TJL #14: The Motivation-Skill Dichotomy
There can be only 2 reasons why you are procrastinating
Hi friends,
Welcome back to Today Jan Learned (TJL) #14. In this newsletter I try to share something interesting every day.
Today I want to share with you something that can help you cut through your procrastination. I found this in the legendary management book High Output Management, written by Andy Grove.
High Output Management is one of my favourite books about management. It teaches you what being a great manager is all about. While some of it is a bit dated, its core concepts still ring true.
Motivation vs skill
One of these core concepts is, what I call, the Motivation-Skill Dichotomy (MSD). The Motivation-Skill Dichotomy explains why we procrastinate. This is what Grove has to say about the Motivation-Skill Dichotomy:
“When a person is not doing his job, there can only be two reasons for it. The person either can’t do it or won’t do it; he is either not capable or not motivated.”
When a person is not doing his job, there can only be two reasons for it. Either the person can’t (skill), or he won’t (motivation). That’s it! It’s that simple!
This insight enables you to radically refocus your efforts in combating your procrastination. All you can do to improve your output is to either motivate yourself or to figure out what skills you are missing yourself. There is nothing else.
A simple test
How do we figure out which one of these is holding us back? Andy Grove has a simple mental test for this:
“To determine which, we can employ a simple mental test: if the person’s life depended on doing the work, could he do it? If the answer is yes, that person is not motivated; if the answer is no, he is not capable.”
If I were to hold a gun to your head, could you reasonably do the task?
If you would hold a gun to my head and demand me to play the piano, otherwise it’s game over. Then… well… so long and thanks for all the fish! However, if you ask me to juggle 5 bottles, I probably could. (I can juggle three things.) Not that I want to, but I probably could.
An important implication of this is that you only really have two buttons to press: motivation and skill.
Recap
To summarise, when you’re not doing your job it’s because either your can’t (unskilled) or you don’t want to (unmotivated). To figure out which one of these two is holding you back ask yourself: if someone would hold a gun to your head, could you do it?
Anyway, that’s it! Thank you so much for reading!
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Previous TJLs
TJL #6: How to remember the difference between margin and padding
TJL #7: According to Jeff Bezos there are two types of failure
Bonus
From the foreword
Manager’s output
A manager’s output = the output of his organization + the output of the neighboring organizations under his influence.
Difference between an IC and Manager
On the surface it may seem simple, but he clarifies the essential difference between a manager and an individual contributor. A manager’s skills and knowledge are only valuable if she uses them to get more leverage from her people. So, Ms. Manager, you know more about our product’s viral loop than anyone in the company? That’s worth exactly nothing unless you can effectively transfer that knowledge to the rest of the organization. That’s what being a manager is about. It’s not about how smart you are or how well you know your business; it’s about how that translates to the team’s performance and output.