Do you focus on what you’ve learned, rather than what you’ve achieved?

I was challenged by a friend recently; she was making the point that we routinely ask clients to represent the complexities of situation or organisation in a way that reduces them to banal simplicity. What she asked me to do was to capture my life as it is today in a single representational diagram. I made several starts, only to abandon an attempt as some vital aspect of 'what makes me me' couldn't be included. Ultimately all I could come up with was a four circle Venn diagram that included:

o My work time as a learning designer
o My family time as husband, father and grandfather
o My recreational time as an endurance runner
o My passion time as a writer

Depending on the demands of these activities the circles on my diagram would take on different sizes, but they would all be there. They would also vary in the extent to which the diagram has them overlapping e.g. sometimes a long run will have the clear purpose of unblocking a gnarly design or writing challenge. These are all parts of my life, all different, all important, and all bringing me into contact with (mostly) different people.

Coming towards the end of the year, always a time of reflection, I thought that it was a good time to think about these parts of my life, and the people I meet, and to recognise patterns in how these people are dealing with the pressures that they experience.

Professionals, writers, family members and athletes, all different, but all, in the main, sharing a common and powerful desire to succeed, often driven by targets, performance indicators, milestones, numbers. None of this is inherently a bad thing, we need measures of our progress to make worthwhile the efforts we make to improve: being committed to succeed in any dimension of our life demands that we know what success looks like, and numbers measure progress towards that success.

There is, however, a flip side to this situation - sometimes the numbers become what drives us, rather than being driven by an intrinsic motivation to succeed. Hitting the numbers becomes an end in itself, and this can only ratchet up the pressures we experience in our lives, producing consequences that may be negative and unwelcome. I meet a lot of people whose lives are being impacted by these consequential pressures, and there's one piece of advice that, if asked, I offer to them all.

Focus on what you've learned, rather than what you've achieved. As I've said the numbers are important, but they're not the only way of assessing performance. Look at the measures you think are an appropriate assessment of your performance: do they tell you that you've hit target? exceeded it? or fallen short? An honest answer to these questions will give you important data you can use to set and revise future targets, but there's a further question that I would ask, and an honest answer to this is as important, or more important than the first question. What did I learn? The What did I learn question can only be answered accurately if the person responding has made some change in what they do as a result of looking back at their performance. Learning is about change, and we can only say that we have learned if we have implemented a change in behaviour, attitude, approach etc. So, asking What did I learn means that we need to focus not only on performance, but on progress -

“I did this…..
it resulted in this change…..
consequently I learned that…….
and this is what I now do……”

You can change the order of that sequence but essentially, you're focusing on the changes that made a difference. The result is a lot more empowering, and it's usually easier to recognise what you now need to do to make further progress. If you've got a spare moment or two over the festive season, better still, if you can carve out an hour or so from your schedule, try this:

 Try to capture your life as it is today in a single representational diagram.
 Look at the diagram and ask yourself what conflicting pressures you can see in that diagram.
 Now take time to think about the learning that's available to you, and how you could leverage that learning in the coming year to reduce those pressures.
Who else might you need to involve to help you access that learning?

Have a very restful and fulfilling festive season!