Delight or Discipline
Do you rely on delight or discipline to reach your big goals? In a recent HBR podcast, writer and interviewer Madeleine Dore, breaks down some of the themes in her new book "I didn't do the thing today". One of the hacks she mentions is to focus on delight instead of discipline alone when faced with a large project. It got me thinking about some of the big projects I've done and why some have succeeded while others have failed. I then saw how we do this every day at Bergan.
The first project that comes to mind is a personal goal I set for myself to improve my average speed on my bike. This was during the spring and summer of 2020, when the roads were quiet in the morning and the commute was less rigid. I woke up early every morning and rode my bike. In years past, I would ride 2 or 3 times a week and I relied on discipline to get out of bed, rather than the joy of riding. But during those early pandemic days, my bike ride was usually the only time I left the house, and it was a wonderful experience to greet nature in that way every day and I looked forward to it every night. I began to notice the difference in temperature day-by-day and I saw the bare branches sprout buds, and then those buds became leaves. By the end of the summer, I had surpassed the original goal I had set for myself, and it felt like it was an effortless process to get there.
Later in 2020, I decided to start building an app to help us work our best. It could have been a very frustrating experience, but I really enjoyed the problem-solving aspect of the process. I also saw the magic in the final product that I was making and how that might improve the daily activities of those using it in our shop. That excitement propelled me forward as I researched and stumbled my way through making something new in an unfamiliar discipline.
It also made me realize that we work best at Bergan when we create the space for ourselves to be open, playful and creative. Two small design issues came up recently in which the client's original proposed solution was debated and refined in our shop to be more efficient and less intrusive on the original design. In these instances, thinking beyond the immediate solution and exploring other options by digging into our collective knowledge and experience allowed us to save the client time and money on these design modifications. All of this is only possible if the people involved find delight and pleasure in thinking creatively about finding the best solution for a given situation. I am eternally grateful that we have a team like that at Bergan.
At the end of the day, we must produce something and it needs to be competitively priced and delivered on-time. But it is our love for what we do that gets us out of bed to see the sun rise in a new way, to find a new technique for automating a process and a better way of making our products. It is amazing what we can accomplish if we focus less intensely on the big problem and instead allow ourselves to play in the creative spaces where we focus on solutions.