Every year I take a week off to reflect on life, usually alone, in a cabin in the woods. It sounds kind of cliché I know, but has become a bit of a ritual. This year I found a cabin in Baring (not boring), Washington close to the Skykomish River and Mt. Index. My days are simple, deciding between coffee or tea in the morning, stoking the fire, reading, walking the dog, and preparing simple comfort foods. Mostly it is an exercise in waiting, to see what arises in solitude. These weeks usually start with some misguided ambitions about decisions I'll make, conclusions to be reached, and whatnot. By the end of the week I may have some answers, but mostly new and better questions; then the cycle repeats itself a year later. I've come to really cherish this experience, particularly embracing the dual nature of planning and reflection as both utterly vital and laughably futile at the same time.
This year I'd like to share a few thoughts, particularly for those of you in my professional network that are early in your careers or that are facing a period of uncertainty. First, I would recommend reading this blog entry from Wait But Why. It's a humorous exploration of the career journey. It's also some of the best professional advice on life and early career planning I've ever encountered, anywhere. If most of your career is still ahead of you this will be time very well spent. If not, it can be an amusing exercise in retracing your steps and fully appreciating how you got to where you are. So with that in mind, here are some tips and observations about planning and goal setting I felt oddly compelled to share:
- Know Yourself: This does not mean having a vague sense of your strengths and weaknesses. It means having a rigorous and precise method to evaluate who you are, to repeat this process over time, and to challenge whatever conclusions you reach. Humans have an incredible ability to tell stories about ourselves, to ourselves. If we aren't careful those stories can obscure foundational truths about who we are. In a professional context this often shows up as becoming really good at something you don't like doing, adopting personality traits or affects others value that you don't, or confusing the vision others have for you with your own. It is worth taking time to reflect on your personality, what commands your attention, how you choose to allocate your time, and the feeling-tone of your life before investing energy in a structured planning or goal setting exercise. Challenge your own talk track about who you believe yourself to be and see what you uncover. "Know thyself" is an age old maxim for a reason, in both its positive and negative senses.
- Practice Kindness: This may seem obvious, but kindness is not something that just happens all on its own. It's a habit. It's a practice. On some very foundational level, it is a skill. You can get good at kindness, and quickly become bad at it again under the wrong circumstances. If you are lucky you are part of a community (work, family, place) that values kindness and makes this easy for you and others. Even then, being kind to YOURSELF requires even greater intention and discipline. I mention this because kindness to self is a pre-requisite to meaningful forms of self-reflection and the possibility of planning or productive goal setting of any kind. I'm not talking about remembering to take vacation time, pampering yourself, or whatever vice you may have that quells your inner monologue. I'm talking about foundational forms of kindness to self: the permission to be who you are, acceptance of what you are not, and the courage to disentangle the knot of hope-and-fear that propels us forward in life. Kindness to self shows up in its most poignant form as claiming your decisions as your own and treating them with great care and respect. At the end of the day your choices are the only things that are truly yours in an absolute sense. They can enact forms of agency, dignity and self-efficacy in your life, or not. The choice is yours.
- Remember that Good Advice is Hard to Find: At some point in your career someone is going to tell you that it is important to find formal mentors. Mentors can catalyze growth and self-reflective insight in many ways. I won't waste your time on what a mentor is or all the impacts a mentor can have. You can Google that. What I will say is that far too little attention is spent on recognizing who you should consider taking advice from in the first place. Above all else, look for the unexspected in others. If you model your path on mentors who personify your own ambitions, or even worse, mirror back to you what you already believe to be true, you can easily be led astray. Granted, having mentors that have achieved what you aspire to, that command your respect, that exhibit personality traits you would like to emulate, or who can be allies in some way are all very good starting points. My experience, however, is that someone whose personal or professional journey followed an atypical path will challenge you in ways you couldn't have anticipated. Some (of many) possible signs to look for when identifying mentors: they have overcome a significant personal adversity, they successfully navigated a major career transition, they've left a safe job to pursue a passion, they returned to school mid-career (just because they wanted to), they have publicly failed at something in a spectacular way and recovered from it, or they are practiced in the art of radical-candor. Put otherwise, your mentors should have more than technical expertise in life and work, they should possess some wisdom and perspective grounded in self-awareness, born from the kinds of experiences that give rise to that possibility.
- Set Goals with Rigor: I'm not talking about SMART goals. I'm talking about ambitious, bordering on audacious aspirations that are honest and vulnerable representations of who you really are and the person you want to be. This is where the personal and professional intersect and become indistinguishable. Sometimes this is easy; your most earnest goals might just be the next step on whatever path you are on. Sometimes they are painful recognitions that you've strayed from some more authentic expression of self. Goal setting is a fraught exercise for this reason. It if is too hubristic or idealistic you end up with lofty and unattainable dreams. If you are too cautious or pragmatic the results will be utterly uninspiring if not counterproductive. My approach to goal setting - by my standards - strikes a healthy balance between simplicity and rigor. It's a spreadsheet that maps facets of my life against different time horizons (currently 10 years out). It's a bit more structured than a to-do-list without being so complicated that it distracts from the matter at hand. I set goals and intentions around Family, Vocation, Learning, Health, Financial Prosperity, and Fulfillment. "Fulfillment" is the x-factor that could mean a lot of different things for different people: spiritual life, creative expression, philanthropy, volunteering, building community, mentoring or whatever ties your life together in a way that feels purposeful and whole. Check things off when they are done. Add new steps when they become clear. Do not delete anything though. Looking back on what you didn't do or chose not to pursue years in the past is itself incredibly instructive.
So there you have it, a snippet of my thought process about setting goals, career, and life planning brought to you by a week gazing at the Skykomish River and Mt. Index.
About the author: You can learn more about me at www.davidbeckley.me .