Alex Shalman.comPractical Personal Development

Editor’s Note: This is a guest article by Richard Johnson.

“I don’t think of work as work and play as play. It’s all living.”
~Richard Branson, founder of Virgin

Ah, drive. It’s that thing which successful people have, isn’t it? It’s that mad gleam in the eyes of those at the tops of their fields. From Steve Jobs to Hayao Miyazaki it’s that thing about them which screams manically: ‘I’m used to working 12 hours a day, because I like to!’

Sick, sick people. But wouldn’t we all like to get the results they do?

‘They’re lucky, special or both’

A big section of the personal development industry is dedicated to becoming really successful. There are two major beliefs sceptics use to disregard at least this section, if not the entire industry: ‘successful people just got really lucky’ and ‘they’re successful because they’re so driven, and you can’t get that kind of drive if you don’t already have it.’

So many A-list celebrities claim that we can all emulate their successes. And the sceptics respond: ‘really?’ Maybe they want to believe that’s true but they can’t help doubting. Even if luck is ruled out, there’s still that thing about our heroes that we don’t have: that zeitgeist, that winning edge, that drive.

The luck and genetics arguments are both intelligent but neither is likely to have much truth in them. The first one is reasonable, but the second one largely discounts it. If the best of the best really have something special about them it diminishes the role of luck.

And we know there is something special about them. I know, I know – the best of the best are just like the rest of us deep down, but, still, if your idea of a full work day is eight hours then you and Schwarzenegger differ in more than just muscle mass.

The famously successful are only special in that they work much harder than most of us. Natural talent, drive, physique etc are questionably important and questionably valid.

Vanessa-Mae may like to think she was born to be one of the world’s best violinists but she does so at the casual dismissal of the 7500+ hours of practice she had before the age of 18. Jack Nicholson gives the impression of being a total natural, but people forget that it took 10 years for his acting career to go anywhere. As Jack himself once said in an interview, ‘no-one ever got successful without working hard’.

We may never be able to rule out the luck of circumstances but we know enough about the lives of the successful to know their achievements are far from lottery wins. And with a bit more digging we can see that genetics play only a small part: hard work takes care of the rest. It’s really just a matter of figuring out how to bring yourself to work at that level.

Six Lessons on Cultivating Drive

1. The difference between motivation and drive

When I talk about drive I’m not talking about motivation.

If the work is enjoyable it motivates you to continue. You may go into flow or just have a good time with it and so you’ll spend more time doing it. Motivation can also be bought in book shops and cinemas and the entertainment and self-improvement industries produce new products for it all the time. Motivation is great.

But drive is better. Drive is lasting and drive is not dependent on the nature of the work you’re doing. Drive is the desire to work as much as is healthy (and sometimes beyond that) and not because the work is inherently enjoyable. In fact it’s drive that can make so much work enjoyable.

An interviewer, after commenting on Will Smith’s iconic level of success, asked the actor if there was anything that separated him from everyone else. Will replied that the only thing he can think of is that he ‘isn’t afraid to die on a treadmill’ – that he ‘cannot be outworked’. And Mr. Smith was very happy to admit it.

Success seems straight-forward enough, but drive is very mysterious. Motivation is an open book: you can easily buy the stuff. You can’t do that with drive: it’s in you, but there’s no clear way to unlock it.

2. Feeling your way through

If you want to learn how to gain more drive you just have to experiment with your behaviors. In my experience it’s your actions which affect the building up (or diminishment) of drive. Given human behaviour is very idiosyncratic there’s a lot of variety here, and who knows what might work for you. But I have uncovered three principals at play with releasing my own drive that I suspect will work for pretty much anyone.

3. Hit the ground running

Early rising is not universal among the high achievers, but it’s worked for Aristotle, Ghandi, Mandela, the Dalai Lama and Franklin, and is advocated by many successful people today, so it’s worth a look, right? Early rising is, simply by numbers, the best option: you’ll almost always get an extra hour or two in your day by doing it. There are plenty of other reasons why it works well, too.

For me, waking up at 05.00, taking my laptop back to bed with me and working for two hours straight is the best way for me to cultivate drive for the day ahead. If there’s a better means of doing it I have yet to discover it.

On days in the past I used to lie in and that was usually fatal for my drive. On those days I just didn’t have any. When I don’t have drive I’ll work for a few hours on the blog, Japanese and self-improvement and it won’t be especially pleasant. I’ll often watch for my next break, spend too long on the breaks and by evening I’ll be done. Lying in is definitely something for me to avoid.

In fact early rising is so important to me that I’ve made my bed less comfortable. My mattress used to have a thin bumpy foam mattress on top, with the sheets covering the two. It made the bed so good to lie in that I couldn’t bring myself to get out of it before 07.30 unless I had to. So that bumpy foam thing had to go. The bed is still comfortable enough and doesn’t cause me back trouble now or anything like that, but it doesn’t keep me captive in the mornings anymore either.

4. Do the hardest work first

Do the most difficult job first and the rest of the day will be like riding a bike downhill. My policy used to be to do the most important job first, but that’s no good for my drive. The longer you leave the hardest work untouched the bigger it looms in the day and it will seem more and more like something you have to do, rather than something you want to do.

For me that’s writing articles for blogs. Plenty of bloggers whip up a new post in twenty minutes, but for me an article never takes less than three hours to write. In those first two hours of the day I’m unlikely to finish an article, but I’ll get really into it before the day has even really begun. It makes for a great start.

5. Gather momentum

Another death for my drive, aside from rising late, is a day loaded with interruptions. If I have to go to the building society or find a replacement email client or go to a dentist’s appointment or whatever it’s going to hurt my drive a little because it breaks up my work routine and kills my momentum. Several such interruptions (especially long ones) and I’ll feel pretty listless by noon.

I’ll still get on with what’s important but it will become an ‘I hafta’ instead of an ‘I wanna’.

By rising early and immediately getting stuck in with challenging work I gather momentum. As long as I can keep that momentum going my drive will get stronger and stronger.

6. Tweaking the methods

The more I experiment the more I find ways to tweak my current practices to make them better or just more versatile. I’ve recently found that while getting up at five is good, it’s the two hours of blogging first thing that’s most important. I can get up at six and my drive won’t be noticeably less for the day.

Before I started experimenting with cultivating drive I used to blog, learn Japanese and do miscellaneous personal development for four hours a day. These days it’s more in the region of eight+ hours per day.

By doubling my daily workload I procrastinate less and do more stimulating activities, and this actually means I experience less tiredness and stress than I used to.

Analyse your own daily actions (many of them will be routines) and make changes. Use the ready, fire, aim approach to release more and more drive as the days go by. Think about the details. And if you find any killer strategies it’d be great if you leave them as comments, I look forward to reading them.

About the author

Richard Johnson writes personal development articles for www.reachingabetterplace.com and studies English Literature and Japanese at university in Oxford.

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