Dan Pink has this thing about stating your purpose, drive, motivation in a single sentence. The point is to get to the core of your motivation in as few words as possible. I have not given significant conscious effort to this exercise, but it has been rolling around in my unconscious for a few weeks. That effort bore fruit while I was at the gym this afternoon. It hit me while I was getting ready to do some pull-ups. All of sudden, "He pushed for a big Z score" popped into my head. It's utter gibberish to most people (and would have been gibberish to me too until I read about Z scores for my stats class), but at that moment it was very motivating.
A Z score is used to determine if a data point is an outlier. While I don't strive for outlier status in most aspects of my life, I also crave something more than the mediocre and routine. The higher the Z score, the further away you get from the meaty part of bell curve. Interesting things happen at the edges. The center is easy satisfaction and contentedness with the status quo. The action is at the edge. The edge requires effort. Seeing how I've been feeling about my job and career, this silly little statement has given me a new way to look at my situation and what I might do to get excited about work again.
My life does not have the trappings of the extreme, but I make strong efforts in my activities, however mundane they appear. If I'm going to spend time on a rowing machine or doing research projects, I might as well make a strong commitment.
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