Agile Personal Development

One method for determining your life’s goals is to use the vision and mission development approach, while leveraging your personal values. This is typically found in most business environments, and is usually thought of as just another pointless slogan (think “Is this GOOD for the COMPANY” from Office Space). However, I believe there are some good pointers from the process that apply to setting your own personal vision and mission. Without identifying what we see as our purpose in life, how can we set and prioritize our goals? For development of my personal vision statement, I’m following the approach found here. What I like about this method is that it has translated the normal questions you would ask about your business into what you should ask about yourself. Starting with the opening questions, here are my answers:

Ten Things I Most Enjoy Doing.

1. Traveling. Going to new places really excites me. A lot of this comes from researching a new place before I go, the rest from actually experiencing it.
2. Exploring. Closely aligned to traveling, but broader. I really enjoy seeing new places, learning new things, experiencing something different.
3. Continuous Learning. Reading up on new places, new ideas (or old ideas that are new to me), learning a new language, etc is fundamental to who I am.
4. Being a Father. Still something I continue to learn about, and probably always will. There is nothing like hanging out with my son when he is in a giggly kind of mood.
5. Spending Time With Friends/Family. Sometimes this is just keeping up with them, especially those that I don’t see often. I really like just hanging out with really good friends talking about life.
6. Being at the Edge of the New. Sounds like something from the Matrix, but I enjoy being at the edge of new technology, new business concepts, etc.
7. Outdoor Activities. Walking along a ocean side path is one of the most relaxing and enjoyable activities for me.
8. Thinking / Planning / Daydreaming. When I get a chance to sit back and reflect on things, I usually find innovative answers to problems I’m trying to solve, or come up with ideas for the next thing to learn about.
9. Giving Back / Mentoring. In general, I’m becoming more interested in how to give back to society. One of the specific areas I enjoy is mentoring / teaching.
10. Solving Problems. Without something to think about and keep my brain occupied, I’d become very bored.

Three Things I Must Do at Work Every Day

1. Talk with People. If I don’t do this, I have a hard time focusing on what I am working on. The feedback and energy from discussions with colleagues helps keep me going.
2. Solve Problems with Innovative Approaches. The hardest type of job for me would be something very routine, where every day brings the same. I like working with / leading a team to find ways to address difficult challenges.
3. Be Self-Directed. Certainly most of the major tasks I am responsible for are part of a larger business objective. But being able to determine when, how, and with whom I meet those objectives is critical to me. Being micromanaged would be a miserable way to work for me.

I’ll continue with the next steps of developing a personal vision statement in the next post.

One of the key results of this experiment will be a comprehensive methodology for planning, implementation, and tracking of my personal development. As I evaluate different methods for incorporation, I’ll keep the details in posts, and update the Methodology page with the best methods. The initial structure of this methodology is as follows:

Planning

Goal-Setting

I’m currently evaluating several different types of goal-setting methods, including the “corporate white shirt and tie” approach (personal vision statement, mission statement, values, etc), the “brainstorm every cool thing you want to do in life” lifelist approach, and the “7 Habits” approach.

Strategy Development

The several methods I’m looking at include the “corporate white shirt and tie” business strategy approach (what can I say, I think how I’ve been trained) as well as some more “softer side” approaches to determining what areas in your life you should focus on. For now, I’ve broken things up as follows:

1. Continuous Learning. This is an important area to me, one that is completely aligned with my learning personality. I think of this area of life as the “what am I doing to expand my knowledge and experience new things” category. Researching new ideas, studying a new language, learning a new skill, etc.

2. Travel. A similar thread to continuous learning, but an area that I think deserves its own category. Seeing new places always makes me learn something new, but there is no comparison between actually being there, versus looking at someone’s random pictures of a place on the Internet.

3. Career. Being a corporate kind of guy, I’m always looking for ways to either expand my career internally, or look into other alternatives, like small businesses, freelancing, changing companies, or completely changing my career. This is part of my “what if” disease - I’m always wondering if what I’m doing is the best thing for me, my company, or the world. (well, OK, probably not the *whole* world, but something bigger than just me)

4. Family. Becoming a better father, husband, son, brother, etc is a continual process for me (especially the fatherhood part). There are a lot of ideas out there on how to do this best, I’m looking forward to evaluating them. One of the key areas for this category is work/life balance. Since I (usually) enjoy my job, I need to remain vigilant that I don’t forget about my true priorities in life.

5. Health / Fitness. Probably the area where I need the most personal development. I’ve tried a few methods so far, but have never been able to get them to stick. I guess that explains all those late night “get fit in 20 minutes a month” schemes. Being a thirty-something guy, I need to make sure I am around to be a grandfather (no pressure kiddo).

6. Personal Finance. Probably the area where I need the least personal development. I’ve been pretty fortunate to have a healthy paranoia of having an empty bank account for most of my life, so I’m doing OK here. However, there are always new ideas out there, and as my priorities change in life, the way I spend money will likely change as well.

7. Relationships/Community. Beyond the family aspects, I’m looking for ways to keep up with my friends and colleagues, many of whom I correspond with virtually. I’d also include in this category methods to give back to the community, e.g. mentoring, charity, etc.

8. Entertainment. The category is really here so I have an excuse to get GTA IV when it comes out next year, along with a new PS3. All work and no play makes Johnny a dull boy indeed.

Implementation Planning

This will be an area to evaluate all the little tips/tricks/tools, etc that can help me move forward in the strategic areas listed above.

Implementation

Obviously the 800 lb gorilla in this area is GTD, which I have implemented with moderate success. I’d like to find a way to incorporate it into some of the strategic areas listed above, as well as the current tools and techniques I use.

Tracking Progress

There are a number of websites and tools that I’ll be evaluating to help keep me on track. As I come up with the implementation plan, selection of which ones to evaluate will be easier.

As I kickoff this project, I’m currently following a simple iterative process for developing my personal development methodology and plan.

1. Plan

This includes three elements - Goal-Setting, Strategy Development, and Implementation Planning. I’m using an iterative ‘agile’ approach to evaluate different methods for completing these steps (and folding the best methods into a comprehensive personal development methodology), and developing my personal development plan.

2.Implement

Implementation of the plan is the key to actually achieving my goals (this is the hard part for me - sometimes the planning is the most exciting part). Along the way, I’m evaluating different tools, techniques, etc to keep on the path. These implementation tools also become part of the personal development methodology.

3. Tracking

This is where I find ways to track my progress and guilt myself into sticking with the plan. I’ll evaluate different methods for collecting and displaying metrics, with the goal of developing a comprehensive ‘life scorecard’ or ‘progress meter’.

4. Repeat

As I become aware of new methods for planning, implementation, or tracking, I’ll need to revisit the overall approach. I’ll also reevaluate whether my goals are still valid, or if I need to re-prioritize.

The common thread through all the process steps is the use of an ‘agile’, iterative cycle to allow rapid evaluation of methods - how relevant are they to my goals, how quickly can I implement them, are they something I can stick with overall the long run, etc. This also allows for incorporation of the many great ideas that are constantly being generated either in books, blogs, or other sources.