Doing What Matters
After a conversation with a good friend about some of the goal-achieving tactics I've employed in the past, I realized "this is some good stuff!" So I figured I'd share it here. As always, your mileage may vary. All of these ideas or concepts are things I have recently implemented as part of my career development and progression. Some of them find their origins in Earl Nightingale's "The Strangest Secret" and other metaphysics sources. (The term "self-help" is pejorative, inaccurate and unhelpful.) Anyway, feel free to let me know if you try this techniques and how well it works for you. I expect this to be the first in a series of thoughts on goals and careers.
The first and most important piece of "advice" I gave my friend was to only work on things that matter.
Now, the idea of "what matters" is subjective. Hell, Seth Godin and his merry band of co-conspirators just released an e-book on this very topic. While this book may enumerate and describe what topics or ideas these (rather well known and even influential) people consider to matter NOW, the fact is that this IS a subjective idea. What matters to anyone - what is important to that person - varies with the person. In the context of one's career, what matters is probably what matters to your boss, or your boss' boss, or similar decision makers within the organization. In this context, these are the people whose idea of "what matters" we will discuss.
It's not hard to find out what matters to these people, the ones who constitute the management hierarchy into which you ultimately report. Start with your immediate supervisor and if necessary, work your way up. And just what do you do to find out "what matters" to them? You ask, of course.
Generally, your job is to make your boss look good to his boss. Simple, eh? Unless you and your boss have an adversarial relationship, helping your boss get ahead is a standard way of increasing your standing with and within the organization. This plays back into the concept of "you can have everything in life that you want if you're willing to help enough other people get what they want first".
The next way to determine what matters is to look at your goals. Most organizations, especially large ones, have an annual (or more frequent) process of establishing goals for each employee. The only connection to this process may occur once per year, when the goals for the year (or the coming year) are established and agreed to between the employee and his (her) immediate manager. In some organizations, there may be regular (semi-annual or quarterly) checkups on the progress toward the goals. Whatever the case, there will usually be some organizationally determined goals as well as some self-determined goals. These organizationally determined goals are "what matters" to the hierarchy above and including your manager.
Once you have determined what matters to your boss and his management chain, do your best to give it to them. (Oh come on! You can't tell me you didn't see THAT coming!)
Let me describe how I took this on. Some of you may be saying that you can't just do "what matters", but that you have do whatever your management throws at you. They say jump and your response is supposed to be "how high!", right? I beg to differ. I never said any of this stuff would be easy to do, and you may have to start slowly with it so as to not attract to much attention to the unimportant bullshit you are now not doing (or avoiding). However, the best part about the stuff which doesn't matter is that because it doesn't matter, few people will be paying it any attention. They will be focused on the stuff that does matter.
(Yet another way to identify those things - ideas, projects, customers, or "work" in general - that do matter is to observe where the attention is directed by management and others.)
For example, there is a particular class of problem that I used to deal with on a regular basis at my job. The fact that I kept dealing with this problem over and over, with no end in sight, frustrated the hell out of me. Then I began collaborating with someone in another group on an unrelated project, and through this collaboration I saw an opportunity to correct this "problem". After weeks of discussion (some of it heated), cajoling, presenting evidence, and otherwise attempting to make a case for fixing this "problem", I realized that my collaborator - someone with both the responsibility AND authority to resolve this problem permanently - had no intention of doing so. It wasn't and isn't important to him. Thus, it likely did not make the radar of his management, and so forth and so on. At this point, I chose to stop attempting to resolve or fix this "problem". In fact, I chose to completely ignore this problem. It stopped existing in my world. I literally do not even "see" these issues during the course of my regular duties.
In the moment that I made the aforementioned choice, my stress and frustration vanished. I now had significantly more time to pour into other projects, which I subsequently did with almost immediate results. In the span of approximately 6 weeks, I accomplished 3 of the 5 personal goals I had agreed to with my direct superior. (A fourth had been accomplished months prior.) I went from 20% completion to 80% completion in a matter of weeks, on goals which had stopped me cold for 2 straight years. With 2 weeks left in the year, I am 95% complete. I will reach 100% by year's end, and I imagine I will be on the only person reporting to my manager who will reach that milestone.
