This video from RSA, “The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”, is fantastic. The message resonated with me, as I was afforded unusual insight into the motivation of strangers when Crain’s New York Business named me one of its “40 under 40” New Yorkers. The short bio was innocent enough; it described my first venture and the role my business had in supporting my family life, not the other way around. A tsunami followed. Crain’s must have an extraordinary readership, because the people who contacted me in response to that article were educated and had all of the external indicia of success: prestigious employers, titles and occupations. But something was missing; inner fulfillment eluded them.
I was reminded of the words of the poet David Whyte, “Work, paradoxically, does not ask enough of us and yet exhausts the narrow parts of us that we bring to its door.” People are exhausted, enervated by the pettiness of corporate life and yet frustrated by the impediments to making a substantive contribution to our very real needs. It was a bit much for me, people were writing me letters through the postal mail, by fax, by e-mail and even turning up unannounced at my office. One person, aggravated by my failure to respond to his e-mail message within four hours, contacted Barbara Benson, the reporter who wrote my profile, for additional contact information for me. I removed my e-mail address from the website and replaced it with a form to capture information. Although career counseling is certainly not my expertise, I wrote a short form e-mail response thanking the writers for their interest in my work and suggesting organizations such as Idealist that could help them better align with their values. But while the experience was tiring as the flood of queries invariably came when I was on deadline, it was valuable. Whenever I envy the predictability of a corporate paycheck, I reflect on this experience and realize how fortunate I am. That is a great motivator.