The Effort Scramble
I’m lucky. I’ve had mostly good jobs, for which I am grateful. It took a miserable job to show me the powerful lesson of the “Effort Scramble.”
Many of us have been indoctrinated in the ethic of hard work. The notion that we earn our achievements by putting in the time, the effort, the blood, sweat and tears – is in the fabric of our education system not to mention our culture.
Now, don’t worry - I believe in hard work.
Effort is often what makes the fruits taste so sweet.
Or as Tom Hanks says in A League of Their Own – “The hard is what makes it great.”
So I, like anyone else who was taught and believed in the virtue of hard work, charged off into the world working hard.
And low and behold, the combination of the privileges I was born with and my effort … produced good results!
This was good news! I kept up the hard work and the results continued! Yay!
Like you perhaps, I continued to challenge myself.
Imagine my surprise then when I eventually arrived in a role where I struggled in a significant way to get the outcomes I wanted.
The effort did not produce the results.
So, what did I do? I applied MORE EFFORT. I worked harder. I got busier. I stayed later, I started earlier.
This my friends, is The Effort Scramble.
Since our effort has generally provided us the results, accolades, or recognition we crave we go into effort overdrive.
As our confidence in being able to achieve the actual result we want declines…the more we lean into the Effort Scramble.
Somewhere around this point, the logic of “working harder” starts to slip away. Doing more of the same WILL NOT get us different results.
In fact our obsession about effort blinds us to the actual issues we face in achieving our goal.
The scramble to avoid failure, embarrassment, judgement, or blame leads us away from the flexibility, experimentation, and humility that will deliver us to what we want.
It might take weeks, months, or years to realize we’ve been in an Effort Scramble vortex.
(If you’re a leader…you may have been sucked into the Effort Scramble vortex of an employee before. The one who is not quite meeting expectations but is Just. Working. So. Hard. The Effort Scramble is all around us friends…)
Having been in this spot before, let me just say….it feels like shit.
It’s also a glorious gift.
Because the Effort Scramble is a diversion. If you are aware of it (in yourself or another) you can begin to tackle the actual challenge ahead of you.
What are you really afraid of? What do you really want in exchange for this scramble?
And most bravely: If you knew for sure you are a whole, deserving, and capable person just as you are – how would you tackle the day?
Wishing you much love,
Marijke Ocean Joy
P.S. Does any of this sound familiar? I’d be truly honored to work with you or a member of your team. In an Explore Coaching session we can talk about what it is like to work with a coach and see if we’d be a good fit together.