Author: Melih O.

I’m not convinced that motivations are well understood, least of all by me. You see, I was taught in economics that perfectly rational people will respond to a set of incentives in a perfectly rational way. While I’m sure that that makes sense in a textbook, and of course for the graphs and models which derive from that axiom, it doesn’t make sense as a framework through which to observe life nor make decisions regarding the advancement of it.

And so comes forth the challenge of understanding what motivates.

Since a large-scale operation to discover isn’t an option, I found it most pertinent to find the answer in myself. Instead of comically interviewing myself on the subject however, I’ve been looking for others ideas of motivation to see if it is something to which I can subscribe.

It lead me to an article on Steve Newcomb’s blog about building a cult culture at a startup. Steve Newcomb was the founder of Powerset which is now a part of Bing.com. This paragraph here really got me:

The best way to prove to yourself, potential investors and to any potential future employees that you have a killer idea, is to get a number of A-level engineers to join full-time with equity-only deals.

Would I ever do an equity-only deal? That’s a pretty awesome question. Does that mean that the idea motivates you so much you know it’s going to succeed? Or is it that the money you make is irrelevant in the short term versus the ability to cash out in the long term? Does it mean committing to a project for 2-3 years to vest enough of the equity such that if there is a liquidation event then it’s all worth it?

One million and one questions flew through my mind in an instant. And I came back to the original which was, “Would I ever take an equity-only deal?”

I quickly realized that the answer was no. Not because I’d want money instead of the equity, that’s not the problem. I think the problem is that the motivation doesn’t come from the expected result, but by the journey that gets me there. Having the equity doesn’t give me the power to control, in some shape or form, the journey. I know that no end result is guaranteed, but I do know that I have to get from point A today to some point unknown in the future, and that I want to enjoy it while I go down that path.

Nonetheless, there was much more in this article to glean from, and so I’ll return to it tomorrow. Maybe the answer lies here, but really what the answer isn’t lies here, and the answer lies somewhere else.

I did everything wrong at SCUBA class today.

Funny because I thought that I did everything else quite well today.

I got to class late because I got into a really good discussion with Jason and Andrew about how to work through some new questions that we’re posing at work. It’s a really fascinating time for me on that front. I thought that I really enjoyed creating much more than innovating. This is a problem when it comes to joining a project, and helping to be part of the solution. However, it turns out that I really have no problem with innovating, but that I just hate doing things when I think I’m perpetuating a bad state of being.

And so I’m trying to do a better job of understanding what it means for a project to be in a bad state. Is it that you read the code, and think to yourself, “Why the fuck was it done this way?” That’s one piece, but the god honest truth is that after one month when you look at any code you ask yourself why the fuck anyone thought it was a good idea, especially when you’re that anyone. We all outgrow our code.

Fine, it isn’t the code itself. Then is it that the API is too fragile to really scale? The tough thing there is, the product requirements ask that an engineer deliver functionality*. Good engineering practices ask that an engineer deliver functionality. All fine and dandy right? No. Not at all. If a product works, and if an architecture works are two completely different sets of functionality. It’s just unbelievably frustrating when you want to build a product, and have to build an engineering toolkit instead, and vis-a-versa. However, that doesn’t put things in a bad state. It creates friction. Friction produces heat. Heat produces fire, and fire leads to the Internet (just run with it, we don’t have that much server space to draw out the connection).

So fine, we have friction, but we’re not in a bad state yet. So what’s the problem then?

I think I figured it out tonight at SCUBA. You see, I didn’t realize that I had a bad O-Ring because it looked normal to me. The teacher said you have to smell that it’s off. That made no sense to me at all. You’re supposed to put the weights into these quick to remove weight pockets, and I put them in a side, zippered pocket instead. So when we went to do the ascent technique which requires throwing away your weights…. I just sat on the bottom of the pool. I was just in the wrong mind set the whole night. And that’s the problem.

A bad state is one of a discordant mind set. I felt as if this post needed some big words, so I threw those in there. But this experience in the pool tonight really opened my eyes to a wider problem. If you’re constantly solving a different problem than the one being presented to you, there’s a problem. It gets even worse when you can’t conceive of why you’re constantly unable to achieve success. In your mind set, you’re solving the problem presented to you and solving it well (in theory). However, the truth is that you’re just solving a problem, but not THE problem, and unless they are one in the same, then you’re just plain out of luck.

So, after my SCUBA fail, I think the proper resolution is to work on understanding the macro problem, and then understanding how to decompose that into micro-level actions. The challenge awaits!

I’m gonna say my piece, and it’s going to piss some people off, but then you can say your piece, and I’ll sit down and shut up and listen.

This game owes you nothing. There’s going to a come a day where the game passes all of us by. It chews us up and spits us out. Which means every time we get to play, every time we step on the field, we have to play as if it’s our last match.

When you come out here, first come with your heart. Bring passion. Bring joy. Bring beauty. Bring an appreciation for the beauty of the game.

Then mentally show up. Get here on time to warm up. During warm ups get in your touches, and work on one thing for each game. Work on your first touch. Work on your headers. Work on shooting to corners or work on wall passes. But mentally commit to being better at one thing after the game compared to before the game.

Finally physically show up. Make the runs you’re supposed to make, and surprise yourself and make some you didn’t think you were strong enough to make. Play defense with intensity. Support your teammates with passion. Ignore the ref. Play the game beautifully, and after these 90 minutes which we have, these 90 minutes where the game is still ours, let’s walk off the field and say to ourselves if today was the last time we ever played the game we did so with heads held high, with pride in our performance and with everything we have left on the field.

We did not do that today, and for that I am ashamed to be associated with this team. This game will never give you anything. We have to go out there and earn every inch. Today we just quit. I promise each and every one of you that this team won’t quit again. If you think that quitting is an option, then don’t come back next week.

A lot is constantly happening, and it comes to be overwhelming at times. I do a really bad job in those instants of stopping and just taking a breath.

Today was one of those days where I just needed to take a breath, and not let the world overwhelm me.

In my ideal world, people do things for the right reasons. They do it right the first time. One takes pride in one’s work. I spent a lot of time working through what I thought was a simple problem last night trying to help someone who I don’t think holds my same beliefs on effort and integrity. And it drove me absolutely insane.

I got pulled off of the cliff, but then dove right into another trap.

This time what got to me was the that it felt as if the theory of doing the right thing was more important to understand than actually doing the right thing. I didn’t do a good job of processing the lack of grounding. I know the value of understanding how to do it is important, but sometimes I just want to do, and see what happens. My problem here is that I’m the perpetrator of  the discussion, and the tangent. I do it to myself. And I need to stop, and just do.

It was all just driving me crazy, and so I stopped and took a breath, and exhaled. Friday night is a good night to get the chance to just hit the pause button on life.