Let’s talk about pigeons. B.F. Skinner, the godfather of behaviorism, put them in a box. A little key was available, and a food dispenser. The pigeons quickly learned: peck the key, get a pellet. The progress was clear, measurable, and repeatable. The chart on Skinner’s wall, a series of satisfying little tick marks, showed one hundred pecks for every hundred pellets. A beautiful, linear display of what we all crave: progress.
Now let’s talk about us. We are pigeons. We spend our days furiously pecking at the keys of our digital lives, generating little tick marks on dashboards that we mistake for real movement. We’ve built a massive global economy around the illusion of progress—a sprawling, noisy, self-congratulatory system designed to make us feel busy, useful, and on track, even when we’re standing perfectly still. We love visible proof: dashboards, to-do lists, and an endless stream of metrics. These aren’t compasses; they’re comfort blankets.
The illusion works because it’s easy. Tracking effort is simple. Tracking real-world outcomes is a bloody mess. The chart says “100 presses,” and we celebrate that number. The chart doesn’t show if anyone ate the pellet.
The Funhouse Mirror of Progress
The problem with most leadership dashboards is that they’re like looking in a funhouse mirror. Everything looks good, but it’s all distorted. You see the number of messages sent, the number of tickets closed, the number of meetings attended. These are signals of activity, not necessarily of impact.
Skinner called this continuous reinforcement: Press the button, get the pellet, every time. Predictable. Linear. The chart looks perfect. But then he changed the game: pellets came on a random schedule. He called this intermittent reinforcement. Presses no longer guaranteed a reward. And yet, the pigeons pecked more. Harder. Longer. They developed little dances, rituals, desperate routines, all because sometimes, unpredictably, a pellet dropped. They were believing that the activity itself would eventually conjure the reward. It wasn’t learning anymore. It was addiction.
The Cult of Busyness
Busy is just procrastination with branding. We’ve become masters of ritualized pecking. We fill our calendars with back-to-back meetings, not because we need to be there, but because the act of showing up feels productive. We compulsively check email and respond with performative speed, mistaking a full inbox for a full life. We obsess over the aesthetics of our to-do lists, relishing the visual and psychological satisfaction of a checked box, even if the task was a meaningless piece of administrative fluff.
Why? Because motion feels safer than focus. Focus risks visible failure. If you work on one big, hairy problem and it doesn’t pan out, that’s a public, undeniable failure. But if you spend the whole day doing a hundred small, unimportant things, you can point to the mountain of finished tasks and say, “Look how busy I was!” You can’t fail if you never even started on the real work.
The Dopamine Slot Machine of Modern Work
The Skinner box has been digitized, and we’ve built a whole new layer on top of it: the dopamine economy of fake progress. Likes, shares, tasks completed, hours logged… these are all just pellets for the modern pigeon. They’re a hit of dopamine that tells your brain, “You’re doing great! Keep pecking!” It’s activity without consequence.
Jira tickets aren’t just a project management tool, but a modern Skinner box. We get a little ping, a little color change, a little satisfaction when we move a ticket to “Done.” The same goes for achieving inbox zero or seeing a green chart on a dashboard. The action itself becomes addictive, a self-perpetuating loop of perceived productivity. It’s the casino of modern work. The more we get these tiny rewards, the less we ask the only question that matters: Did any of this actually lead to progress?
Fake Wins Make Bad Leaders
The insidious thing about these illusions is that they hijack energy. Every celebratory ping for a meaningless task, drains the energy and attention needed for what really matters. They crowd out what creates substance… and every false win creates worse leaders.
Just as the pigeons exhausted themselves in their ritualized activity, teams burn out their best people and erode trust celebrating such empty wins. The celebration of a “milestone” that doesn’t actually improve the product, the company, or the customer’s life is a lie. And people can feel it.
A company on vanity metrics is like a body on sugar: jittery, fat, and dying slowly. The long-term danger of the illusion of progress is that it makes you feel good about being a bad leader. It allows you to believe you’re in control when you’re drifting. It lets you confuse the noise of activity with the signal of impact.
The Bruise Test
So how do you know if you’re a pigeon? Apply the Bruise Test. Real progress leaves a bruise if it’s absent. Illusion vanishes without a trace. This is the ultimate test.
Ask yourself: If you stopped doing this tomorrow, who would notice?
If you stopped showing up to that weekly status meeting and no one missed you or the information you provided, it was never real progress. If you stopped logging those hours in that time-tracking app and nothing broke, the activity was just a soothing ritual. Progress is what hurts when it’s paused. It’s the meeting that, when canceled, creates a visible problem. It’s the task that, when left undone, causes a tangible consequence.
The pigeon that keeps pecking at a key that gives no food is a prisoner of its own conditioning. The smart pigeon is the one that stops pecking and goes looking for real food.
How to Stop Being a Pigeon
Ready to stop being a pigeon? Here are some blueprints to apply the Bruise Test to your own work and your team.
The Pigeon Test for Your Calendar: Look at your weekly routine. Identify one regular meeting, report, or task. Pick one. If you stopped doing it for a week, and nothing broke, it was an illusion. Kill it. Immediately.
Subtract Signals: For every KPI or dashboard metric, ask: “Does this measure a meaningful change in the world, or just button-pressing?” The number of “customer touches” is usually the latter. The number of actual problems solved is the former. Cut the button-pressing metrics.
The One Bruise Rule: Before you start your day, identify the single action that, if left undone, would cause visible pain or a tangible setback tomorrow. That’s your one bruise. Do only that first. Get it done. The other tasks on your list are just noise until that one thing is complete.
Celebrate Absence, Not Presence: Applaud what’s been stopped, not just what’s been added. When a team successfully eliminates a useless meeting or a pointless report, celebrate it like a product launch. The pigeon that stops pecking when no food comes is smarter than the one that keeps at it.
Leadership isn’t about the charts you make, but the bruises you’re willing to find. Now, go find yours.