PROGRESS AS THE MOTIVATOR
A multi-year study by Harvard Business School showed that the top motivator of performance in employees is progress. This is really interesting given that in a survey of (600) managers, also conducted as part of the study, ranked “progress” as the least likely motivator of performance, while things like recognition, incentives, clear goals, interpersonal support all ranked higher.

The study goes on to state that workers’ emotions were most positive and the drive to succeed was at its peak when they felt that they made headway on a project or received support to overcame obstacles. In contradiction, days when employees felt like they were spinning their wheels their moods and motivation were at their lowest.


HOW CAN THIS HELP US WITH POKER?
If we can make the basic assumption that the idea of progress as a motivator is universal, then we should experience the same increased motivation when we make progress in relationship to our game as well as the same hit to our motivation when progress slows down. Moving forward with this theory, we can come up with ideas to make ourselves better students of the game.

Tracking our Progress
In order to realize the benefit to our motivation, we need to realize our progress. How this is accomplished will vary from person to person. For some of us, having detailed daily to do lists that we can check off when items are complete will help us to realize the progress. For others, journalizing what we accomplished that day will help us to consider what progress we have really made that day, rather than just getting things done and then not realizing how much we really accomplished (the journal also has the added benefit of reflecting on the day’s tasks, which goes to further solidify their importance in our mind).

Something that we do not want to lose site of when reviewing our progress is that we do not want to use results to measure our progress. Of course we already know this, but sometimes it is easily forgotten that variance and fluctuations make results an even worse measurement of progress than they are in the business world.

Knowing is Half the Battle
Another way that the concept of progress can help us is in heightening our awareness to the fact that if we do string together a series of losing sessions and we feel our motivation start to drift a bit (especially as our peers are telling us to “take time off from playing and review your sessions” - the last thing we want to do when we are stuck, right?) that the reason for this may be our lack of progress actually killing our motivation. For some of us, understanding what is causing an issue is a huge first step towards our solution.

Also, tying this in with the information from our Tilt Series, we can use the understanding of lack of progress and how much it affects us personally as a de-motivator to help us formulate triggers and/or contributors to various forms of tilt (most likely meltdowns and frustration).

Finally, if we happen to be experiencing a stretch where our motivation is lacking, the we could consider throwing in some tasks from our master to do list that can be accomplished relatively quickly and easily to see if this jumpstarts us. It should go without saying that we do not want to go crazy with this concept and find ourselves completing easy tasks for weeks on end, only to come to the end of the month and find that we booked 100 hands. Another way to spur motivation in the face of significant commitments would be to take larger tasks and break them down into smaller steps, at least temporarily, to help us realize more progress.

EDIT:
Sorry all, I had accidentally saved this as a draft rather than posting it, so I have corrected this.

Also, it was brought to my attention that the article linked is just the first few paragraphs unless you have an online subscription to Harvard Business Review (apparently I am not smarter than my cookies). If you want to read the full article, you can find it in this month's issue of HBR, which is carried by the larger bookstores.