Monday, December 5, 2016

Being Purposeful

A coworker recently poked her head into my office and casually said "We've drafted an RFP for the new website, can I send it to you for review?"

Although I was pleased by the opportunity to opine, my eyebrows went up as I asked "How about if we get our teams together and make sure we all understand what we're looking for in a website, and then move on to the RFP?" We did, and it was a great conversation. Both the Marketing and Information Services teams had great ideas to add to the conversation, and I am sure that our website will be better for the discussion.

It seemed counterproductive to me that we would consider taking on any part of a project as big as redesigning our website without first understanding what we wanted to get out of the project. Yet...when I asked myself "What am I trying to get out of life?" I could not answer.

For someone as goal oriented as myself, this is a glaring omission. If my goal is to spend as much time with my daughter as possible, perhaps I should quit my job. If my goal is to maximize the amount of travel that Aimee and I do in retirement, perhaps we should downsize our house now rather than when we retire.

Of course there are many answers to this question for each of us. We probably want a mix of things out of life. If you were to write down some of the things you want out of life, how many of your actions today have moved you closer to those goals?

The answer for me today is "None." Tomorrow I will change that.