While grappling with the stress of watching her team members being laid off and her own uncertainty about the future, the engineer turned to her work diary to center her thoughts. In her talk, Professor Amabile provides an example of one engineer struggling through the experience of massive layoffs at her company. Nurture your own personal growth and work through difficult events. Down the road, your iDoneThis becomes a map to which you can refer back and see how you overcame obstacles. This record gives you the information to form a plan of action to resolve similar setbacks. In short, you can pinpoint where things started to go wrong. You can go back into your log and see what decisions, actions and efforts led to the setback. IDoneThis contributes to such positive growth, because it keeps a record of all your daily doings. The Progress Principle encourages learning from negative experiences and counts those valuable lessons toward your overall progress, turning negatives into net positives. Professor Amabile also suggests using a work diary to consider the causes of setbacks you experience and create a plan of action if a similar problem rears its head again. Plan next steps, think things through, and overcome setbacks. Writing and recording wins in your iDoneThis calendar is a quiet affirmation and celebration.
IDoneThis helps you see your workday through the lens of accomplishment because it asks, “What’d you get done today?” In taking a moment to reflect on this question, you make a habit out of focusing on the progress you made and your wins, however small. “This is the best way to leverage the progress principle,” Professor Amabile says. Professor Amabile notes that even on frustrating, seemingly unproductive days, you can almost always find one thing on which you made progress. Capture progress that may have been lost in a busy workday and celebrate the small wins. We’re so pleased that she suggested using iDoneThis as an online work diary tool, and we thought we could break down how iDoneThis contributes to the four benefits of keeping a work diary that she identifies:ġ. In a recent 99U conference talk, Professor Amabile shared the best way to achieve those small wins and leverage the progress principle in our daily lives: keeping a work diary.
#The progress principle download driver
They found that the number one driver of a positive inner work life, the key to motivated, engaged, and productive employees, is making progress on meaningful work, even if that progress is a small win. Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile and psychologist Steven Kramer wrote a whole book about it called The Progress Principle. We’ve written before about the secret to happiness and motivation at work.