From our newsletter Outside the Lines

That Great Work thing

In my yes-it’s-really-coming-probably-in-early February book, Find Your Great Work , I talk about the five core truths of Great Work.

One of them talks about the importance of focus.

It’s inspired this month’s article, because today my business partner (and as it happens, wife) and I will be sitting down to make plans of our own.

Making plans

We do this every six months or so, a time to hit the pause button, step out of the minutiae and ask ourselves just what the heck is going on around here.

We’ve already started sketching out the topics and issues we want to talk about, and I’m noticing how they fit on four different levels:

The first two levels

The immediate, everyday business level.  “What’s happening on this project?”  “Did you send X to Y?”  “Is it you or me who was supposed to do Z?”  This is all about tying up loose ends from the daily and weekly work we do.

That typically leads to…

The 2009 plan.  “What would be the two or three big wins in 2009?”  “What’s our Great Work for the year?”  “What other structures do we need to build?”  “What’s the right balance between travel and staying at home?”  This will involve calendars, figuring out what to say No to as well as Yes to, and committing to what I once heard someone call “the valuable few”.

The final two levels

Often, that’s where planning stops:  glance at the here-and-now, glance ahead a little and we’re done.

But I think the deepest shifts occur when you really change your focus.  The next level you can look at goes to…

The personal level.  “What do I want to achieve in the next little while?”  “What do I want to learn?”  “What will be my own adventure this year?”  “What’s my Great Work?”  This is all about getting clear on your own agenda and what makes you tick.

And rarely, very rarely, you create space to get to…

The Meaning of Life level.  “What does happiness look like?”  “Where will we live?”  “What’s the life we’re trying to build?”  This shifts the focal length again and makes you ask whether the life you’re building is actually the life you want … or whether it just happens to be the life you’ve gotten into the habit of.

Where are you looking and thinking right now?

So before you get swept back into the here-and-now and start being busy again, let me ask you:

• What plans have you made?

• What do you want?  For yourself right now?  For yourself in your life?

(And if, by the by, it’s more Great Work then sign up for pre-publication offers on Find Your Great Work here.)

Don’t take my word for it

Smart people thinking aloud about focus and planning.

“Plans are nothing; planning is everything.”
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, American general & politician

“Adventure is just bad planning.”
- Roald Amundsen, Norwegian explorer

Read more quotations on focus and planning here.