Work Less and Do More: Work on Purpose
This is a guest post.
We spend so much of our time at work! Our work comes to define us, and what we get done at work turns into quality of life outside of work. And yet… Once we’re at work, we can easily get caught doing things that aren’t very effective. Sometimes for years at a time. That’s all because we rarely work on purpose.
Humans are funny creatures. We have dreams and lofty goals—a meaningful life, security for us and our families, launching a new brand of toothpaste into third world markets. We plan how we’ll get there. We even start implementing our plan. So far, so good. But then the great cosmic joke begins. Once we’ve started along the path, we forget our original goal. We end up enslaved to the path, even if it stops taking us where we wanted to go. We’ve lose our original purpose and become wedded to our daily grind.
At work, this makes bureaucracy. Our boss likes weekly written status reports, so we dutifully spend an hour each Monday writing the report. We get a new boss and keep writing the reports. Our new boss is perfectly happy to receive them, but she would be just as happy with a five-minute chat. We keep spending 52 hours a year (that’s an entire work week) writing the reports, because we’ve lost our original goal: having a good relationship with our boss. When the boss changed, our behavior didn’t.
Work on Purpose by Asking Why
Reconnecting with purpose is a cinch: just ask Why. Why uncovers the larger purpose to what you’re doing. You can ask why to that purpose to get the goal of that goal. Ask why several times and you’ll uncover a whole ladder of goals that go from the tactical all the way up to the grandiose.
What if you did this while writing your status report? You might uncover a goal ladder like this.
Ask: Why am I writing this?
Answer: To update my boss about my actions.
Ask: Why am I updating my boss?
Answer: To keep my boss informed about what I’m doing.
Ask: Why do I want to keep my boss informed?
Answer: Because if she’s informed, our relationship will go more smoothly.
You’ve made it from your actions to your purpose: keeping the relationship going smoothly.
Make Sure You’re Aligned by Asking How
Asking Why uncovers your motivating purpose. It tells you where the energy is coming from that’s propelling you forward. That doesn’t necessarily mean that what you’re doing moment to moment will work, however. Maybe you set your high-level goals a long time ago. They may be out of date, or you may be able to find better ways of reaching them than what you’re currently doing.
Double-check your goals by starting at the top level purpose and asking “How can I achieve this?” Your answer might be the same as the next lower goal you identified on your way up the goal ladder. If so, great! You’re in alignment! But often, the answers don’t match. Then you know your subgoals and actions aren’t serving your higher goals.
During a Saturday radio interview, I asked my interviewer why he worked weekends. We traced up his goal ladder: “I want money,” he said. “Why?” I asked. “So I can afford time to spend with the people I love.”
Then we started at the top and went back down the ladder. We asked “how could you spend time with the people you love?” The answer, much to his surprise, wasn’t “I should make money,” but “I should ramp down my work efforts and spend Saturdays at home with my family.” The very path he’d chosen to his goal was the one thing keeping him from it.
Check Your Inner Teenager
Working on Purpose is the key to keeping yourself on track for your highest goals. Double-check your to-do list every so often. Make sure your actions are aligned around really reaching your highest goals. You needn’t just work on purpose; you can also try Living on Purpose. Reconsider how you volunteer, how you spend your leisure time, and how you use your life outside of work. Do you really want your 35-year-old life following the path made by 15-year-old you, no matter how smart and well-intentioned you were at the time? Yet many of us do just that (I know I do!). We set our ambitions early, chart a lifelong course, and never think to re-visit it. A session of Why and How is simple, but can profoundly reconnect you with the life you should be living.
Keeping your actions aligned with your purpose means everything you do will be moving you towards your goals. Align your work and your life by asking “Why?” to discover your driving goals, and then ask “How?” to make sure you’re not just working, but you’re working on purpose.
