You just fell into a gumption trap.

Gumption Traps

Joe McCarthy talks about Gumption Traps in a series of typically excellent posts. The idea comes from Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values. Here is what Pirsig says about gumption and Gumption Traps:

I like the word “gumption” because it’s so homely and so forlorn and so out of style it looks as if it needs a friend and isn’t likely to reject anyone who comes along. I like it also because it describes exactly what happens to someone who connects with Quality. He gets filled with gumption.

A person filled with gumption doesn’t sit around dissipating and stewing about things. He’s at the front of the train of his own awareness, watching to see what’s up the track and meeting it when it comes. That’s gumption.

…

Throughout the process of fixing the machine things always come up, low-quality things, from a dusted knuckle to an accidentally ruined “irreplaceable” assembly. These drain off gumption, destroy enthusiasm and leave you so discouraged you want to forget the whole business. I call these things “gumption traps.”

There are hundreds of different kinds of gumption traps, maybe thousands, maybe millions. I have no way of knowing how many I don’t know. I know it seems as though I’ve stumbled into every kind of gumption trap imaginable. What keeps me from thinking I’ve hit them all is that with every job I discover more. Motorcycle maintenance gets frustrating. Angering. Infuriating. That’s what makes it interesting.

I highly recommend reading all of McCarthy’s post on this, but here is part of what he says about Gumption Traps:

Pirsig uses motorcycle maintenance as a metaphor for life, and explores a variety of gumption traps – externally induced out-of-sequence reassembly, intermittent failure and parts problems as well as internally induced traps arising from value rigidity, ego, anxiety, boredom and impatience – and ways of addressing and overcoming them.

In innovation, we have both internal and external Gumption Traps.

How to Avoid Gumption Traps

There are a few things that we can do to avoid Gumption Traps. The first is that we have to be doing something that we believe in. This provides powerful motivation to act on our ideas. As is often the case, Hugh MacLeod captures this idea perfectly:

There are also some very useful steps to follow in Nine Things Successful People Do Differently by Heidi Grant Halvorson. This idea started as a blog post, but it’s now an excellent short e-Book – the book includes the scientific research that supports her ideas, along with practical steps to enact each of the nine things.

The nine things are not really surprising, but they are powerful. The one that most directly addresses the Gumption Trap is number 6: Have Grit:

Grit is a willingness to commit to long-term goals, and to persist in the face of difficulty. Studies show that gritty people obtain more education in their lifetime, and earn higher college GPAs. Grit predicts which cadets will stick out their first grueling year at West Point. In fact, grit even predicts which round contestants will make it to at the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

The good news is, if you aren’t particularly gritty now, there is something you can do about it. People who lack grit more often than not believe that they just don’t have the innate abilities successful people have. If that describes your own thinking …. well, there’s no way to put this nicely: you are wrong. As I mentioned earlier, effort, planning, persistence, and good strategies are what it really takes to succeed. Embracing this knowledge will not only help you see yourself and your goals more accurately, but also do wonders for your grit.

Grit and Gumption are pretty much the same thing. Grit is an important part of innovation. Grit helps us learn from experiments that fail, instead of despairing. Grit helps us push our ideas even if the boss doesn’t directly support them.

Grit helps us change the world, if that’s what we’re trying to do. And we should be.

The next time you face a Gumption Trap, if you’re not finding a way around it, think of Halvorson’s nine ideas. They can help you change the world.