What is my purpose? What should I do with my life? As I work with college students, I find myself in these conversations over and over again. And as I get older, I realize that what we once thought was answered is always being re-defined, re-shaped and sometimes re-rooted.
My friend Carly (she blogged about the topic here) passed along a video of Jim Collins (author of Good to Great) sharing some considerations for leaders. I wish I had heard these when I was 20, so I'm blogging them for all those college students I love. But, to be honest, I think the principles apply to every crowd.
About 30 minutes in, Collins starts talking about a personal hedgehog (the hedgehog from GTG is explained well here). He challenges you to find your path to the best fit for you, the place where your three circles meet. I've diagrammed it for you:
1. Build a personal board of directors
- pick them for their character, not their accomplishments
- they don't always need to know they're on your personal board
- begin the discipline of putting white space on your calendar
- effective people take time to think
- study yourself, make empirical observations with no judgment
- you spend way too much time trying to be interesting, why don't you spend it trying to be interested?
- learn to ask questions, learn from everyone you meet
- "If you woke up tomorrow morning and discovered you had 20 million dollars, a terminal disease and only 10 years to live, what would go on your stop doing list?"
6. Stop your stop-doing list
7. Unplug the opportunities that distract you
- there will always be many once in a lifetimes
- define your 3 circles and hold everything up to them
9. Articulate the values for which you will not compromise
10. Prepare to live a life where at age 65, you're only 1/3 through your work
Want to hear more? You can watch the whole thing:
4 comments:
This is great. I also read a book entitled last year; I wrote this book on purpose, so you could know yours. Lots of the same principles.
I find myself thinking about this kind of stuff quite often.
Oops, I read the book last year. "Last year" was not in the title!!!
Amy- thanks for the book recommendation! And love the comment edit. :) You're too fun!
April! My next blog is taking the 10 Considerations for the Emerging Level 5 leader and working through a bit of my reflections. I haven't written it yet, but I'm excited to do so.
We MUST talk about this when you get back from Miami! Thanks for the shout out too!
Post a Comment