Written by Stever Robbins
Stever Robbins is a serial entrepreneur, the author of Get-it-Done Guy’s 9 Steps to Work Less and Do More, host of the #1 iTunes business podcast The Get-it-Done Guy, and an adjunct lecturer at Babson College. He is currently working on his 11th startup.
Article photo by a4gpa
Looking to America
I am a young American.
A young, flawed, American.
A young flawed American looking, as I’ve done in the past, to America for guidance, for acceptance, and for strengthened hope.
But what now reflects back into my eyes, mirrors anything but.
It’s an America more flawed than I. An America covering her flaws in a veil. A veil threaded and woven with ignorance and fear for certain groups of her people.
In the past she knitted and wore this veil, only to realize how out of fashion it was.
But in these times of certain uncertainty, she is wearing it again.
Her ignorance and fear is for those who want to enjoy her for what makes her unique, what makes her America. Life, liberty, and happiness.
People who want the right to marry who they love.
People who are trying to pursue a better existence.
And those who are trying to practice their religious freedom.
These three groups of people are exactly who America was created for. But this fact gets lost in the fear.
The fears that same-sex couples will somehow destroy love and marriage for straight couples and American families.
The fears that immigrants are going to come and steal valuable jobs from Americans who truly deserve them.
And the fears that allowing an Islamic community center to be built near the New York City September 11th attack site means that terrorists have won their war and that this will breed more terrorists.
The exact opposites are true.
Same-sex couples aren’t going to destroy the sanctity of love and marriage. They’re going to strengthen it. They’ve been denied it for so long that when they are given the right to marry; they’ll truly understand its worth. And their families will be strong, based on love that’s been tested.
A Mexican immigrant is not going to cross the border and steal the job you have or the job you want. He or she is going to work the lowest-paying, most degrading, and back-breaking job that you can’t even think of, let alone have or are trying to get.
And an Islamic center near Ground Zero isn’t going to breed terrorists. Forcing it to move and showing America to be intolerant of Muslims has a much greater chance of doing so.
Though what I hear and see in the actions and words of many Americans right now is frustrating and disappointing; I’m also excited. Excited for the near future when the veil begins to wear and tear with holes and lose its style.
The guidance, acceptance, and strengthened hope I’ve been looking for in older America may not be there, but that’s because I think I might be looking in the wrong place. Perhaps my generation is where I should be looking.
Generation Y, we’ve been insulted, made fun of, criticized, and branded as spoiled, inconsiderate, and unmotivated since we were born. Now is our time to look to America and guide those who are wrong and right, to accept those who are being alienated, and to strengthen the hope for America’s future.
Photo by ginnerobot
4 Simple Strategies to Get Rid of the Just-In-Case Blues
This is a guest post.
Face it. Most of us have something lying around the home, car, closet, or at work for “just in case.” Just in case it rains. Just in case a guest stops by for an impromptu stay. Just in case I decide to go mountain climbing. It never ends!
The downside of this just-in-case blues is that the more we think we “might” need it, the more we’ll accumulate, and soon, we don’t even know why we have the item here in the first place!
The upside of all this? Not much. Unless you really do have impromptu guests crashing at your place often. Or you have spur-of-the-moment mountain climbing excursions. But these things rarely happen and you know it.
The fact is we carry around most of the stuff for “just in case” due to fear. Fear of emergencies happening around each corner. Fear of the “what if’s.” Fear of the unknown.
But guess what? Life is unknown. There are absolute uncertainties around each corner; that is for sure. Allowing ourselves to be afraid and live in fear is simply not worth our finite time and effort.
Accumulating so much stuff for just in case allows us to bank on the idea of failure when living in the moment is sometimes all we can, and should, do.
So how do we alleviate these just-in-case blues that plague the best of us?
Here are 4 simple strategies to get rid of the just-in-case blues:
1. If you don’t think you absolutely need it, then don’t bring it!
We can eliminate so much of our items we travel with if we just didn’t bring it along.
