A step change in my personal development has come from shifting my focus from being productive to finding real meaning in what I do. It’s not always easy and old habits die hard, as they say, but it does make a difference.
Being Productive
When the focus in on being productive, the aim is to on being efficient. For the sake of this article, “effective” means choosing the right activities to do while “efficient” is about managing resources and doing things in the right way. For many, it means doing what you are told to do without questioning it. This can often lead us into doing things that make us feel uneasy, doing them because we have been told to. It can also mean confusing being busy with being fruitful.And as the financial sector, and MPs with their expenses, have shown us, being productive can often mean sacrificing what we know is right, hiding behind “It’s not illegal”.
Finding Meaning
Finding meaning, on the other hand, means being effective and doing what is right. It means being congruent, behaving in a way that is consistent with my values and beliefs. It means doing what I know to be the right thing to do and not excusing my actions because they were legal, or expedient.
One way to do this is to find a role model from present day or the past and when face with a decision, or when needing to check the congruency of your behaviour, ask yourself what that person would do in that situation. A Christian might as “What would Jesus do?”, a civil rights activist might ask “what would Martin Luther King do?” etc.
Finding meaning also means finding work that is satisfying. By this, I mean something much more, much deeper than financially rewarding or ego-boosting. It’s work that helps us to grow, to develop as much of our potential as possible, that helps us to build our self-esteem, that is right for us. For many people, it’s work that in some way or other provides service to others. It’s tough to describe but you’ll know it when you’ve found it.
Your Emphasis
So, where’s the emphasis in your life? Do you spend a lot of time chasing your tail, being busy, focusing on being productive? Or have you found meaning in what you do – are you growing as a result of what you do, moving forward, or do you feel like you’re either being held back or are going round in circles?
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