive feedback at work, my manager gave me a fresh perspective of what he thinks of the reviews. I came home with a positive outlook and was happy. I told my wife and she was excited to see me happy. With the usual evening, I went to bed that night. In a hour or so, I woke up with a fresh concept, an idea that I could now develop into a script. I was so excited at that moment, I told my wife that I’m going to write a script (finally!). More than a new story, the fact that the creative spark occurred, was the moment for me. I dragged my laptop and started writing. This has happened to me in the past and those ideas have become my short films. I was thrilled and I started writing more and more. All the scenes were flashing through my head, organically became words on the screen. I slept after 3 hours, feeling contend and fulfilled.

Few days passed by. I closely observed the mileage of recent positive feedback from my performance review. I was multi tasking and delivering the best at work and my script. There was this consistent feeling that I’m capable and can act. I felt energized and welcomed new challenges. The trigger to keep me going was positive feedback. I was reminded that I’m the best and that fueled me for weeks.

So whats the point of all of this ? You perhaps already know that you like getting celebrated and getting recognized. But here was the aha moment for me. I started using this as a trigger hack whenever I would get stuck in a phase of inertia. I would force myself into easy tasks and put myself in an environment, where I would likely get positive feedback for the quality of delivery. And then I would take that tonic to go finish up my hard problems at hand. The key was being deliberate about this method and using positive feedback from accomplishing easy tasks to fuel to pick the hard tasks. I simply found hack around my inertia and fooled my brain to work using the flywheel effect of positive feedback.

So I would leave you with the thought if you can relate to this and pick events/milestones from your life. If you are in period of inertia, sitting on some hard problems. You may want find opportunities and improve your chances of getting positive feedback in one area and let the net effect trickle down as actions on your outstanding list!