We over pack, justifying to ourselves that we may encounter some sort of crisis while out and about that warrants us having to carry a first aid kit, extra pair of pants, socks, hand sanitizer, extra napkins, a mini flashlight, extra batteries, and the like. It’s become ridiculous. A life and death crisis most likely will not happen and if it does, so be it! That’s how life is intended. You can’t plan everything out nor can you prevent anything from happening that is supposed to happen. Learn to let go.
2. Realize you can’t control everything.
This ties in with learning to let go and shush our inner control freak. As much as you might plan, things you didn’t expect to happen will happen as they invariably do. Adapt to it, go with the flow, and make the best of it. Sometimes, a change of events actually turns out to be better than the original plan.
For example, spring break 2005, I went to Hawaii with one of my girlfriends. As we were at Chicago O’Hare International Airport waiting to board our plane, we were so immersed in our conversation that we completely missed the announcement over the intercom that our gate had changed! We just sat there, wondering why we hadn’t been called to board our flight yet. Once we realized something was wrong, we had to scramble to get onto the next flight to Hawaii. It turned out that the next flight to Hawaii was a direct flight, unlike the original one which had a layover in California, thereby having us get to Hawaii earlier than planned, giving us more time to enjoy our vacation!
Sometimes the unexpected is just as fun, if not better, than the original plan of events. Learn to go with it.
3. Don’t have things lying around, tucked away, or stored in the back of your closet if you’re not going to use them.
By continually putting things off to the side and labeling them as just in case items will only put you deeper into your clutter and mess. The more stuff you own, the harder it is to find what you actually need, when you need it. Have only the essentials; get rid of the rest. And by essentials, I’m talking about life essentials. Not things that don’t add any value to your life but rather, things that help you sustain life and enjoy it as best as possible.
4. Rid yourself of duplicate items.
Three umbrellas, really? A dozen pairs of jeans (or more!)? Thirty shirts that all kind of look the same? What’s the point?
Duplicate items also include photos and multiple versions of the same document. Not only does this take up space and memory but it’s much harder to sort through when you have 10 photos of the same exact people all in slightly different angles to show their best sides to the camera.
If there’s no need to have multiple versions of the same thing, then get rid of it. Tell me, how often do you ever go back to your second or third version of your resume when you’re on version twelve right now?
How often do you wear each pair of jeans you currently own? You most likely wear one or two, and those would be your favorite ones. Why have the rest around then?
Don’t keep things that are duplicate items for the sake of keeping them. Keep what is in better condition or better quality, and get rid of the rest.
Now What?
Less stuff means less hassle and less worries. Truly, our possessions take away our energy due to having to maintain it, fix it, insure it, watch over it, store it, clean it, and so forth.
Ultimately, eliminating your items by minimizing your life and living simply will help curb your just-in-case blues and also help you move forward with your life, instead of continually looking backwards. You’ll no longer need to keep something for the sake of having it just in case and mainly due to fear. You’ll be keeping something because you’ll actually need it. Realizing this difference can make all the difference.
Written by Nina Yau
My name is Nina Yau and I’m a writer, artist, and martial artist. I’m also a minimalist who owns less than 100 things. I blog about changing the way we think and view the world through minimalism at Castles in the Air.
Article photo by Kevin
Five Green Tips For De-Cluttering Your House
This is a guest post.
De-cluttering your house and/or office space can have a restorative effect on you outlook. Clutter and general messiness can be distracting. Use green strategies for your de-cluttering project to help the planet as well as enhance the inherent positive effects of a clutter-free living space.
Here are five green tips for a de-cluttered living environment:
1. Hold a garage sale/sell your junk at a local flea market.
Essentially, the key to making your de-cluttering project green is to avoid throwing things away. Almost everyone has seen the pictures of overflowing landfills. Don’t add to the problem if you don’t have to.
Holding a garage sale is a tried-and-true method of making some extra cash off items you no longer use. Some areas have flea markets where, for a small fee, you can set up a booth and sell your junk to a larger crowd of people. Your local newspaper would be a good place to start looking for flea market information.
