Guy Reams (00:01.036)
This is day 120, make work winnable. I sat at my desk staring at the problem in front of me. We needed to build some new features into our software, but I had no clear picture of how they might work. The challenge was not the effort. I had worked through hard problems before. This one was different. It was not panic. It was friction, the kind that slows your thinking and makes every decision feel heavier than it should. I could feel myself starting to circle this problem rather than solve it.
That is when I decided to stop forcing clarity and change the rules a bit. I turned the work into a game. I broke the problem into six stages and gave myself two days to solve it. Winning meant finishing each stage, not solving everything at once. I was not lowering the bar. I was creating forward momentum. The moment I set the stage, something shifted. The weight seemed to lift off my shoulders and now I had a path.
may not be a complete path, but it was a path. Once the game started, everything changed. My pace increased. Decisions that felt murky an hour earlier became obvious. I worked fast. I slept a little. But it was not burnout. It was momentum. Each time I completed a stage, I felt a small surge. Not relief. Energy. I moved to the next stage faster than I expected. By the end of the second day, I stood at the sixth stage. The pinnacle. I'd done it.
The problem was not fully solved, but I did have clarity now. I had progress and I was not exhausted. I was actually energized. I sat back and thought about why this had worked. Games seem to give you clear goals. They give you immediate feedback. They show you progress. They deliver small wins. Real work rarely does any of that. Real work is ambiguous. Timeline stretch, success criteria shift.
You can work hard for weeks and still feel like you are standing still. The brain does not struggle with effort, it struggles with invisible progress. When you cannot see movement, even simple work feels impossible. When progress is visible, hard work becomes fuel. I realize that many problems feel overwhelming, not because they are difficult, but because they lack structure. The problem I faced was the same before and after I turned it into a game.
Guy Reams (02:22.604)
What changed was not my motivation, it was the interface. I gave myself a way to see progress, that changed everything. This applies beyond developing software, it applies to leadership, strategy, long-term projects, and work that feels so heavy, but it can be made lighter by making progress visible to you. You do not need to change the work, you do not need to change how you, you just need to change how you see it.
I think I'll carry this idea forward. When work feels heavy, I will ask myself if the problem is the difficulty or lack of visible progress. Most of the time, it is the second. When that happens, I will break the work into stages. I'll set a time box. I will define what winning looks like at each step. I'll turn the work into something I can see myself completing, not because I need tricks to stay motivated, but because my brain works better when I have a path.
If you are staring at something that feels too big, try it. Write down six things that you could finish. Not six perfect outcomes, just six simple steps. Give yourself a deadline and start the first one. When you finish it, notice how you feel. Then start the next one. You are not changing the work, you are making it winnable. And that seems to be enough.