Perils to progress

Little projects and great public works alike depend on the physical and psychological resources of individual human beings. And the achievement of any goal--major or minor--depends on how well the people in pursuit of that goal are motivated. Motivation, then, is crucial to the progress of a whole society as well as to the progress in an individual's life. Activism, in particular, depends on extraordinary motivation. And anyone who wants to foster movements toward change--either great or small--will benefit from knowing all the ways in which motivation can be destroyed: these are among the perils to progress.

Distraction is the least destructive way that progress toward a goal can be impeded. Distraction is just a loss of concentration: it results from a stimulus that briefly overpowers the mind. Distractions sometimes but do not always require a conscious effort to be overcome. A student, sitting in a math class on a beautiful, sunny day in spring hears some birds chirping and some students laughing and enjoying themselves outside. His mind wanders from the instructor's lecture on evaluating triple integrals. After a minute or so, his attention returns to the class work. He was distracted. He can recover, if he can backtrack and capture the pieces he missed while his attention wandered. But filling in the blanks right away is not always easy or even possible to do. He may have to go over the topic himself with his textbook in the dorm room that evening. Distractions will not necessarily jeopardize his grade in the class, but they can make his efforts to learn the required material less efficient.

Disruption is an interruption of goal-directed activity by an unrelated event. It does not usually threaten to take minds off track for very long, especially because it puts itself very clearly in contrast to the work in progress. Disruptions are events that have to be handled, but are normally circumscribed at a particular time and place. An example of disruption is the intrusion of an unauthorized person into a meeting. The business of the meeting has to be postponed until the intruder is addressed and sent out.

Diversion is another way to impede progress: it is a course of action that favors the achievement of a secondary goal over the achievement of the primary. The goals that people achieve when dealing with diversions are not those they set out to achieve beforehand. Diversions are not necessarily activities to resent and try to avoid, even as they require a commitment of time, energy and will-power. They may involve managing a crisis that is both urgent and important, like helping a child with a serious disability or caring for aging parents who can no longer live independently. We may forgo a promising career, pass up our chance for advancement in a company to pursue a greater good; secondary goals can become primary. But however worthy they are in themselves, diversions are by definition irrelevant to the achievement of an established objective.

The clock and calendar can never be turned back. Like little doses of radiation over a lifetime, diversions add up. Repeated diversions threaten to undermine enthusiasm for our goals and even for goal-setting. If we are diverted too long or too often, we stand to miss the satisfaction of our deepest desires. While we may be content with diversions and even find them more rewarding, we may, on the other hand, find that diversions ultimately produce only frustration and resentment.

Derailment is yet another but a more serious process for hampering achievements. An artist who had several works of major significance in her studio at home thought she had done everything that she could to protect them. She had installed and activated intruder alarm and fire suppression systems. She had arranged to have a brother check on her house daily while she traveled three hundred miles to visit their mother. In being away from her home, she was fortunate in one respect: she was not injured or killed when a tornado, unseen in that part of the country in one hundred and fifty years, destroyed her house and all its contents.

No one in the community lost a life, but many lives were changed. The artist suffered a very serious setback in her career: while her insurance covered much of her financial loss, she could not expect to get any critical acclaim for works that reviewers in the art world had not seen. But she still had her vision, her talent and her motivation. She started back to work as soon as she got her studio organized again.

Refreshing faded memories, gathering necessary tools and materials together again and, for an organization, reorganizing the talented people who once worked very well as a group--all of these can take precious time. But given the will to do it, in time, it will be done.

Demoralization is the most serious impairment to progress: it is the abandonment of efforts to achieve a goal because of a loss of faith in the value or achievability of that goal. When breaks in concentration occur repeatedly, or when there are frequent interruptions in activities that lead to a goal, or when many subroutines have to be completed in the pursuit of accomplishment, the question can arise, ‘Why bother?' This question, when it comes up often, or when it has remarkable force, leads a person naturally to consider abandoning the original plan.

We are less likely to give up on big projects than on little ones. For work we consider significant, distractions and disruptions rarely cause anyone to become demoralized. But lengthy diversions (for months or years) or a derailment may be enough to destroy the will to continue even the most promising project: they can demoralize a person. A fifty-year-old man lost his job. For several months, he pursued other employment opportunities without success. He became convinced that he could not get any other work. In time he quit trying to land any job at all. His greatest loss was not the loss of a job or of opportunities to work; his greatest loss was his loss of faith in his ability to succeed. He was demoralized.

Fortunately, although there are many ways that progress can be imperiled, we have some ways to minimize the perils to progress.

Control the environment.

At most, the human mind can only attend to a few things at once. Arguably, our minds can only attend to one thing at a time. Clearly, a person who is working on several projects can only work on a part of each project at a time. And rare is the job that can be completed before another makes its demands: all but the very shortest projects suffer interruptions, and these only exacerbate the difficulties in attending to several tasks at once.

We should control the key variables of the environment: Reduce the number and impact of distractions. Persuade others to prevent disruptions. Avoid traps and time sinks. Employ gatekeepers to handle routine requests and to help maintain the continuity of work.

Distractions come from our environment, but they also come from within: our own minds and bodies can produce them. Our thoughts cannot match the power and impact of the basic emotions--particularly the unsatisfied desires. Strong feelings can ruin our ability to think. Very often the only way to be free of troublesome desires is to satisfy them--provided that this does no one any harm.

Develop our strengths.

Reprogramming is often useful and sometimes necessary: it involves the modification of habits to create more productive patterns of behavior. For one thing, we must be able to defer gratification without losing our resolve to bring our projects to successful conclusions. Perseverance entails the ability to go a long time with only an idea or dream, and little if any tangible accomplishment, to motivate continued effort. It does not mean simply the ability to withstand inaction or endure long stretches of empty or wasted time. In fact, well‑motivated people may resent any long period in which they have nothing to do. But well‑motivated people benefit from understanding that any large or complex operation takes time and that waiting--sometimes waiting a long time before seeing results--is a fact of life.

The continuity of a project over a long time and after many interruptions demands that participants reestablish their links to past thoughts and activities. Perseverance is an essential virtue for any seeker of goals and for managers of any job, and it involves the ability to keep track of where the work needs to be picked up after an interruption.

Looking for little signs of progress can help us stay motivated to continue our efforts: one way to get through the long dry stretches is to find as many tangible accomplishments as possible along the way.

Prepare for challenges.

We will sometimes have to operate in difficult situations, and bad things will sometimes happen. We should develop plans for handling all the problems we may encounter on the path toward our goal. We can benefit by developing effective responses to as many future events as we can foresee. Being prepared, having thought out beforehand our responses to troublesome situations, is the best way to meet the inevitable challenges to our efforts.

To make progress, we must overcome inertia, move things that are naturally resistant to change. And there are many more things that can go wrong than can go right. Our ideas of progress put us on a narrow course: they are specific and focused, and the world in all its complexity, rich in detail, offers us many more pathways than we can possibly pursue in a lifetime, and too many pathways that lead us nowhere.

We have to choose the kind of progress we want to see. And then we have to act. Progress is not inevitable. And it can never be permanent. Progress will never occur without sustained and directed action.