on 30-Jun-2022 09:35
Hey there, community. Who has two thumbs and is overwhelmed at the tremendous opportunities to learn in this modern world? THIS GUY. I love learning, and I need to learn. I get unsettled and irritable when I get complacent. But there's a downside to a glut of opportunity--the paradox of choice:
Trying to choose a path from so many options can result in, well, no choice at all. And that's not good. So to circle back to the title...what's your mission? Not what your day-to-day job-related tasks are, but YOUR mission. For me, I've been at F5 for nearly 14 years now and my mission has been to bring technology specifics and related solutions to the community in an engaging, helpful, and informative way. The mission itself isn't changing, but some of the ways in which I serve that mission are.
As I referenced above, there is so much I could learn, and as I have spare time, I try to at least have a high level understanding of things that cross my path. But for my interests and the interests of the community I serve on mission, I'm focusing on deepening my understanding and skill in three areas:
I'm no spring chicken anymore. Until I hit my early 40s, I could pick something up, read it, and move on. That's no longer the case. I need to learn differently now. I covered some of this a while back in an episode of You Want Answers, linked here:
If I were to summarize my current learning journey in a few bullet points, they would be:
So that's where I'm at, and that's my mission. What's YOUR mission?
Great reminder to stop and think about what is important @JRahm.
Focus and Intention are things I've only learned to do *on purpose* in the past few years.
Working with a coach I teased out the times I did great at something, the times I did terrible at something and looked at them closely to discover what drove great & terrible respectively.
In my case - I was motivated, in the extreme, when I figured SOMEONE ELSE thought I would fail. I was also de-motivated when some task was overly complex, if nobody was waiting on it, and I couldn't figure out the best place to start. Those seem simple enough to understand in the abstract but recognizing when they were *happening* to me in the moment was less obvious.
BUT...now I am exercising three things more regularly:
* checking in regularly with my own personal goals.
* invoking the "challenge myself" muscle such that I can mimic the extrinsic motivation I've had in the past - I can sorta make it pop from my own head without the need to have someone else doubt me AND
* I can more often recognize the signs of when I am stalling myself out (procrastinating) and getting myself back on track more often.
I'm still not close to 100% success on all of those activities but I'm certainly better and they almost always start with slowing down for just a second, recognizing how they look/feel as they are happening, and then, with increased intention, confirm that the action I'm about to take (or not take) is aligned with my personal goals and short term targets.
My mission then is improving my ability to more accurately turn on, and turn off, my powers for my, and those counting on me, benefit.
Good stuff, @LiefZimmerman! Setting goals is something I used to do consistently and got a way from. And then I got back to setting goals, but then didn't check in on them until I realized I didn't hit any of them when...setting them again. So now, like you, I'm trying to be more regular with the evaluation/reflection part of having a plan.