Do you ever feel that your days are nothing but a grind, that you have nothing to show for your life? Even after pulling off the big deal, winning the promotion or earning your first pot of gold — even after reaching a whole pile of goals and milestones — the joy is gone in a flash, and it can feel as though none of it carried any real meaning. In truth, a stronger sense of achievement benefits us in many ways — it helps us build a healthy self-image and sustains the drive to keep going in our careers. This article introduces a few ways to help cultivate that sense of achievement.
Secret One: Steady Progress
When we talk about achievement, what often comes to mind is a promotion, a windfall, a breakthrough invention, or a literary masterpiece. Goals like these are not only grand and demanding; they also consume a great deal of our energy and time, which makes them hard to get close to — and hard to use as a spark for our sense of achievement. Yet achievement is not a leap from nothing to the finish line. It is built up, step by step, from small wins and small advances. So if we want a greater sense of achievement, we need to feel that we are making meaningful progress, day after day.
Of all the things that can stir our emotions and energy in the course of a day, the most effective is making progress in meaningful work. Over the long run, the more frequently people feel they are making progress, the more likely they are to become more creative and more productive. Progress each day — even a small win — can change how we feel and how we perform. One study found that as many as 28% of incidents had only a slight effect on a project's progress, yet a profound effect on workers' morale and sense of achievement. And as these small wins accumulate day by day, our performance at work improves too. That same study, however, also found that small setbacks deal an even greater blow to how we feel about our working lives and to our sense of achievement — so steering clear of the various little irritations around the office can help keep that sense of achievement from being eroded.
Another condition for boosting a sense of achievement is that the work itself must be meaningful. Have you ever worked a summer job? Most people who do only feel a flicker of achievement when they finally clock off. Why is that? Because such work rarely lets us make any genuine progress. The author once worked as a stock clerk in a large supermarket, and no matter how hard the author worked at restocking, there was always more stock to put out — which made the work feel pointless, so naturally there was little sense of achievement to be had.
Being meaningful does not mean having to be the next Mandela or the next Steve Jobs; meaning can be very simple — for example, providing clients with high-quality service, improving the company's efficiency, or contributing to the community. Whether the goal is big or small, as long as it is meaningful to us and we can clearly see how our work contributes to that meaningful goal, it counts. From a management perspective, a company need not endow the work with some grand significance — after all, plenty of jobs do carry a certain meaning — what matters is helping employees see how their work contributes to that meaningful goal. Management should also avoid stripping employees' work of meaning, such as by dismissing their suggestions, frequently disrupting their work, or making changes without telling them. In this way, when employees feel their work is meaningful, their sense of achievement at making progress will rise considerably.
Secret Two: Balancing Different Goals
Each of us holds different identities and roles in life, and naturally we have different kinds of needs, wishes and goals; no single goal can satisfy all of a person's needs and desires. What is more, today's society is ever-changing, and the standards and models of success are shifting all the time. One way to respond is to learn to set different goals, satisfying different kinds of needs and wishes, and so build and strengthen a diverse and lasting sense of achievement.
Of course, everyone defines success differently, and the author has no intention of judging or prescribing one by one. That said, a Harvard study that interviewed over a hundred senior business executives found that a lasting sense of achievement has four key elements: happiness, achieving success, significance, and leaving a lasting legacy. If we attend only to our careers, neglect our families, or do things that harm others, then even if we win outside recognition and success, we may still not feel fulfilled.
Tending to all four of these long-term dimensions of achievement at once is not easy, but fortunately the study also distilled some methods that can effectively raise our sense of achievement. They include: matching our expectations accurately to the dimensions above, and bringing the right feelings and perspective to bear as we pursue different goals; knowing when to focus on a particular goal, while also knowing when — having gained enough of a sense of achievement — to switch tracks or goals at the right moment. Pulling together the various strategies that help build a lasting sense of achievement, the study ultimately found that achievement is like a kaleidoscope: true achievement is not a single pattern, but a brilliant, intricate image assembled from different patterns and different mirrors. At the same time, we should regularly take a good look at our own life's kaleidoscope, and see whether there is some dimension of achievement worth devoting more time to improving. And if we can maintain a certain sense of achievement across different dimensions, we are better able to allocate our energy according to the proportions we hold in our hearts — and even to resist the temptation and stress of over-pursuing one kind of achievement, so as not to fall into a bottomless pit and lose the ability to gain any sense of achievement at all. In practice, we can break each of the four dimensions of achievement above into finer sub-dimensions, then write down how many areas we currently feel a sense of achievement in, and how many feel lacking, and afterwards begin to adjust where we place our attention, so that in time we can gain a just-right sense of achievement across different areas.
Conclusion
On the journey to gaining a sense of achievement, the path we walk is not one straight, broad road, but a forest where it is easy to lose our way. So along the way we need to reflect, again and again, on the meaning of this experience, and to adjust our direction from time to time.
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