Prioritizing Sustainability of Approach
Prioritizing Sustainability of Approach
Wrapping up the Mission--> Approach series
Time to get moving on your mission! By now, if you are ready for a change, you’ve started to clarify your mission. Preparing for the future, you’ve figured out how much time you have while you contemplate specific approaches to fit with your mission. Now it is time to get started and so you must prioritize because of two frustratingly contradictory truths:
The fewer things you do at once, the more you get done over time.
Every plan is made at the point of maximum ignorance, so you must constantly develop alternatives as you learn.
While there are many approaches to prioritization, in this case two factors stand out: sustainability – the likelihood that you can keep going, followed by reversibility – lowering the penalties for stopping an approach so that you are not overly motivated to avoid them.
Sustainability is derived from critical elements of any approach that reinforce your ability to stay with it, because persistence is king. Feedback cycles are long, the world is chaotic and sometimes luck breaks in your favor, so you must stay in the game long enough to get back on offense. An easily accessible example is a job that pays enough, with a team and mission such that you won’t quit. Similarly, your personal budget is so crucial because cash is a great tool for weathering the road to success, allowing you to only abandon an approach because it does not work, rather than your inability to persist.
So what critical elements of an approach can influence sustainability? Unfortunately each element has a limitation, so the more that you can combine, the more sustainable the approach.
Team
It really, really helps to surround yourself with those you trust, whose skills and strengths you value, and with whom you have fun. With the right team and the right leader, anything feels possible. Conversely, we’ve all worked with the wrong people (for us), who suck the energy out of each interaction, leaving every day as a dark void of demotivation.
However, when you love your team and nothing else, you run several risks. First, you can simply lose focus, goofing off at the expense of the mission rather than in pursuit thereof. Second, teams need to change and grow over time. If your only anchor is your team, you will fail to recognize or delay this change to everyone’s detriment.
Beneficiary
Customer, patient, recipient– for whom are you on this mission? Who benefits as a result? In my medical examples it’s patients, which is to say, people. If you love your beneficiary, this affection can sustain you through the challenging times. Medical residency is brutal, with long hours, youth lost, life missed. However, the pursuit is only possible because of crucial patients you meet along the way. This sense of generous contribution is perhaps the strongest, purest motivation for human action.
When the beneficiaries are abstract (humanity), as obstacles mount, you run the risk of misanthropy. When the beneficiary is specific, the accrual of pain allows motivation to give way to obligation and obligation to resentment. Nothing hollows you out like resenting those you once endeavored to aid.
Interest
Work that tickles your intellect can be rewarding. A sense of learning, developing yourself while revealing the unknown can be even more intoxicating. Choose work in which you are deeply interested and time will pass without notice as you immerse yourself. We’ve all experienced these flow states (they are why I love video games!).
But interests fade. Either through frustration (or its mask, boredom) or distraction, you can easily be led in a different direction. What once seemed enthralling is now simply just solved. The days drag on, joy turns to tedium and you cannot wait to get out.
Rewards
Money, power, fame, prestige, ego are all strong motivators for action. Rewards (and their dark cousin, punishment), were once thought to drive all of human behavior. The rewards of your mission should be factored in – money does help with sustainability, and power, knowledge and relationships certainly contribute to success.
I’m going to sidestep commentary on American consumer culture and simply say, when rewards are your only element of sustainability, the inherent challenge of the mission you’ve selected will put progress at risk. If you are swooping in for the “quick win”-- fast money, easy fix, etc. reality will likely disappoint you because of Hofstader’s Law: “It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.” As barriers mount between you and your just rewards, frustration grows and it becomes all too tempting to look elsewhere for an easier path.
Health
Will your approach allow you to stay in good shape? Eat well? Sleep? Spend real time with your loved ones? Avoid temptation? Set yourself up for success in designing health into your approach as your body, your chariot through reality, really needs you to care for it. If your approach makes you fat, sick, lonely and grumpy, you will start to make short term decisions to get out of the pain you’ve wrought for yourself.
The take-away? Take time to reflect on the approaches you’ve generated in the context of the elements above. Favor those that combine as many elements as possible, so when each one rears its dark side, you have enough momentum to carry forward.
Finally, in addition to prioritizing sustainability, consider the reversibility of your decision, or how hard it is to undo it. Amazon famously utilizes the Type 1/Type 2 Decision framework, suggesting quick action on reversible decisions (Type 2) like talking to a recruiter, versus thoughtful contemplation on harder to reverse decisions (Type 1) like taking a new job, moving to a new location or starting a new organization. Reversibility is best saved for choosing amongst fit, sustainable approaches as a final sort, so that you don’t just choose easy but irrelevant options. Commitment to your mission is necessary for success.
With these tools in hand I wish you good luck as you embark on your next mission! Onward!
I would like to thank Auriell Towner whose guidance, support and encouragement have been crucial in keeping the Schutzblog going.