I got this framework in my head several years back about three dominate motivation types: average, elite, and ascendant.
It was a way to work through and explain patterns of behavior I observed in people, and some paradoxical things like how low ambition people seemed to have more in common with the absolute highest, almost effortless achievers (though not always in visible ways) than with those who appear at or near the top but strived really hard.
Tim Grover’s book about athletes, Relentless, helped spark the a-ha moment and gave me some tools to play around with. So I decided to do a sort of serialized book, writing articles one at a time focusing on how these three types played out in specific contexts, and by the end, have something like a full picture.
I intended to write maybe 50 of these and publish a full-fledged book. But after the first several, my writing took me too many different directions, both work and personal, and I never returned to the job.
I recently stumbled on these articles again, and rather than try to resurrect the full book project after all these years and with the ideas no longer fresh and burning in my mind, I decided to just put what I had together into an ultra-short booklet so they’d at least be contained somewhere.
(I asked participants at Praxis if anyone wanted to take on the task of putting it into a PDF, and four people volunteered! Thanks to all four. I ended up using the design by Benjamin Bramblett – huge shout out!)
