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Jettison career goals. Instead, commit to pacts and tiny experiments if you want to advance in a time of uncertainty, advises Anne-Laure Le Cunff, a Google executive turned neuroscientist and author of the popular Ness Labs blog.
She argues uncertainty has much to teach us. So does the innate sense of adventure we were born with. But our response to adventure and uncertainty generally is fear and anxiety. We cling to the comfortable linear path of career ladder steps and associated goals.
“Traditional methods of pursuing goals have an effect counter to their intent: They create a discouraging perspective where we are far from success. Our satisfaction – the best version of ourselves – lies somewhere in the future,” she writes in Tiny Experiments.
The alternative she recommends is to make a pact that commits you to a simple and repeatable activity that will bring you closer to achieving your ambition. It’s essentially a tiny experiment that you can learn from: I will take a certain action for a limited duration. “It’s a call to escape inertia and live in forward motion,” she says. “You just need to show up.”
When she started her blog she made a pact with herself to write and share 100 articles in 100 workdays, drawing on her university studies for a doctorate in neuroscience and personal readings. It propelled her forward, grew a following and led to many other connections and collaborations as well as the book. She now writes only one post a week, consistent with her schedule. But the short-term pact with heavier output was essential to explore and learn.
A pact is purposeful. It should feel exciting and provide meaning through the learning you accrue along the journey. It is based on actions you can reliably perform – it must be doable. It should be consistent, something you do every day, every week or every weekend.
It should be trackable, a notion she distinguishes from measurable, a feature usually stipulated for goals. You don’t want a lot of metrics in this experiment to fuss over. It should be tracked by a binary: You did it today (or this week or weekend) or you didn’t.
The repeated trials of your pact give you sufficient information to make a decision about what might come next. By committing in the pact to a specific number of repetitions, you are prevented from making a premature decision because of one challenging week.
A pact, she notes, is not a habit because it’s not forever. Similarly, it’s not a New Year’s Resolution, some lofty ambition for an unlimited time frame. It’s simply a prescription for a personal experiment. She urges you to be wary of the effort paradox, mistakenly believing you would be happier after overcoming a greater challenge, and thus making it more likely you will fail.
“If you are hesitating between two versions of a pact, think tiny. What’s the smallest version of this experiment that you can run? It’s easy to maintain your pact on your best days but think instead of your worst day,” she writes.
On your career journey, she also recommends intentional imperfection. Don’t get caught up in trying to be perfect at everything. Be deliberate about where you invest your efforts, recognizing that you cannot be at the very top all the time and across all spheres of your life.
More broadly for personal improvement, she recommends committing to a weekly Plus-Minus-Next Review. Divide a sheet of paper into those three columns and write down any accomplishment that made you proud in the plus section while in the minus column any challenges or obstacles you faced. That would include tasks you intended to complete but didn’t, mistakes you made, biases you noted and decisions you regret. Then use insights from the plus and minus column to write down approaches that will shape your actions better for the next week.
It’s meant to be a quick, practical exercise. “Not everything needs to be fixed; not every problem needs a solution,” she stresses. It’s reflection in action and along with pacts will help you progress.
Quick hits
- Berkshire Hathaway chief executive officer Warren Buffett is famed for his talks at the company’s annual meetings but he had to overcome a paralyzing fear of public speaking. Communications consultant John Millen notes Mr. Buffett took a Dale Carnegie public speaking course – the framed certificate, not his college degrees, hangs on his office wall – and then pushed himself further by teaching a university course at night.
- Lin-Manuel Miranda was on the subway to a friend’s birthday when the chorus of what was to be his favourite song, Wait for It, showed up in his head. He wished his friend a happy birthday upon arrival and said “I gotta go,” leaving to finish the song. “You have to do that sometimes. You have to say ‘No’ to your friends to say ‘Yes’ to your work,” he advises.
- The most valuable skill isn’t inspiration but the ability to work without it, reflects Ottawa thought leader Shane Parrish.
Harvey Schachter is a Kingston-based writer specializing in management issues. He, along with Sheelagh Whittaker, former CEO of both EDS Canada and Cancom, are the authors of When Harvey Didn’t Meet Sheelagh: Emails on Leadership.