What drives people to do their best work every day? Is it a big paycheck? How about impressive benefits? Perhaps it is awards and other types of recognition? While all that is nice, none of these factors is the most important to a sense of meaningful work.

In fact, the secret to workplace satisfaction costs nothing.

It is simply a sense of progress.

There is an ancient Greek myth about a cruel king named Sisyphus, a mortal cursed by Hades to roll a boulder up a hill for all eternity. The catch was that just before he reached the top, the boulder would slip from his grasp and roll back to the bottom, forcing him to start over. For too many people their workday is Sisyphean in that they put in hours of effort with no sense of progress to claim for it.

According to Teresa M. Amabile, and Steven J. Kramer, authors of The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work, the best way to find satisfaction at work is to have a sense of daily, meaningful progress. In their surveys of workers, they found that 76% of people’s best days involved progress, while only 13% involved setbacks. As they summed up:

“Of all the positive events that influence inner work life, the single most important is progress in meaningful work.”

What was more surprising to them was how little management understood and appreciated this fact. According to their surveys, a sense of progress was dead last in a list of possible motivating factors. This demonstrates a strong disconnect between perceived and actual reality. On the positive side, it means that managers who pay attention to workflow, clear barriers and set out clear goals will help their employees feel more successful and fulfilled.

A sense of progress is important to authors. There is an old adage that authors succeed by writing something every day. Even if the work they produce is ultimately not used, the dynamic of forward progress in the task of writing is essential to eventually finishing that novel or long essay.

To learn more about how a sense of progress can improve your everyday work, read The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work.