Picture yourself taking your kids to Disneyland on a beautiful summer day. As you drive down the 5 Freeway towards the entrance to the park your youngest child points out Space Mountain and everyone in the car agrees that it will be the first stop. You find a parking spot, ride the tram over and walk through Downtown Disney. Your family excitedly rushes over to Space Mountain only to find that the ride is “Out of Service”. Your kids are unhappy. You tell them that things break down from time to time and it’s good that they shut the ride down to make sure everyone is safe. “Out of Service” happens. In the software world, where I’ve spent much of my professional career, we have SLA’s to promise a certain percentage of uptime. We do this because things break down and need to be fixed.

Running into the dreaded “Out of Service” sign is inevitable.

Human beings really aren’t that that much different. There are times that we are “Out of Service.” This doesn’t alway mean that we are physically incapacitated or out of work with an illness. These out of service days are self-inflicted, days when we are absolutely disengaged and going through the motions at work or in our personal life. Of course this is human, to a point. We all have these moments. The problem in today’s world is millions of workers are often out of service more than they are in service.

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It’s a real problem that can have a massive impact on the bottom line of companies. Some studies have shown that as many as 29% of workers are completely unproductive, an incredible number that continues to increase.

So what is the answer? More importantly, what is the question? Why are so many workers disengaged with their jobs?

The standard response is that they aren’t in the right jobs and aren’t doing something that interests them. Many of us are told to “follow your passion” and find a job that you really love doing and that engages you.

Of course, that’s not always easy, nor is it realistic and it doesn’t guarantee success in the long run anyway, according to Cal Newport.

Newport, the brilliant Georgetown University computer science professor addressed the popular subject of “following your passion” in his wonderful book So Good They Can’t Ignore You. Newport argues that science does not tell us that we have to match passion to our work to find happiness, but we can create those conditions if we adopt the right mindset.

Newport coined the term the “Craftsmen Mindset” and writes that we need to stop worrying about whether we have the perfect job and instead focus on being good at the job we have.

We can’t just expect fulfillment and value from our work. We need to create value to achieve fulfillment.

It’s a different way of looking at the world, thinking of what we can offer the world versus trying to understand what the world can offer us, and very similar to JFK’s most famous quote:

“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

The Craftsmen Mindset is another reminder of the importance of mindset in general. You can use all the traditional platitudes in the world to try to motivate yourself, but if you aren’t engaged and getting satisfaction from your work you’re going to go through periods when you disengage and are “Out of Service.” The problem today is that this disengagement is an everyday occurrence for millions of American workers.

So what is the solution? How can people feel fulfilled in a job they don’t particularly like?

According to Newport, the answer is to systematically get better by focusing on gaining satisfaction from being really good at the job you have right now. The myth of someone going from janitor to executive isn’t a myth, it’s happened on several documented occasions. Real professionals are focused on the satisfaction of completing the task in an efficient and proper way, putting in the time and work to get better. The reality is many people enter professions looking for a stepping-stone to the next job and end up spending entire careers in those professions— finding out they love that job in the process. According to best-selling author Dan Pink, it all comes down to self-determination theory.

So why does this happen? The answer could be in self-determination theory, which is based on gaining an understanding of why we love some pursuits and not others. Researchers have identified three-key factors to help workers become intrinsically motivated. They are:

Autonomy: Having the freedom to control your day and your actions.

Competence: The feeling that you are good at your job, i.e., the satisfaction of a job well done

Relatedness: The feeling of connection to other people.

It all comes down to not focusing on doing something you think you love, but instead focusing on a job that can maximize your motivation, give you a certain amount of freedom, building satisfaction and connections with other people. Find these three-key areas and you can avoid going down the “Out of Service” path. Most importantly, be aware of the times you begin to drift towards non-productivity. Practice mindfulness to be in the present and understand when you are starting to wander down the route of disconnecting from your work. When this happens recognize and refocus your attention.