What Do You Want To Be Known For?

This week I announced that I'm giving away a copy of the book, Get Momentum: How to Start When You're Stuck by Jason and Jodi Womack.   (If you're reading this before 9 p.m. on Wednesday, March  21, 2018 there's still time to enter to win!)  I highly recommend this book to help you get started on any project whether it be personal, work, or a passion project.  Get Momentum first helps you to figure out why you're stuck and then breaks down getting momentum into 5 steps:

1. Motivation - What do I want to be known for?
2. Mentors - Whom can I learn from?
3. Milestones - What are three subprojects I can complete?
4. Monitor - What positive things are happening that I can acknowledge?
5. Modify - What one change can I make to keep moving forward?

The very first step kind of stopped me in my tracks: "What do I want to be known for?" Before I even read the chapter, I made a quick list (in no particular order of importance):​

After I made the list and really thought about my day-to-day life, I began to wonder how others really saw me.  Just because this is what I WANT to be known for doesn't mean that this is how the world is seeing me - I have to take action to make sure these qualities are visible.  There's no doubt I want these things to be true about me, but what am I DOING to make them true, and what should I avoid to negate these statements?  I can be kind most of the time, but if I'm unkind some of the time, will that cancel out a perception of my kindness? or will the world take the time to weigh my kindness against my unkindness and award me with being "known for" the one that I've done the most?  Without putting pressure on myself to be perfect, how can I Iive to create the kind of legacy I want to leave?  

This is heavy stuff!  Thankfully, there were more exercises in the book to help me work through all of this.  One of the activities that helped me the most was figuring out how I spent my time.  As I've mentioned before, time is one of my weaknesses, so I needed to figure out if I was proving what I wanted to be known for by how I was spending my time.

• Was I being present with my kids? 
• How much time was I working on staying "on top of things" at home and at work? 
• How often was I actually helping someone else achieve a goal? 

I've tried various methods of tracking my time in the past, from pen and paper to an elaborate spreadsheet I created, but I decided to try something new this time and downloaded the Toggl app at the recommendation of some of my productive friends.  This let me track my time in real time with a stopwatch-type feature or record my time later if I forgot to start the clock.  After a week or so, I could look at a high level pie chart to see how I was spending my time.  I could easily see that I was working way more than I was spending time with my kids and family (even when I kind of cheated and counted driving to the grocery store with the kids in the back seat as "family time!")

The real difference maker was when I answered the next couple of questions in the exercise.  The first was: "What do I wish were different?"  You may have heard the saying, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results."  Insane may be a bit of an overstatement, but if I want things to be different, I'm going to have to change.  I think we could all make a long list of what we'd like to be different in our lives, but what are we doing to make that happen?  If you're like me, I've gotten to this point before - I know what I want things to be like and then make a giant plan of all the things I'm going to change to make it happen.  And then I fail because that amount of change all at once is overwhelming. 

That's why the second question this section asked was really valuable to me:  "Do I really need to make changes now?  Should and can I wait?"  Yes, I definitely need to make some changes, but which of them are critical or should be done first?  It takes time to form new habits - longer than you'd think.  Gretchen Rubin, author of many books including Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of our Everyday Lives, wrote about this in her blog post, "Stop Expecting to Change Your Habit in 21 Days."  Give yourself time and space to make a change and really master it before adding more change.  ​

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"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results."

I chose one change to start with - during the school week, I will try not to work on my day job or on my passion project (this blog!) from the time I get home until the kids go to bed unless they are involved in some way that they enjoy.  This should include checking email on my phone... I'm doing better, but I'm still not perfect.  If I can involve the kids and they enjoy it, then that's a win-win.  For example my oldest son has been helping me with live Facebook videos - that's fun for both of us.  By making that one change,  I'm working toward one of the things I want to be known for - being present and involved with my kids and family because we are using that time to play family games, read together, or just talk.

I will add some more changes soon - once the family time on weeknights is a real habit.  In the meantime, I'm trying to keep my short list of what I want to be known for front of mind as I make decisions or even speak - is what I'm about to do or say going to cause others to "know me" for being kind or helping them achieve their goals; is how I'm choosing to spend my time helping me stay on top of my responsibilities?  If the answer is no, I need to rethink my actions!

How about you - have you thought about what you want to be known for and what that really means in your daily life?  I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments.  If Get Momentum sounds like a book you'd like to read, you can earn entries for the giveaway by visiting the Facebook page and/or simply like and comment on this post below before Wednesday, March 21, 2018 at 9 p.m.  to get an entry!  

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​Sources

Womack, Jason W., and Jodi Womack. Get Momentum: How to Start When You're Stuck. Wiley, 2016.
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Rubin, Gretchen. “Stop Expecting to Change Your Habit in 21 Days.” Gretchen Rubin, 16 Oct. 2009, Stop Expecting to Change Your Habit in 21 Days.

Photo by Niklas Rhöse on Unsplash
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