Along with crushing my stated professional goals, I found time to focus on working with customers who matter. These are the customers who generate significant amounts of revenue for the company. I've received accolades from my colleagues who support our biggest customer, and those words of praise have been forwarded up the chain to my manager and his boss. I've made suggestions to my colleagues which have been picked up and championed by a counterpart of my direct manager. I've gotten my name in front of a wider audience of co-workers and colleagues. Basically, in the space I created by ruthlessly avoiding those things which don't matter, I have been able to gain visibility and recognition for my contribution to the organization's goals. My efforts have been directly responsible for generating new revenue with our biggest customer. I have been acknowledged, to my management hierarchy, by that customer's support personnel. All of this has occurred within the last 2 months, and most of it is due focusing on the stuff that matters while actively repelling the stuff which does not matter.
In light of my experience with doing what matters, and only what matters, I shared this advice with some of my former students as well. What spurred this move was coming across the following guest post on I Will Teach You To Be Rich. This post perfectly complemented the advice I gave my friend to focus on the stuff that matters, ignoring as much as possible the stuff that does not matter. In the space that is left by not working on the trivial bullshit (that passes for important), you have the freedom to create whatever you choose.
As I told my friend, a LOT of the stuff in our lives is unimportant and does not matter when it comes to getting what we say we want from life. Much of it is sold to us by the media. Much of it comes from our desire to be liked, accepted, or curry favor with others. Then there is the inability to say "no", for the same reasons. Cal Newport's guest blog post illustrates the power of using this word in the service of our own personal goals. Even stuff which is legitimately important to other people may not be important to YOU. Remember this. This does not invalidate the wants, needs or desires of other people, by no means. What it should do is help you be RUTHLESS in determining that which serves your goal -- that which matters to you -- so that you can act in accordance with those goals.
(For the love of God and all that is holy, PLEASE start saying "NO" to the people in your life who have shown you the regular disrespect of wasting your time. Time is the one resource you cannot get back, so optimal use of it is critical to this process. These people who rob you of your time may not have that intent, but the outcome they create is what their actions must be measured by. Theft of time is selfish, self-centered, egotistical and disrespectful. If anyone deserves to receive a NO, it is this "Time Bandit".)
Ultimately, this comes down to clarity. You cannot do that which matters (to you or anyone else) if you are unclear about what that is. Clarity is the root of all accomplishment. You MUST be absolutely clear about what your goal(s) is (are). To achieve this state of awareness requires a level of honesty with yourself that can only be described as being ruthless. Being honest on this level may hurt, because you may find out that things you created in your mind as important are not truly important to you. Maybe they were (are) important to your parents, your extended family, your spouse or significant other, your children, your co-workers or important to other random people in your life. Hell, they may be important to people who completely do not matter to you at all. However, these things may not be important to you. So be honest with and to yourself if you want clarity, and once you have clarity, execute RUTHLESSLY in congruence with that clarity. Also realize that what is important to you can, and will, change. This is fine. YOU have CHOICE in the matter. Once you have established the clarity about what you want, what matters and is important to you, then you must pursue that. If clarity leads to you to the realization that something different now matters to you, pursue that. Whatever you pursue, do so with the single minded focus and intention which can only be arrived at via clarity - of purpose, of need, of desire.
Now, I will say that being this ruthless about doing what matters may not always be fun. In fact, it likely will not be fun. However, it is absolutely critical to achieving the goals you have laid before you. In my personal life, in the pursuit of those things which matter, I have found myself surfing the Internet less, going to clubs and parties less (which I only did bi-weekly before), having a drink less, and even watching pr0n less. We manage to fill our time with all manner of things, activities and people which are not important to us. This is a bad habit that we must learn to break, and the way you break such a habit is to constantly exercise the muscle of breaking it. This is a process, a journey, yet the journey itself is not guaranteed to be fun. (The more worthwhile the goal, the less fun the journey probably should be. Take starting and finishing an undergraduate education, for example.) However, we are pursuing this goal for the sense of achievement that we believe comes with arriving at the ultimate destination, in whatever form that sense of achievement my manifest itself. Use the vision of that achievement, and how you will feel to reach it, to keep your head in the pursuit of the goal.
