Success. How do you know you’re a success with your organizational goals? With your time management? If you’ve been reading for awhile, you know I share a lot of my own learning and stories; I’m in my early 50′s and still learning. So I find it easier to explain the lessons and insights and with more depth when they are my own.
One of my coaching instructors a few years ago asked me to define success for my business. The course, Organizer Coach Marketing, was about the inner work we need to do, even before getting to the marketing tactics. Who is your favorite type of client and why? What value do you think they get from your organizing and coaching meetings; can you ask them for their own description? And so on.
Because if you don’t know this part, then your tactics are just a shot in the dark. Sort of like organizing – if you don’t know your values, how can you know whether you’re spending time on the “right stuff?” If you haven’t figured out a time management system that feels intuitive to you and how you process your world, no planner or app is going to improve your time management. If you’ve bought all the products you can discover to organize the stuff, and it’s not still not feeling organized, then it’s more about your habits, your ability to maintain what you’ve put in place, and your abilities to motivate yourself or others.
So here was my own “internal work” thinking about my definition of success. I’ve purposefully put the thinking in order, from superficial to deeper thinking. You’ll notice the transition from external measures to internal ones here as well.
Success is:
- Profit and revenue
- Billable hours
- “Six figures”
- Number of certifications I have/credentials (Important. Confidence-building. Only successful if you can bring the learning directly to clients and they benefit.)
- What clients/colleagues say (Important, but not as the only source of feeling a success.)
- Being asked to write a book about organizing. (What a boost.)
- The types of clients I work with: Are they curious about their own habits? Are their issues complex, because that’s what I enjoy?
- Doing the work I love.
- Creating new projects as I work on others or let them go. Design work (classes, workshops, writing books,blogs).
- Having time to write (“Write” means to share, educate, think deeply, create.)
- Volunteering in my industry. Giving back, now that I’m older and wiser and believe I have some to share.
- Seeing my prior career experience being useful to my business and clients. Realizing how it all fits is a beautiful feeling.
- Working with clients in an organizing/time management situation so that they can move onto do their own great work in life, and move into their own life’s purpose.
- Fulfilling friendships with smart, creative and wise colleagues – local, virtual and even those I only get to see once a year but stay in touch with. (Important to the self-employed, as we have no “hallway” to walk down or “water cooler” to hang out at!)
- Being able to do the work I love, not having it take over my personal world, expressing my values through my work and life (heck, knowing what they are!), being a strong and caring partner in life, being a respected partner in business, and making enough income to support the life I love.
Now, that feels like success. What are your own, internal measures of success? How do you know that your home is organized enough? Your home business systems are successful for you?
Tags: confidence, respect, success
Sue, thank you so much for sharing your internal thought process.
I can honestly say that your bottom line (Being able to do the work I love, not having it take over my personal world, expressing my values through my work and life, being a strong and caring partner in life, being a respected partner in business, and making enough income to support the life I love) mirrors my own definition of success in a much clearer way than I’ve been able to articulate myself.
To our success!
Sue- I love how you’ve spent the time to develop and deeply think about what success means to you…and very specifically. During the recent snow storm (Nemo,) I saw people posting photos of rulers inserted into the snow showing off how many inches deep the snow was. During the early stage of the storm, I found myself doing just that. As the storm progressed, I stopped with the ruler, and instead began taking photos of the changing landscape.
This mirrors the idea of defining success. We can begin with something concrete like how many hours we want to work or how much money we’d like to make, but when we get past the mechanics, we then begin to think more deeply so that we’re creating an entire picture. It’s not one-dimensional. Instead it encompasses the best of who we are in all arenas in our life. A wonderfully full, snow-covered landscape!
Love the diversity of ideas of what we measure success by! I agree, it is not one idea but many that deliver us success. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for weighing in here, Ellen. I enjoy reading others’ perspectives, because so many people are raised believing that money is success. Or a title is success. Or other “external” ways of measurement. Not too long ago, in the same month, I was asked by two professionals what my own definition of success was. They asked me at the right time and I thought/continue to think about the question often. I also ask clients the question directly, where earlier in my career, I might have assumed. Great lesson.
Linda, thanks for being here. I always marvel at and enjoy how you see something (rulers/photos) and connect it to something more internal and profound (success and our definitions). Your coaching and organizing clients must love this creativity!
Janet – Our host for the Thank you so much for coming up with this topic. Sometimes, I have a blog post that fits right into our topic however this time, you gave me the opening and push to try to articulate my thinking. Success is such a personal definition. It’s important that as organizers and coaches we always remember to honor, respect and work to the client’s personal definition. So, thank you for this.
One of my biggest challenges is staying focused and thinking really deeply on a subject. So, reading your thoughts on success is very inspiring. I am really challenged to define what success means to me personally!
And, I am going to start asking my clients what success is to them!
I agree wholeheartedly on the importance of getting the client’s definition of success, which may be different from mine. Otherwise, how will we know when we’ve arrived?
@Tracy – Wonderful. So glad you were inspired and have something new to add to your clients. It IS a challenge to define it personally. My “train” took many years and work to figure out! And that’s not to say I expect it to stay the same