The Pickle Jar Theory of Success

How tiny, joyful efforts compound into ‘overnight wins.’

By Osamede Ogbomo

4 min read

June 4th, 2025

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In an interview with Act One, Princeton computer scientist Bernard Chazelle quipped that his work process is like wrestling a stubborn pickle-jar lid:

“You twist every day and nothing moves; you keep nudging and nothing happens. Then one morning it pops, and you don’t know why. All those turns had shifted it a millimeter here, a millimeter there, changing the crystal structure of the jar. When it finally opens, it’s because you stayed with it — the problem has to live with you.”

We hear endless advice about that satisfying pop: the promotion, the extra zero on the paycheck, the bestseller. Yet lids rarely loosen for people who stare only at the pickle inside. Momentum comes from the turning itself: daily, absorbed, almost playful.

Two years ago, when I began working as a researcher at Act One, we were undertaking an extremely ambitious project. How could a group of twenty-somethings become experts on finding career success in their twenties? We soon realized that “career success” is the wrong goal. Those conventional milestones—bonuses, titles, book deals—are instruments, not ends. We slog toward them, hoping they will buy us a bigger porch, a fancier title: a “good life.” When we finally arrive, the satisfaction fades fast because we confused the tool for the treasure.

We think success is the prize at the end of hard work. But for the best performers, joy in the work is the prize—and success is the echo.

What we wanted all along was not status, it was enjoyment: the feeling of being fully immersed in activities that matter with people who matter. Career success isn’t suffering through miserable days for some ambiguous prize you hope to win at the end; it’s drawing on skills you’ve practiced until they become second nature and then channeling them toward something novel and meaningful.

Imagine this: you walk into the office, drop into your cubicle, open your laptop—and before you can blink, the workday is over. You’ve disappeared into the task. It feels like a super-power: all of your strengths, every lesson from school and college, culminate into the perfect deployment of your distinct skills. Your coworkers look frazzled, but you’re invigorated. Your boss sees your skill as invaluable. Work is effortless—the ultimate asset.

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls this state flow: loving your work so much you lose yourself in it. Flow lies where practiced skill meets a worthy challenge, making work both fulfilling and successful.

The principle holds across fields. The surgeon who entered medicine to appease her parents plods through each shift, while the pediatrician driven by a fierce love of children pushes her skills toward mastery, and the awards follow. The contract lawyer who drifted into law because he aced college English will never out-maneuver the litigator who treated mock trial like the Olympics since middle school. Purpose and genuine delight turn hours of effort into something closer to play, and, as any athlete knows, playing a lot becomes playing well, and playing well becomes playing in the big leagues.

When I spoke to professors, attorneys, and talent specialists about finding this flow, none of them described flow as a shortcut to promotion; rather, it was the very reason they still loved their jobs—and, paradoxically, the reason promotions kept coming. It’s the principle of the pickle jar: stop obsessing over the career-success pickle and just grip the lid. Enjoy the tiny, invisible turns that accumulate over time, and eventually, the jar gives way in a single, satisfying snap.

When the pop comes, onlookers call it brilliance or luck. You know better. You remember every turn, each its own reward, compounding into that sudden release. And if the lid never opens? You still spent your days absorbed, challenged, alive—a success few people taste.