Entrepreneurs have a saying: you need to be working on your business, not just in your business. That often gets viewed as spending time on things like planning, marketing or establishing systems. But it goes beyond that. And while not all of us may be entrepreneurs or business owners, all of us need to take the time to work on ourselves.
Proposals are a fundamental part of my professional reality. Having written a few hundred or so over my career, you’d think I’d be fairly good at that. And I am, in my way. I have strategies. I like to think that I give good proposal. But there are aspects of the process that are persistently challenging. The most significant part being figuring out what the client actually requires.
Whether consultants or employees, we all have clients that we serve. We advise, advocate, support and sell. How we do that depends on our attitude and our orientation. It is shaped by how we show up in our work, and how we engage with those around us. We have a choice in that. And we forget that at our peril.
You know the feeling. You’ve got a mountain of work in front of you. Projects that are critical are falling by the wayside to make room for the latest dumpster-fire of urgency that landed on your desk. The merely important projects mock you from the depths of notebooks that go back years, reminding you of…
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And so another year begins. And with it, we turn our attention to hopes, ambitions and intentions for the future. And how we think about planning and managing the resulting commitments and goals. For some of us, that means a trip to buy office supplies is in order. But sometimes the best planning tools are the ones that we already have.
We (and I) write and think a lot about work. We embrace dedication and commitment and “giving 110%” like that’s something easy to do. In reality, it’s not easy, and sometimes it’s downright unpleasant. And the risk is that—faced with a mountain of work—we run screaming in the direction of our Netflix queue and oblivion. Some thoughts on how to persevere instead.
There is a difference between doing the work and loving the work. Much of what produces worthwhile work is–well–work. Painful, sweaty, slogging, frustrating work. That’s why, often, we avoid the work. That’s why “do the work” is an exhortation and imperative; it’s designed to get us to make the first step, with the hope and intent that we keep on going. And that’s where the challenges start.
Doing the work is fundamental. Yet, if we we’re honest, many of us are tempted by short-cuts. We look for quick wins. We settle for just enough. We distract ourselves. And when we look back over our shoulders, the mountain of work is still there, waiting for us. It might even appear to be a little bit bigger now. When we stop figuring out how to get around it, we realize that the only way to tackle the mountain is to start climbing. On why that’s a really good thing.
Liminality—the idea of in-between spaces as a source of growth and transformation—is a simple construct that’s difficult to live through. The art of storytelling is a complex, rich mine of insight with a similarly simple construct beneath it. The traditional of three-act narrative owes a lot to liminality, because it borrows a great deal from how to navigate the places in-between. Story is what shows us how to live, to imagine and to consider what’s possible. The same structure is what allows us to grow and succeed.
I’ve been exploring liminality and in-between spaces in a few posts. And while the structure is simple, and the ideas it offers are profound and meaningful, actual living in and transitioning through liminal spaces is often anything but clear, ordered or certain. There can be a great deal of fuzziness, frustration and even fear. I thought it would be helpful to explore what it’s like to actually live in the in-between spaces.