2. Repurpose, repurpose, repurpose!
Repurposing can be defined as the act of taking an everyday object and using it for something other than its originally intended purpose. Coffee cans can be painted and reused as pencil holders, etc. Think creatively and you’ll be surprised by the variety of ideas you’ll generate.
3. Donate to a good cause.
If you can’t sell your junk at a garage sale, or if you’re feeling philanthropic, donating clothing and other items to organizations like Goodwill is a great opportunity to help your community. Be sure to ask for papers documenting your donation, as these can be used for a tax write off at the end of the year.
4. Make your own green cleaning products.
Traditional cleaning products can leave toxic residues in your home, and contribute to ozone layer degradation. Check out the variety of home-cleaner recipies available online. A clean home can now be a non-toxic home, something any parent/pet owner can appreciate.
5. Catch up on your recycling.
Bottles, newspapers, and magazines can sometimes end up hanging around long after their period of usefulness has been accomplished. Take these to your local recycling agency or organization. Some states even offer small amounts of compensation for recycled goods.
Written by Alexis Bonari
Alexis Bonari is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is a passionate blogger on the topic of education and free college scholarships. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.
Photo by Criss!
40 things to do, say, see, hear, taste, smell, and feel as soon as possible
Almost everyone loves to write, read, share, and tackle life goal lists. There are tons of books like “1,000 Places To See Before You Die,” sites for sharing lists like 43Things.com, and even a movie about two men chasing their final to-dos called, “The Bucket List.”
It’s fantastic that people want to do and see so much before they die. But I’ve realized after writing and publishing a few of these lists, is that they often imply a “years down the road” mentality, that we have a ton of time to finish every item on our lists. This makes us lose interest and leaves our lists to collect dust. None of us know how long we’re going to have. We may never live to an old age. So how about a new list with a more seize-the-day approach?
Here are 40 things to do, say, see, hear, taste, smell, and feel as soon as possible. Some things on this list are very small and simple, but can give profound results if you let it be so.
1. Enjoy a small victory after many major defeats.
2. Build something with your bare hands.
3. Hear whales communicating underwater.
4. Listen to the entire catalog of music from your favorite singer or band.
5. Let go of an inhibition.
6. Do something just for the hell of it. Not for money, fame, praise, or receiving an award.
7. Believe when all others have lost faith.
8. Taste fresh mountain spring water.
9. Hear genuine laughter.
10. Do something taboo.
11. Sit and listen to a waterfall.
12. Don’t say; “I’m having a bad day.”
13. Eat healthy.
14. Listen to a genre of music you’ve never liked.
15. Find beauty where others don’t.
16. Don’t think someone is strange just because they’re different.
17. Think those that are “normal” are strange.
18. Give a negative situation positivity.
19. Head to the woods.
20. Speak to someone much older than you. But listen more.
21. Ask questions that have no answers.
22. Give before someone asks.
23. Sincerely give a compliment to a stranger.
24. Give someone you don’t like a chance (or a second chance).
25. Reconcile with someone or a past event.
26. Get lost in a book, art work, or movie.
27. Dress to impress yourself.
28. Help an injured animal. (Seek trained professional if you could be in harm’s way.)
29. Take a break. Don’t worry about chasing a goal. Just enjoy the moment.
30. Go the extra step when you really don’t want to.
31. Be like John and “Imagine.”
32. Tell a love one; “I’m proud of you.”
33. Tell a love one after a failure or mistake; “I’m still proud of you.”
34. Enjoy a rainy day.
35. Don’t watch or read news for an entire day.
36. Lose a regret.
37. Dabble with your hidden talents.
38. Donate anonymously.
39. Find a new passion.
40. Finish an entire goal list.
Please feel free to add any other ideas from your own lists in the comment section below. We’d love to read about your near-future goals!
Photo by Nicholas_T
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