How was your day? (And how to make it better)

Welcome back to Work Smarter, your guide to reclaiming your time, restoring your well-being, and succeeding in work and life.

If you are beginning your journey with me to individual, team, and organizational success, you can learn a little more about what I do here.

In my last newsletter, we discussed How Teams Can Collaborate Better. Chances are you’ve worked with a team at some point in your career if you aren’t on a team now, but this week, I want to focus on changes we can make as individuals to buy back our collaborative time. 

So I ask again, how was your day? How did yesterday unfold for you? Did you spend your day doing work that you added value to, and that added value to you? Was it work that generated progress toward your and the organization’s most important goals? On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your day? Was it a ten? Or, deep down, do you feel that it was more like a one?

What can we do to make our days better? In order to feel confident about working toward your goals, I recommend having a clear idea of what really matters to you, or what I like to call your North Star Objectives. I’m talking about not just a single goal such as getting a promotion to a specific position, but a combination of expertise, values, and identity.

Focus on your expertise.

Reflect on capabilities that you want to develop, be known for, and grow into during the coming five years. Focus on the kinds of expertise you enjoy using, rather than on the demands of a specific role or function. This area of expertise might already be a strength for you, or it might be aspirational. Either way, it must be something that you enjoy, or would enjoy, deploying. 

Check out Gallup’s CliftonStrengths or Donald Super’s Work Values Inventory for diagnostics that can help you define your expertise.

Focus on your values.

What do you truly value? Material items? Accomplishment? Creativity? Helping others?

Thinking about times when you were thriving in your work—showing up fully engaged and absorbed in what you were doing. Identify aspects of the work you found meaningful. Then characterize the nature of interactions you had with your network at this time that  mattered to you. Heidi K. Gardner and Mark Mortensen discuss the importance of compassion in their Harvard Business Review article, Managers Are Trapped in a Performance-Compassion Dilemma. 

Focus on your identity.

What are the personal, outside aspirations and commitments that you want to hold true to? The list might include family or community involvement. Or it might include exercise. Is your identity that you are a civic-minded person? An activist? Fighter? Athlete? Provider? Caregiver? These aspirations and commitments help you create boundaries around work. 

Sandra E. Cha and Laura Morgan Roberts share how shining a light on differences and mobilizing identity can lead to professional success, particularly for people of color, in their HBR article, The Benefits of Bringing Your Whole Identity to Work.

Want more tips on how to make your day better? Now that you’ve identified your North Star Objectives, we’re covering what practices successful collaborators employ to reach those  objectives next time. Subscribe to Work Smarter or connect with me for a network analysis of your specific challenges and goals.