Driven to Distraction at Work

harnessing the power of emotion

At the Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, where I went to high school, there was a legendary wrestling coach named Ted Seabrooke. He influenced thousands of students—most notably the novelist John Irving—through his coaching and his example. One of his memorable coaching axioms was, “Where the head goes, the body must follow.”

I adapt Seabrooke’s axiom here and say, “Where the heart goes, effort follows.” We work hardest for what we care about most. People will work sixteen-hour days at jobs they hate in order to make money for what they love: their family. Emotion motivates us like nothing else.

Too often, ...