Getting back into writing

Earlier this year, my new manager asked me to list out my personal and professional goals for our next one-to-one. A few days later when I sat down to write them I came to the crashing realization that, although I’ve been extremely busy for the last 3 years that I’ve been a manager and steadily progressing in my career, I hadn’t actually made as much headway as I had thought toward the goals I had set and couldn’t easily identify what my new set of goals would be. I consider myself a very goal-oriented person so these two realizations shook me.

To give you some context, the last time I wrote goals I went through the process of writing a 10-year vision and supporting goals then worked backward to describe 5, 3, and 1-year goals. These became extremely helpful to me as I posted them at my desk and shared them broadly in both my professional and personal life. On several occasions, this paid dividends as others would share something with me to help achieve my goals or they would open doors for me that were previously closed (like my shift into people management). I was (and still am) certain of the positive influence long-term goal setting can have that I’ve presented on them a few times and have shared my process with others (I will share that process in another post).

Like I said: I like goals.

Realizing that I was having a challenging time defining new ones was perplexing to me. Since then I’ve been on a voyage of introspection over the last couple of months. I’m not quite ready to share where I’ve landed from a goals-perspective, but I have realized that my best thinking happens when I write, something I do frequently at work but seldomly outside of it. I also realized that a consistent goal I’ve had for years but never actioned on has been to write more about design and do it publically, so here I am back on Medium. No more random posts about passive investing. From now on I plan to write (frequently) on design, career, and leadership. I’ll write about what I wish someone had shared with me when I was earlier on in my career with the hope that it will help others, but if it’s just me that’s alright too.

Photo credit: @florianklauer