The feeling of accomplishment after solving a difficult problem is incredible. I think this is why we seek out challeneging work. While working, you don’t need to wait until the end result to get this feeling. Many large technical problems can be broken down into smaller tasks with defined acceptance criteria and individually chipped away. While you’re iterating through these smaller tasks, each one of the task loops you complete gives you a dopamine rush and a feeling of accomplishment. Mentally, I tie these closed loops to work being completed. As my career progresses and I find myself taking on more higher level work, like writing product requirement documents (PRDs), doing research, and roadmapping, the loops get much longer. It feels like each task loop for this type of work is much longer, fewer in quantity, and the acceptance criteria is much more abstract. This results in a feeling of being less productive day-to-day.

As a technical person, I really enjoy being a hands-on individual contributor solving difficult problems. When I’m working on a problem, I can break it down into smaller tasks, loop through each one, and get a feeling of accomplishment with each one I close. Throughout the day, I use interstitial notes to keep track of the loops I’m closing. For many techincal problems, there’s a clear line when the problem is solved and you’ve built an intuitive solution. When you cross that line is when you get a big dopamine rush. Slowly, instead of completeing the loops myself, I’m working on completeing deliverables that open up loops for my team to complete. This includes researching, writing product requirement documents (PRDs), and roadmapping. The work is rewarding, but the task loops are much longer, primarily because the acceptance criteria is much more abstract. For example, the entire work surrounding a PRD doesn’t stop at writing the document, it’s continuiously updated and this main task isn’t really complete until the feature actually ships. This means that the task loops might be carried over several days and sometimes even multiple sprints.

I subconsciously tie “work” to the feeling of accomplishment and progress. At the end of the day, I’m mentally thinking of the number of loops I’ve closed. For the purely technical work, this is pretty straight forward, since I can see this in the interstitial notes. For the higher level work, it’s much more abstract. I have notes on the progress I’m making, but there’s less day-to-day task loops being closed. So even if I’m spending time on the task and I’m making progress, I’m not getting the same feeling of accomplishment. Don’t get me wrong, the work is still rewarding and the feeling of accomplishment once the full task is complete is still there, but just less frequent.

So, where do I go from here? There’s two things I’m working on and I’ve found helpful so far. First, is to continue using interstitial notes and breaking down the task into smaller chunks. This as been easier with the techincal work, but I’m having to put in more effort into breaking down the abstract work into smaller chunks. I think this will just be a skill I’ll need to develop over time. The second thing is to seek feedback as a way to tie off the task loops. This is going to be different per task, but as I complete the prior mentioned smaller chunks, I’m going to seek feedback more consistently as a way to mark the end of a smaller loop. I’ve already found that getting direct user feedback is a great way to get a huge feeling of accomplishment. The bigger benefit is that I can capture the feedback and share it with the team to share the feeling of accomplishment and progress with everyone.

I mainly wanted to write this post to note my current thoughts on this topic, since I think this will change over time. I want to thank Jon (gamer, sys admin, and Splunk ninja) for clearly articulating the feedback loop idea. I’ve always known that the dopamine rush from solving problems is rewarding, but I hadn’t really thought about the iteration and feedback loop equating to the feeling of accomplishment until Jon pointed it out. I’m going to try out the two techniques for a bit and likely seek out more techniques from others. My goal is to have a second verion of this post in a few months with more insights into how it went.