Designing Love (and Purpose) Into Our Routine

Making sure we can dedicate close to twenty percent of our time to the things we love - those things that really connect with our clear purpose - can often be a huge challenge in itself. Even when we have some level of control over what we do and when, the responsibility of leading nearly always involves things flying at us that were not detailed on our schedules! Getting those most critical and purpose-related tasks squeezed can be a heavy lift. With that being the case, how much more difficult can it be to ensure we’re able to draw a line between many of our other - let’s call them less than ideal tasks - back to even the clearest purpose? Remember, we can’t love everything we do…

Once we have clarity around how we can connect many of the tasks we don’t necessarily enjoy back to a clear purpose that really does drive us, we can’t expect everything to automatically fall into place. In the fifth lesson of our Emerging Leader Development course, we emphasize the importance of creating systems for ongoing growth as a leader and share this quote from the late Jim Rohm; “If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they may have planned for you? Not much!”

Even in a leadership role, we can quickly fall into someone else’s life plan - and that can just easily be getting caught up in someone else’s wants (or drama) with them having nothing resembling a plan in place for themselves, and certainly not for anyone else they’re pulling into it! Make no mistake here, I’m not about to suggest that avoiding traps like this while sticking strictly with our own plan is simple. In fact, I think it’s nearly impossible. Nearly impossible… We what can do, though, is be intentional about building systems and routines that help protect our time and keep us dialed in on fulfilling our clear purpose yet still allows us to serve the teams we’re responsible for.

I know I mention it frequently, but I can’t stress enough how much learning to understand my unique behavioral style through learning about The Model of Human Behavior combined with the results from a scientifically validated DISC assessment has helped me recognize what I’m wired to do well and what things will require more energy or focus. Coupled with how that same base knowledge has helped me communicate more effectively in nearly every situation, I’m not sure I can point to a more useful tool. That said, I’ve been able to get even better results personally since adding a pinch of the chronotypes I learned about from Daniel Pink a few years back. Since that’s far more in depth than we can go here, and can vary greatly from person to person, I’d suggest you check his book, WHEN - The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing or a few of the lessons Cindy and I shared around that idea in our Leading At The Next Level program.

Regardless of what tools you use to build the systems and routines that help you keep your purpose deeply ingrained in your daily agenda while limiting the chance of being pushed aside by things that seem urgent - but aren’t always all that important - being intentional about creating and maintaining those systems is crucial! Then, as leaders, we need to be just as intentional about ensuring those systems help us build experiences that fulfill our team members’ purposes as well as our overall organizational purpose - so we’ll pick up there next time.