And Now a Word from…
Emery Kaze / Luxembourg
A periodic column featuring a special guest author from around the world!
Personal Branding Prescription to Fulfillment
In today’s world, where distraction is the rule, we need to focus more that ever. But the question is, what should we focus on? and what do we need to achieve? My answer to the second question is that it’s all about fulfillment. With regards to the first question, I challenged myself to come up with the shortest prescription to fulfillment, so that we can maximize our focus on it.
Being professionally successful doesn’t necessarily mean being satisfied with what we do. This happens when we’re lacking a purpose in our lives – the end-point that the more we get closer to, the happier we are, and we define our goals to set the road to go there.
I used to get interesting answers when I’ve asked some people about the most important things they want to do everyday – their job in life. My answer to this is that our life job is to work each day on our goals to achieve them. Each achieved goal is a step forward toward our purpose and more fulfillment.
But the challenge is double. The first is, are we really able to productively act each day on our goals toward our purpose? And the second is, how to make sure that we stay motivated all the way?
My vision of how purpose, goals and activities relate to each other is like a concentric set of circles, what I like to call “goals circles.” From inside out, the central part is our purpose. The next layer is the long term goals, followed by the intermediate, then the shorter-term, and so forth. Each goal sits on a segment of its layer. The size of that segment is proportionate to the relative importance of that goal toward achieving our purpose. The outermost layer contains the tasks that we should do each day to achieve our goals.
Most of those tasks are repetitive in nature, such as content curation, follow-up with our network, etc. That nature makes them rapidly overwhelming and frustrating. We need systems to streamline those tasks and integrate them into our lives. Saying it differently, it’s about turning tasks into habits. Integrating a seemingly very simple habit, such as efficiently managing our mails, can have a turbo-effect in achieving our goals and getting closer to our purpose. So you need to consider simple tasks first and turn them into habits. You’ll get big result with little effort.
It is also critical to highlight the importance of motivation while acting on our goals each day. Monitoring our progress and seeing that we’re moving forward is key to staying motivated, and accomplish more. Obviously, you need a tool for that. One of the tools that I really like is Goalscape, where you’re able to see how far completing one simple task moves you toward your purpose.
So my prescription to you is to set your goals, turn your tasks into habits and use a tool to monitor your progress toward your purpose each day.
Emery Kaze hates conformity and is skilled in reinventing businesses and careers. He is Luxembourg’s personal branding pioneer and creates awesome medical and dental brands for the world.
