Mission Statement

If someone were to ask you what your personal mission statement is what would your reaction be? Would you laugh at them? Slowly back away? Would you actually have an answer?

This topic came up between my wife and I the other evening (you talk about strange things when you're stuck in the house all day every day for two years with the same person). We were talking about how we were reacting more negatively than usual to standard day-to-day annoyances that come up at work.

I've talked about Tom Rath on here before. His book Are You Fully Charged? has stuck with me apparently. I remember him writing about how it's good to have your purpose clearly in front of you as you go into work each day. He says:

Try to remind yourself why you do what you do every day [...] find a way to infuse each day with a reminder of your mission. It could be as simple as keeping a story of the impact of your work on hand or having an image, quote, or statement that brings the 'why' of your job to life.

He gives an example of a study that Adam Grant did looking at this effect. Adam took tough job–a call center for a University where employees would call alumni and ask for money–and split it into two groups. For one group he brought in students who were scholarship recipients to talk to them about how important their work was to their ability to get an education. This was basically just a way to connect their day-to-day efforts with the actual outcome. Going forward, the group who had met these students made twice as many calls per day and raised nearly four times as much money per week as the other group. Similar results were found when patients were brought in to talk to factory workers who built parts for MRI machines about how the machine that they built helped to identify and cure their illnesses.

It's so so easy for us to get bogged down in this spreadsheet, or email, or upset customer or unproductive meeting that's right in front of us, and lose sight of the big picture. The little things can just pile up until they're all we see. Keeping our purpose in mind has to be an intentional and repeated thing.

So in the conversation I mentioned earlier, I half-jokingly said "what we need are personal mission statements." You should know here that Kim is a saint and, at this point in our relationship, is used to me prattling on about things like productivity or psychology or technology like a crazed amateur life coach. But in this case (and to my surprise) she said "hmm yeah, maybe tomorrow over lunch." So here I sit, several days later and I'm finding it very difficult to come up with such a "purpose". I waffle between having it be broad vs. work-focused or aspirational vs. descriptive.

I will report back here on how that goes. Regardless of whether I come up with anything as formal as a mission statement, I really like the idea of a daily check-in, a "this is what I'm doing here, and here's what we're working towards" ritual. In theory it should be easy given that I work on climate change, I could just have a picture of my kids, or nature–anything really. But with something so big a reminder of what's at stake almost feels daunting or demotivating. I find I'm drawn towards stories of volunteers feeling empowered and optimistic, legislation we've managed to help get passed, systems that I've helped with that resulted in meaningful movement on this issue.

I would be really curious to know if other people have rituals like this that they find effective. I've heard that the start of the day can be a really powerful time to set one's attention and mindset. Whole books have been written on just that. But I struggle to make such routines stick. I plan to give it a solid try with this though.