WORK IN PROGRESS
THE Personal Effectiveness E-zine April 2005

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Project you! - Part II
Beginning your ladder

In the March issue I wrote about working on one's life as a project, with you as the project manager. The piece covered creating a vision in which life is as you wish it to be three, five or ten years from now, and in which all of the "departments" of your life are congruently supported by, and in support of, that vision. I mentioned the need for a ladder that would reach to the vision, with the steps needed being the rungs of the ladder.

This month we'll look at the first of the two steps that you need to take to create the ladder from where you are now to where you plan to be in the future.

Just as with any journey, you need to know both where you want to go and where you are now. Where you are now is not usually the beginning of your journey. It is certainly the beginning of the rest of the journey, but you have already come a long way. It is a good idea to take stock of that before you start to plan the future.

When I started to work on my Bachelor's degree, many years ago, I had to do just that, and it was both enlightening and supportive. I had done so much more than I had given myself for! To clarify, my bachelor's degree, unlike my graduate degrees, was what one might call unconventional, even though done at an accredited college - Empire State College, a part of the State University of New York system. When I started there I was asked what I wanted to become, and what I had already done along the way. My first task was to create a portfolio demonstrating what I had already learned on the way to reaching my goal. When developed, it went to my committee and they decided how much "life credit" I would get before it. Then, based on that process, they and I together worked out what I needed to do for the rest of my program. I'm not sure which was more useful, developing the portfolio, or learning the process of developing it. I do know that I was thrilled to realize how much I had already done that would contribute to my goal.

With your vision established after last month's newsletter, this article involves the first of two more steps. Step One, which we will cover this month, involves discovering how far you have already come, and Step Two, scheduled for May, involves deciding how you will get from where you are now to wherever it is that you want to go.

Step One: How far have you come?
If you are breaking new ground in your planning, starting off on a journey that is different from anything you have done before, the first and perhaps most important thing to do is to learn the art of generalization. Just because you have not done the things you need to do does not mean that you have not developed many of the skills you need to do them. The first task is to look at what you have done, and identify the skills that are generalizable to other types of situation.

You may feel that your future is a clean break from your past, and that this step is a waste of time. If you read through Step One below, however, you will see that this lays some very solid groundwork for Step Two. If you've ever experienced the uncertainty of climbing a ladder which is on uneven or shifting ground you know that this is a bad idea, so I urge you to take the time to mentally organize the foundation for the future. That foundation cannot help but be the past, even when we think that the two are unrelated, or perhaps diametrically opposed to each other.

The Step One trick is to look at what you have done in the past, either in a conventionally work-related past or in some "world" separate from the one you are seeking to enter, and take all of your assorted tasks down to basics.

As I write this I am reminded of an extreme case that I encountered on the internet a few years ago - one that appeared to be serious although, who knows, perhaps it was a hoax. Posted somewhere on the internet was what claimed to be the resume of a former high level drug dealer who had served his time and who most creatively showed how the skills he had learned - team building, motivating a sales force, dealing with logistics and transportation in an import/export business, dealing with legal issues, etc. could transfer for use in a legitimate business. It was creative and funny, but it made a point, and rumor was that the individual got a job in a legitimate organization as a result of that creative posting.

I am not suggesting that my readers are former drug dealers, but that we all have skills developed in the past that are probably more transferable than we realize. When it comes to feeling that one has no experience to bring to the hiring marketplace, probably the most extreme case is the former home-maker who, for whatever reason, wants or needs to start - or re-start - a career. She often feels that she has nothing to offer. Yet, consider what she (usually she, though not always in this day and age) has done during the time when she was "not working". In actual fact, she was most assuredly working - just not being paid for it. Whether it be scheduling of activities, coordinating transportation, peace-making and negotiation between warring teenagers, decorating a home, or any of the many other tasks of a home-maker, she was undoubtedly using skills that are needed in the workplace.

What did you do? Don't do this in your head - write it down, in a column on the left hand side of a sheet of paper that has three columns. Label the left-hand column "Task," the middle column "Skill/Knowledge" and the right-hand column "Future requirement."

Starting with the left-hand column, list everything that you have done in the past. Be thorough. Keep working at it, listing EVERYTHING that you did - not just thing things that you - or other people - think were important. Keep going. Think of your daily routine, from start to finish. Think of what interests and hobbies you have had in your life, and what you have learned, what you have done, in relation to them. Think of what you have done in both formal and informal learning situations. Don't let yourself off the hook until you have reviewed your entire life experience in every context - work, education, family, hobbies, social life, perhaps even spiritual life - leave nothing out. You will most probably have filled the left-hand column of several sheets of paper.

Now to the middle column. What skills did each of those tasks call for? What did you need to know in order to do that? Find a skill and/or an area of expertise for EVERY activity that you have listed in the left-hand column and enter it in the middle column on the same line as the related task.

Lastly, what tasks, of those that would be involved in your planned future world, call for the skills that you have in the middle column? Again, go through all the tasks and skills, and for each one, enter something related to your future world in the right-hand column. There may be some areas left blank here, either because you really cannot see any relationship between past and future or because you do not yet have a clear picture of the future. I'd suggest that you review this list from time to time in the future to discover whether you may be able to fill in some of those blanks as your future becomes clearer.

When you have not only a map showing where you have come so far, but also a clearer idea of how that experience will serve you in the future, it will be time to move to Step Two - actually creating the part of the ladder that is ahead of you - which is probably where you wanted to start in the first place. So that you have plenty of time to complete Step One, we'll work on Step Two in the May issue of Work in Progress.

This may seem like a lot of work, but your future is worth it.

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TELL A FRIEND

I hope that you enjoy Work in Progress, and that it is useful to you. To pass its benefits on to a friend or colleague, please forward this issue, perhaps with the suggestion that they might like to subscribe.

Equally, if you or someone you know might benefit from a free sample coaching call (actually you pay the cost of the phone call but the coaching session is free) then please contact me either by e-mail or through the Guestbook page of my web site at http://ChoiceCoach.com.

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PLEASE! Any re-use of this material should include the words "Copyright Diana Robinson 2005. For more information visit Diana's web site http://ChoiceCoach.com or contact her at Diana@ChoiceCoach.com."

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