When I was thirteen years old, I had to capsize a canoe and swim 100 yards to shore with all my clothes on. I was at a Camp Takajo in Maine and this ordeal was required before I could to take out a canoe on my own.
If you’ve ever had to swim 100 yards fully clothed, you understand a basic idea from physics – “drag”. Drag is the mechanical force that opposes your body’s motion through the water.
Dolphins don’t experience a lot of drag.
Dolphins slice through the water. Evolution has honed the dolphin’s body to minimize drag.
Not so with our human bodies.
Even the world’s fastest swimmers only convert 9% of their effort into forward motion. That means that 91% of their effort is spent moving water out of the way.
Jump into a lake fully clothed, on the other hand, and you’re literally drowning in drag. Swimming becomes a struggle. You can barely inch your way forward.
Great swimmers focus on reducing drag.
And if you want to achieve goals – in work or life – you need to understand and reduce drag, as well.
Drag is a factor of life.
There are many forces – within you and around you – that consume your energy – energy that could be channeled into forward motion.
The more you reduce drag – the more efficiently you translate your energy and activities into meaningful results. So, what creates drag in life?
What are the factors that create drag and eat up your life energy?
Drag is created by both internal and external factors. There are psychological, biological, behavioral, interpersonal, and organizational factors that create drag. And slow down your progress and consume energy.
Some of these can be easily reduced. Others are part of life. Struggling to reduce them just wastes more energy.
The idea is to reduce the factors that are reducible
Remember, drag is inevitable. Water is thick – but life is thicker. So, you’re not going to reach 91% efficiency. Don’t even try.
You can reduce drag by focusing on these 6 factors
1) Discordant goals
Discordant goals don’t fully reflect your core values. They are often expressions of greed or fear. Pursuing discordant goals takes a lot of energy. You have to pump yourself up, hype yourself up, threaten, cajole, bribe, and beg yourself to move into action.
Concordant goals, in contrast, do reflect your core values. They are expressions of what matters most to you. In pursuing concordant goals you are natural motivated. Every step of the journey – from idea to implementation – is a chance to embody and express your core values.
How can you refine/edit your goals to be more reflective of your core values?
2) Lack of priorities
Even when your goals are aligned with your core values, there is still the question of prioritization. In a given day, week, quarter, you’ve only got so much mental, emotional, creative, financial, energy to spend. How will you allocate your life energy? What matters most?
What are the criteria you’ll use to prioritize your concordant goals?
My friend Michael Bungay Stanier likes to ask:
What will have the most impact?
What’s easiest?
What’s the most fun?
Using these three criteria, sort your concordant goals and determine where you’ll focus your time/attention/resources.
3) Habits from the past
When I’m swimming, I have a hard time turning my head to the left. Why? I learned to breathe by turning my head to the right when I was six years old. I developed a habit.
Habits from the past can create drag. Particularly, if they aren’t concordant with your goals.
The good news is that habits are not inevitable. They’re learned. And so, new habits are also learnable.
What habits do you want to develop that will make this year more fulfilling, meaningful, productive?
(To see more on how to develop new habits go to this post)
4) People who reinforce habits from past
The people in your life are used to the way you’ve been. Even if some of your habitual ways of acting aren’t the most effective – other people have adapted to them. They’ve figured out what to expect from you and have developed complementary patterns of their own. You and they make up a complex system.
When you change your habits, the system gets disrupted.
Some people may celebrate (they’ve been waiting for this change). Others may not. Why? Because your change places pressure on them to change as well. In subtle (and not so subtle) ways, these people will encourage you to return to your former habits.
What can you do?
First you can explain to the people who will be affected by your change – what you’re doing and why it matters.
Enroll them in the process so that they support the changes you want to make.
And if they honestly can’t get on your side – look for ways to minimize their impact on your life.
5) Competing goals – in organization
If you’re working in an organization – then the goals you set may not fully align with those of other departments. Your win could be their loss. And vice versa.
Competing goals – whether between departments or within a single department – creates tremendous drag. Energy and attention gets consumed in power struggles.
Peter Block beautifully describes how to work through these political realities. He distinguishes opponents – where despite disagreements and competing goals there is trust; and adversaries – where lack of trust makes constructive dialogue more challenging.
The key in all cases is to:
Stay grounded in your core values
Clearly articulate the organizational value of your goal
Understand the challenge from their perspective
Be flexible without abandoning what matters most (values, mission, relationship)
6) No reflection time
A key to reducing drag is to stop doing and take time to simply reflect. Reflection is as important as action. Through regular reflection you are able to self-correct your attitudes and actions. You re-calibrate your goals to ensure that they are still concordant (expressions of your core values) and organizationally relevant.
Take time for both personal and team reflection.
When reflecting ask not just “what happened” but also “what were the thoughts, emotions, beliefs, assumptions” that shaped your actions and decisions. Look deeper. Become interested in exploring your own and others inner life.
Consider a recent meeting, conversation, or decision that you were involved in (one that went well or one that was dissatisfying).
What happened?
What were the thoughts, emotions, beliefs, assumptions that shaped your actions and decisions?
How fully did you embody your core values?
Looking back – what inner shifts in thought, emotion, belief, assumption would have been more useful?
How would those inner shifts have changes your actions or decisions?
What does this suggest going forward?
All these are ways for you to reduce drag.
And to move forward towards meaningful goals like a dolphin slicing through the warm Hawaiian waters. And with a big dolphin smile on your face, too.
So, how are you going to reduce drag this year?
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