Sharpening the Saw

Recently I encountered a "perfect storm" of life events that resulted in a complete breakdown of my beliefs, confidence and motivation. I spent a couple of weeks trying to pinpoint the actual causes of this. I alternately assigned blame, tried to fake it, admitted failure, checked out by watching 1970's TV drama, commiserated with friends, sought advice and professional help.

Today I stumbled upon the answers by revisiting two old friends. I was introduced to one of these friends very early in my career. He helped me organise my work and private life, helping me understand what was important to me and where I should spend my time to make myself truly happy. He helped me set goals and gave me a little notebook to plan and track my goals and the tasks that would help me achieve them.

Then my friend introduced me to another friend. The second friend took my little goal-setting exercise to a new level. He asked me to look at the qualities that are important to me, and how I want people to describe me when I'm no longer around. My life was on track to be the journey I wanted.

Then I got a smart phone.

It was no longer cool to carry around a little notebook. I tucked away my little notebook in a drawer in my home office. I took it out for various life events in 2003, 2007 and 2011 (see a pattern?) where previously I had reviewed it annually. Today, as part of my trial and error approach, I located and read through my little FranklinCovey notebook.

Benjamin Franklin pioneered time management by setting himself the task of mastering 13 virtues for improving his productivity and therefore his chance of success. The Franklin Institute built on those virtues to create productivity planners for success-obsessed Americans in the 1980's.

Enter Stephen R. Covey of 7 Highly Successful Habits fame. When these two joined forces, well, that's when it got interesting. Stephen could put things in 20th century terms. He added important virtues like Leadership. I bit hard.

I'd forgotten what a marvelous tool this was! I spent the day in my study with my 1998 values, my 2007 goals, my 2011 bucket list and 6 pads of sticky notes. And I started sharpening the saw.

I started by affirming the 10 values I've had since 1998 (and probably before). I added the 26 things remaining from 50 item bucket list. Then I added items I'd recorded about how I wanted to Act, Feel and Think (AFT) and how I wanted to Be, what I wanted to Do and Have (BDH). By now I have wall of colourful sticky notes.

Next I looked at the Evaluation Questions. What has made me happy, satisfied and proud? Were these consistent with my values?

No. Guess what? In the past 15 years, I've added some values, and some are no longer important to me. My "perfect storm" of life changes brought clarity to this. Here's part of the sticky note scattergram attached to the wardrobe mirror.

I have been executing tasks to complete goals that I no longer want to achieve, because they no longer conform to my values. This conflict has caused me confusion, frustration, anxiety and ultimately, my failures.

Tomorrow I'll prioritise the values, and start setting some new goals. And I'll be checking out that Franklin iPhone app.