Hitting the Wall at Work?

The problem was which of these should take precedence? If he put any one of them in first place, he probably would not realize the other two. So he chose to spend some time in Indonesia for the summer and get a new kind of information. He had to go walk the streets of the capital and villages and see what it was really like to be there, to get a gut sense of what it would mean to return to his country because he hadn't been there for a long time. He realized the timing wasn't right. He had more learning to do outside of his home country.

He chose to return to the development bank. He felt he could make the biggest contribution there. The idea was that maybe eventually he would start working on some projects in his home country or come around to real estate development. But right now, the development bank felt like the place where he could be most productive, use his MBA skills, and feel like he was giving back.

You say this process of moving through impasse moves us closer to being in the flow at work. What do you mean by "in the flow"?

In Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's very readable book, Flow, he defines it as being so totally absorbed in what you're doing that you lose track of time. You even lose track of you as a separate self. There's this complete engagement that calls upon your capacity so fully that there's no separation of you from the work.

Are those who are more advanced in their careers more likely to be there?

The more we do this work of moving through impasse, the closer to fulfillment we should feel. That's not automatic. Just having a big salary doesn't mean you've done this hard work and you're in a place where you feel your potential is being realized. I work with many people who make very large sums of money who don't necessarily feel that they're in a place where they're making the biggest contribution and deeply engaged.

You're the expert -- how do you keep yourself from getting stuck?

I'll give you an example from my life right now. Because of my teaching and my responsibilities counseling at Harvard, I haven't had a chance to get to my research, which I really love. I realized I was at impasse. I was getting stale. So I started some long negotiations with the people I report to at Harvard about changing my role. The next half year, I'm taking a big chunk of my time and doing more research. It's not a dramatic shift, but just enough to make me feel that much more excited.