So, I'll conclude by saying "do what matters", where "what matters" is given by YOUR goals for yourself and your life. That's not to say that you should invalidate or disrespect that which is important to others. Just realize that you have no obligation to serve their goals. To do so is a choice that you make -- exercising free will -- but it is not an obligation. First, focus on gaining clarity around what matters to you. Second, execute every second, every minute, every hour, every day to create that which matters to you. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Do what matters. Fuck everything else.
The first and most important piece of "advice" I gave my friend was to only work on things that matter.
Now, the idea of "what matters" is subjective. Hell, Seth Godin and his merry band of co-conspirators just released an e-book on this very topic. While this book may enumerate and describe what topics or ideas these (rather well known and even influential) people consider to matter NOW, the fact is that this IS a subjective idea. What matters to anyone - what is important to that person - varies with the person. In the context of one's career, what matters is probably what matters to your boss, or your boss' boss, or similar decision makers within the organization. In this context, these are the people whose idea of "what matters" we will discuss.
It's not hard to find out what matters to these people, the ones who constitute the management hierarchy into which you ultimately report. Start with your immediate supervisor and if necessary, work your way up. And just what do you do to find out "what matters" to them? You ask, of course.
Generally, your job is to make your boss look good to his boss. Simple, eh? Unless you and your boss have an adversarial relationship, helping your boss get ahead is a standard way of increasing your standing with and within the organization. This plays back into the concept of "you can have everything in life that you want if you're willing to help enough other people get what they want first".
The next way to determine what matters is to look at your goals. Most organizations, especially large ones, have an annual (or more frequent) process of establishing goals for each employee. The only connection to this process may occur once per year, when the goals for the year (or the coming year) are established and agreed to between the employee and his (her) immediate manager. In some organizations, there may be regular (semi-annual or quarterly) checkups on the progress toward the goals. Whatever the case, there will usually be some organizationally determined goals as well as some self-determined goals. These organizationally determined goals are "what matters" to the hierarchy above and including your manager.
Once you have determined what matters to your boss and his management chain, do your best to give it to them. (Oh come on! You can't tell me you didn't see THAT coming!)
Let me describe how I took this on. Some of you may be saying that you can't just do "what matters", but that you have do whatever your management throws at you. They say jump and your response is supposed to be "how high!", right? I beg to differ. I never said any of this stuff would be easy to do, and you may have to start slowly with it so as to not attract to much attention to the unimportant bullshit you are now not doing (or avoiding). However, the best part about the stuff which doesn't matter is that because it doesn't matter, few people will be paying it any attention. They will be focused on the stuff that does matter.
(Yet another way to identify those things - ideas, projects, customers, or "work" in general - that do matter is to observe where the attention is directed by management and others.)
For example, there is a particular class of problem that I used to deal with on a regular basis at my job. The fact that I kept dealing with this problem over and over, with no end in sight, frustrated the hell out of me. Then I began collaborating with someone in another group on an unrelated project, and through this collaboration I saw an opportunity to correct this "problem". After weeks of discussion (some of it heated), cajoling, presenting evidence, and otherwise attempting to make a case for fixing this "problem", I realized that my collaborator - someone with both the responsibility AND authority to resolve this problem permanently - had no intention of doing so. It wasn't and isn't important to him. Thus, it likely did not make the radar of his management, and so forth and so on. At this point, I chose to stop attempting to resolve or fix this "problem". In fact, I chose to completely ignore this problem. It stopped existing in my world. I literally do not even "see" these issues during the course of my regular duties.
In the moment that I made the aforementioned choice, my stress and frustration vanished. I now had significantly more time to pour into other projects, which I subsequently did with almost immediate results. In the span of approximately 6 weeks, I accomplished 3 of the 5 personal goals I had agreed to with my direct superior. (A fourth had been accomplished months prior.) I went from 20% completion to 80% completion in a matter of weeks, on goals which had stopped me cold for 2 straight years. With 2 weeks left in the year, I am 95% complete. I will reach 100% by year's end, and I imagine I will be on the only person reporting to my manager who will reach that milestone.
Along with crushing my stated professional goals, I found time to focus on working with customers who matter. These are the customers who generate significant amounts of revenue for the company. I've received accolades from my colleagues who support our biggest customer, and those words of praise have been forwarded up the chain to my manager and his boss. I've made suggestions to my colleagues which have been picked up and championed by a counterpart of my direct manager. I've gotten my name in front of a wider audience of co-workers and colleagues. Basically, in the space I created by ruthlessly avoiding those things which don't matter, I have been able to gain visibility and recognition for my contribution to the organization's goals. My efforts have been directly responsible for generating new revenue with our biggest customer. I have been acknowledged, to my management hierarchy, by that customer's support personnel. All of this has occurred within the last 2 months, and most of it is due focusing on the stuff that matters while actively repelling the stuff which does not matter.
