The Completion Myth

The changing nature of the future of work will require all of us to dramatically alter how we approach our work. As a result we have been studying the psychology of how humans evolve and transform. However we discovered a finding that totally messed with our heads and completely changed how we viewed human evolution.

We started by analysing how humans respond to various parts of the transformation process. We broke transformation into three broad parts. Setting the goal, striving towards the goal (doing the work), achieving the goal.

At the start we had people predict which parts of the process would be most fulfilling and what the impact would be of each part of the process on their life. Without fail all the people in the study said the achievement of the goal is the best and most fulfilling part and that the achievement would improve their quality of life and help them feel better about themselves. In second place came setting the goal, which many people described as being exciting. The strive, in which all the hard work was done, was described as the crappy part that they would have to put up with to reach the achievement. People used words like difficult, hard and not fun to describe the strive.

But here is the thing about humans, we suck at predicting how we will feel into the future or recalling how they felt in the past. To combat this we had people fill out diary entries throughout the whole process and document in the moment how they were feeling. The reason we do this is that it increases the accuracy of the data.

The results made us rethink everything we thought about goal achievement. As they had predicted people did feel a period of euphoria when they achieved the outcome they wanted. What they didn’t predict was the massive slump in mood that comes after achieving a meaningful goal. Many people in the study said, “Wow I achieved that goal and now I feel so flat. I thought I’d feel elated but I just feel … flat.” This slump continued until they moved onto the next goal.

What the diary study showed was that people felt most alive and stimulated in the striving period leading up to the goal. While completing the goal did produce a burst of happiness, the flat spot of indifference, disappointment and sadness that followed the achievement came because people were grieving that they are no longer in the striving phase. The completion of the goal had taken the striving away and an emptiness ensues. We refer to this as the completion myth - We think we will be happiest in the achievement. It’s not the achievement that makes us feel alive but the striving and seeking. While this sounds counterintuitive, we are most alive when we are in the trenches overcoming difficult obstacles. We feel best about ourselves when we are being courageous and evolving while progressing towards a goal, not when we arrive at the goal. This finding was supported in multiple interviews with particular athletes who had come home after winning a gold medal. Many of them said they came home thinking their life was going to be perfect, yet the gloss of the victory rubs off fast and they start to miss the striving phase. They miss pushing themselves and fighting for that little bit of improvement.

This may sound counterintuitive but there are many factors that drive our love of the strive. One is our deeply entrenched desire to seek. Neuroscientist, Jaak Panskepp reports in his research that of the seven core instincts in the human brain (anger, fear, panic-grief, maternal care, pleasure/lust, play and seeking), seeking (or what I call striving) is the most vital. All of us have this desire to seek, fed by the neurotransmitter dopamine. When we seek, we are rewarded by our brain being flooded with dopamine, which in turn makes us feel pleasure. In other words, the goal is not the goal. The striving towards the goal is the goal. The moment we achieve a milestone, we feel lost and this doesn’t go away until our seeking drive kicks back in to keep us moving onto the next milestone.

This is why large achievements like winning the lottery do not results in long term changes in happiness. 

Put another way, we like being in the trenches more than we like standing on the podium.

There are two big downsides to the completion myth. The first is that we place too much hope and expectation on the impact of achievement. “I will be happy when…..” and, “I will have made it when I achieve …..,” are mindsets that will make the crash after achievement even more devastating. The second is that we waste the strive phase of transformation. We don’t pay enough attention to it and leverage it to its full potential. The strive is where the gold is. It is where we build our self esteem, where we grow and evolve. 

Our research shows that we shouldn’t fall in love with the achievement but rather, fall in love with the work.

The final word goes to one of the most beautiful examples of falling in love with the work.

One of my favourite shows is a Jerry Seinfeld show titled ‘Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.’ Each episode Jerry meets up with a comedian and they go for coffee in an exotic car (probably didn't have to spell that out for you as the title kind of gives it away). In one episode he meets with Barack Obama. I know you’re thinking, he a president not a comedian! But as Jerry points out at the start of the show, Obama has pulled off enough gags in his time to qualify as a comedian. At which point Obama says to Jerry “How have you done it? You have one of the most successful TV shows in history, you have fame and ridiculous amount of money yet you seem relatively normal, how have you kept perspective?” Jerry’s response is one of the most beautiful lines I have ever heard, he says “Because I fell in love with the work. The work was joyful and difficult and interesting and that was my focus.” There you go people… striving in action.

* Buy Strive before the 19th of February 2020 and get your copy signed by Dr Adam Fraser.