Getting somewhere..?
One of the things occupying my mind recently [well, the last year], has been the question “What is the best thing I can do with my life?”
I am scared of not reaching on my potential.
Strangely, this fear hasn’t actually made me strive or work harder – it’s actually paralyzed me. When I think of what I could be doing, achieving and enjoying, my mind begins to wander hundreds of different paths, considering every little thing I would have to master in order to get there. Excellent. Although, while I consider myself reasonably intelligent, with excellent emotional intelligence and self-awareness, I a suck at reacting.
I will logically think a problem or situation through, and say to myself ‘It must be done in this way, or it will not be possible’ – but the reactive part of me would rather take me a different way. I have this subconscious ability to create pressure, place it onto myself, completely lose focus on the big picture, and then get lost within something that doesn’t really assist progression. I make good decisions in my mind’s eye, but my reactive brain (at the time) ignores them.
I get lost in the detail, and then eventually ‘wake up’, realizing that I’ve learnt something new, solved some problems that probably didn’t need solving (at least yet), and ultimately didn’t do the best thing I could at the time with respect to my goals.
Somewhere along the way, my brain was accidentally programmed to get lost down the very splinter-end lower branches, rather than climbing to the top of the tree trunk and scouting out the next waypoint.
Perhaps it’s the insecure part of me that still exists, never completely healed from past experiences of rejection and hurt, trying to find contentment and identity in the technical. I love to solve technical problems, re-build things, create systems, hack things, improve things, find the ultimate solution to something (sometimes, if it kills me) but completely miss the higher purpose of it. It’s very reactive. I see in my mind how something could be better, instantly I am solving the ‘problem’ without thought to its meaning.
I get lost in the detail.
I see people like me everywhere. They frustrate me. Intelligent and creative, but unfocused and without real strategy or the discipline to make it happen. They have all the right ingredients to conquer incredible mountains, and yet they circle the same tracks over and over, not questioning the familiar paths.
I am doing that very thing right now. I am getting lost in compiling the detail of self-analysis and how my reactive brain seems to work rather than writing about values – the very point of this post!
Re-wind.
“What is the best thing I can do with my life?”
I don’t want to go into detail about how you define what ‘best‘ is, but I’ve been around a number of different roads many times in my mind over the last few months, and I’m close… It’s happening again. I know what I want to write, but right now my brain is trying to solve problems like ‘how to apply the above question to everyone’ and travelling the paths of morality, conscience, purpose, meaning, spirituality, intellectualism…
How ironic.
That didn’t quite work, so let me try and express the original intentions I had for this post:
- My brain is programmed reactively in a way that doesn’t primarily benefit my goals, or any particular higher purpose
- I have learned a lot about myself recently (as I’m now able to explain), and am able to see more clearly the obstacles in the way of my personal success (my definition of success is not financial)
- Having explored the concepts/needs of purpose and meaning, I have determined what my potential looks like, where it is, and how I can meet it
- Rather than become overly-focused with the realm of my personal goals, and losing sight of more ‘basic‘ realm goals such as keeping the house tidy, I need to re-inforce the realization that I must keep quality in all aspects of my life in order for it to marinate into my being and saturate my meaningful output.
- Be the best me that I can be.
Phil, a fantastic post which I’ve read and re-read. I don’t think there’s a single person on the planet who wouldn’t agree a great deal with what you say. Admitting the problem and being aware of it to articulate it at all is a massive step forward.
I’d say the answers lie somewhere in detailed step-by-step planning upfront; trying to enforce daily routines to positively chip away at the nitty gritty step-by-step; and constant re-evaluation built in from the start.
It’s a bit of a cliche these days, but have you read Getting Things Done by David Allen? While it’s a great method for handling the day-to-day stuff that life throws at you, I think it’s far more valuable as a framework for tackling higher level goals. I’d strongly recommend a read if you haven’t already.
All the best mate.
Dave tweeted a link saying everyone must relate to this but I don’t think that is true. This is probably something a lot of designer/developer types (among others) relate to because of that attention to detail, but there are many people who move through life fast and skipping over the details. Sometimes I envy them.
As well as Getting Things Done, another really useful toolset I have used is David Seah’s The Printable CEO series. The Concrete Goals Tracker and the Day Grid Balancer come to mind here in particular, but there are lots of useful tools there. Your post has reminded me that I’m not using them enough though.
It is relatively easy to analyse what you are doing wrong and learn how to do better, but putting it into practice seems to take years to master. I’m not there yet.
Am I reaching my full potential? What a massive question that is.
I know that I am currently not and some of that is due to a lack of focus, apathy and distractions of various tasks and desires that get in the way. I do know that I just need to keep at it, keep ploughing away through the junk and at some point in my life I will hit the goals that I have set for my life.
If we are going to be honest, we all have weaknesses that we need to work on or need assistance with. Take a step out of your life and look at is as objectively as you can, from there identify aspects of your life which you need to work on/need assistance with. Find someone that you respect who has strengths were your weaknesses are and together put a plan in place for your personal development and maybe something you need to look into is a project management course to help you with problems you mention above?
Just keep your eyes focused on what is true and not the rubbish your emotions are telling you. You clearly have a great future ahead of you, don’t lose site of the fact that you have another 40 years to hit your potential and as long as you keep focused at some point you will hit those goals.
Just remember, the best is yet to come.