Effort vs Achievement
A few weeks ago, I was listening to Jay Shetty’s Daily Jay broadcast on the Calm App. That day he was talking about the difference between effort and achievement. He said something to the effect of “we too often reward effort without looking at the achievement. For instance, we praise the worker who comes into the office early and leaves late.” I appreciated the juxtaposition of these two concepts as I hadn’t looked at them in relation to one another before.
From an I/O Psych and HR perspective, we emphasize the importance of having clearly outlined goals for performance management. This is a must for measuring true achievement at work that can lead to and justify a fair increase of compensation. Without a system like this in place, we often see employees say, “I work so hard, so I deserve a raise.” Here, these employees want acknowledgement for their effort that may or may not hit the achievement aspect of their work.
Additionally, the basis of quiet quitting is rooted in effort management. In some ways, quiet quitting could be a healthy thing as employees are trying to hold better boundaries and refrain from job enmeshment. However, the risk quiet quitting runs is if we are only doing tasks that relate to an organization’s goals, we can inadvertently rob ourselves of our own mission and purpose within those tasks. Why? Because purpose driven behaviors require a significant amount of effort.
As someone who is recovering from burnout, I’ve had to admit that I’m terrible at effort management. Mission and purpose matter so much to me that I will put in inordinate amounts of effort into the smallest tasks because I want them to feel purposeful. However, in the same vein as things I’ve said before, effort may be a renewable resource, but it is not an unlimited resource.
My family often shares a favorite memory that I have recently realized pertains to my issues with effort. Growing up, my father often took us to Island Park Idaho for a week or two in the summer. The scenery and wildlife up there are gorgeous, however, for a bunch of suburban girls, there wasn’t a lot of variety in the activities we could participate in. One thing we did, however, was float down the snake river to Mack’s Inn. We learned in later years that if you have a small motor on your raft, this trip is a delightful 45 minutes. However, the first year we tried it, we did the traditional float with just a raft and that takes 4 hours. Compare those two times for a min. 45 mins vs 4 hours – that’s how slow the shallow river moves at that stretch. About 3 and a half hours into our trip down the river, we were hot, tired, bored, and cranky. My sister’s boy (space) friend had gotten so bored with the speed of our raft that he hopped out and begin dragging the raft behind him (the water only went up to his mid-thigh, so this was pretty easy to do) However, my little sister, who was probably about 4 years old at the time, made a frustrated scream. We asked her what the matter was, and she said, “I’ve been going like this and like this and like this and no one even notices!!” We thought she had been lazily dragging her foot and splashing in the water as a way to play, but turns out she had thought she was paddling with her leg in an effort to move our raft along faster. Unfortunately, it had not helped at all and it’s true – no one noticed.
I’ve had to ask myself how often I’ve done the same thing as my little sister. How many times have I exerted all my effort and hoped someone would notice? How many times have I let myself become bitter and resentful because others did not validate how I was trying to contribute? Honestly, it’s more than I want to admit. Just because something feels productive does not mean that it is productive.
I’ve seen too many people chase productivity for productivity’s sake - myself included. I could give a lesson on the influences of the protestant work ethic here, but I think you get the point. Being busy does not necessarily mean we are creating value. I believe the key to healthy productivity is learning how to balance both effort and achievement.