Steven Kramer

On the days when these professionals saw themselves moving forward on something they cared about—even if the progress was a seemingly incremental ‘small win’—they were more likely to be happy and deeply engaged in their work.

The secret to amazing performance is empowering talented people to succeed at meaningful work.

Overall, the more positive a person’s mood on a given day, the more creative thinking he did that day. Across all study participants, there was a 50 percent increase in the odds of having a creative idea on days when people reported positive moods, compared with days when they reported negative moods.

You might think it is obvious that managers should focus on supporting employees’ work progress. It is not.

Simply ‘making progress’—getting tasks done—in these jobs doesn’t guarantee good inner work life, either. You may have experienced the rude fact in your own job, on days (or projects) when you ended up feeling demotivated, devalued, and frustrated, even though you worked hard getting things done. That’s because, in order for the progress principle to operate, work must be meaningful to the person doing it.

Nothing boosts inner work life like progress.

The action plan for the next day is the most important part of your daily review: what is the one thing you can do to best facilitate progress?

The lesson? To boost your own inner work life as a manager, be sure to provide your people with the catalysts and the nourishers they need to make progress every day, and buffer them from inhibitors and toxins as much as possible. That way, you’ll make progress in your own managerial work, setting up your own positive progress loop.

If you want them to perform at peak levels, you need to support their inner work lives. And you need to do it every day; that’s why a daily checklist can be a valuable tool.