Right after I wrote Wednesday’s post, I got an email from my dearly beloved. “Take a look at this!” he wrote. What followed was an invitation to be nominated for an influential position in one of the most prestigious professional societies in his field. “What do you think?”
My first response was, “Wow, do it!” But then I paused. I’d just been writing about this stuff–what would my coaching self say? In my reply (for the record, he was out of town), I posed three questions:
- What would this leadership opportunity allow you to do?
- What does it make possible for you?
- And, how does it fit into your goals?
Over breakfast this morning, this topic came up again. The key question that did it for him wasn’t one I’d asked. “What I got thinking about was ‘what will I have to give up to do this?’” he told me. It was one of those smack-up-side-the-head moments. What a brilliant question!
When we were graduate students, and in our earlier career days, it was nothing for us to slave away for sixty, seventy, eighty hours a week. Any and every opportunity was fair game. Take it all on! Now, somewhat older and hopefully wiser, we know that our time and energy are finite resources. We have to be strategic. As coach, I often think in terms of possibility. But the truth is, opportunities taken can diminish possibilities as they open paths ahead.
This is where knowing what your non-negotiables are becomes key. If an opportunity threatens what’s most important to you or complicates your life in such a way as to make tending to the essentials very hard, think twice.
In the end, it’s not about maximizing our lives. It’s about optimizing. Optimizing our day-to-day so we can have more of what we want not more for the sake of more.
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