In light of my experience with doing what matters, and only what matters, I shared this advice with some of my former students as well. What spurred this move was coming across the following guest post on I Will Teach You To Be Rich. This post perfectly complemented the advice I gave my friend to focus on the stuff that matters, ignoring as much as possible the stuff that does not matter. In the space that is left by not working on the trivial bullshit (that passes for important), you have the freedom to create whatever you choose.
As I told my friend, a LOT of the stuff in our lives is unimportant and does not matter when it comes to getting what we say we want from life. Much of it is sold to us by the media. Much of it comes from our desire to be liked, accepted, or curry favor with others. Then there is the inability to say "no", for the same reasons. Cal Newport's guest blog post illustrates the power of using this word in the service of our own personal goals. Even stuff which is legitimately important to other people may not be important to YOU. Remember this. This does not invalidate the wants, needs or desires of other people, by no means. What it should do is help you be RUTHLESS in determining that which serves your goal -- that which matters to you -- so that you can act in accordance with those goals.
(For the love of God and all that is holy, PLEASE start saying "NO" to the people in your life who have shown you the regular disrespect of wasting your time. Time is the one resource you cannot get back, so optimal use of it is critical to this process. These people who rob you of your time may not have that intent, but the outcome they create is what their actions must be measured by. Theft of time is selfish, self-centered, egotistical and disrespectful. If anyone deserves to receive a NO, it is this "Time Bandit".)
Ultimately, this comes down to clarity. You cannot do that which matters (to you or anyone else) if you are unclear about what that is. Clarity is the root of all accomplishment. You MUST be absolutely clear about what your goal(s) is (are). To achieve this state of awareness requires a level of honesty with yourself that can only be described as being ruthless. Being honest on this level may hurt, because you may find out that things you created in your mind as important are not truly important to you. Maybe they were (are) important to your parents, your extended family, your spouse or significant other, your children, your co-workers or important to other random people in your life. Hell, they may be important to people who completely do not matter to you at all. However, these things may not be important to you. So be honest with and to yourself if you want clarity, and once you have clarity, execute RUTHLESSLY in congruence with that clarity. Also realize that what is important to you can, and will, change. This is fine. YOU have CHOICE in the matter. Once you have established the clarity about what you want, what matters and is important to you, then you must pursue that. If clarity leads to you to the realization that something different now matters to you, pursue that. Whatever you pursue, do so with the single minded focus and intention which can only be arrived at via clarity - of purpose, of need, of desire.
Now, I will say that being this ruthless about doing what matters may not always be fun. In fact, it likely will not be fun. However, it is absolutely critical to achieving the goals you have laid before you. In my personal life, in the pursuit of those things which matter, I have found myself surfing the Internet less, going to clubs and parties less (which I only did bi-weekly before), having a drink less, and even watching pr0n less. We manage to fill our time with all manner of things, activities and people which are not important to us. This is a bad habit that we must learn to break, and the way you break such a habit is to constantly exercise the muscle of breaking it. This is a process, a journey, yet the journey itself is not guaranteed to be fun. (The more worthwhile the goal, the less fun the journey probably should be. Take starting and finishing an undergraduate education, for example.) However, we are pursuing this goal for the sense of achievement that we believe comes with arriving at the ultimate destination, in whatever form that sense of achievement my manifest itself. Use the vision of that achievement, and how you will feel to reach it, to keep your head in the pursuit of the goal.
So, I'll conclude by saying "do what matters", where "what matters" is given by YOUR goals for yourself and your life. That's not to say that you should invalidate or disrespect that which is important to others. Just realize that you have no obligation to serve their goals. To do so is a choice that you make -- exercising free will -- but it is not an obligation. First, focus on gaining clarity around what matters to you. Second, execute every second, every minute, every hour, every day to create that which matters to you. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Do what matters. Fuck everything else.
Labels: achievement, career, goals
posted by Khyron at 03:35
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