The Work Is The Reward
“This is my thing. This is what I enjoy the most.”
Davis asked Cignetti what makes him so good at watching film.
“Everybody watches film, but what makes you so good at it?” Davis asked.
“I just think the time I put in,” Cignetti responded. “The organization of it all. Always looking to get better. I’ll create hundreds of files. Study the trends.”
There is a key word hiding in plain sight when it comes to mastery, high performance and leadership.
Enjoy.
Cignetti didn’t describe watching film as some miserable obligation he has learned to tolerate on the way to peak success.
Instead, he leaned back in his chair, smiled and said: “This is my thing. This is what I enjoy the most.”
Curt Cignetti has found a way to enjoy the work. This matters a lot more than we realize.
Stop Romanticizing “The Grind”
Culturally, we love to romanticize the grind.
The late nights. The early mornings. The sacrifice. The willingness to do what everyone else is unwilling to do.
And without a doubt, becoming a master at anything requires an enormous amount of work.
Some of that work will be monotonous, some of it exhausting. Some days, even the work you love will feel like work.
I do believe fully that we have made a mistake believing mastery is primarily about who can tolerate the most misery.
Who’s the most motivated to endure pain for the spoils of the reward? That’s not mastery. That’s another reward system entirely.
What the amateur calls a “grind,” the true master may experience as deep immersion in their craft.
For many, the idea of coming into the office on an off day and clicking through hundreds of plays in a dark office sounds miserable.
For Cignetti, this is his thing.
He gets to organize the film. Study the trends. Build the files. Find something other people missed.
He’s fascinated by it.
The fascination is more important than the discipline.
The greats aren’t dull
The people at the highest levels of their craft:
Kobe Bryant.
Jerry Seinfeld.
John Steinbeck.
Michael Jordan.
One thing you would never describe them as?
Dull.
They were curious, organized, enamored, fully immersed.
They didn’t merely tolerate the work required for mastery. They were fascinated by it.
Fascination has produced more masters of their craft than motivation ever could.
For true masterpieces - Created things like - peak performances, books, albums, companies, elite cultures, flourishing minds, the game within the game is not to become more motivated. It’s to recover some curiosity.
It’s to stop treating work as a punishment to be endured and start becoming fully immersed in the craft itself.
It’s to remember the work is the reward.
It’s chasing Cignetti’s sentiment in your own craft.
“This is my thing. This is what I enjoy the most.”
Live there for 10,000 hours and see what happens.
Stay The Course,
