If You Don’t Have Clear Priorities…
The consequences of not having clear priorities and a commitment to those priorities are enormous. The cost is a loss of your personal power, a lack of commitment to what you value and therefore the likelihood that you will not get what you want out of life. When we don’t have clear priorities, we surrender the path of our lives to other’s priorities. This is why we lose our personal power. By surrendering to other’s priorities, we empower them to run our lives and determine our destination.
Naturally, there are times when this is necessary even to meet our own priorities. If you are an employee, you generally need to to work towards the values and priorities of the company that employs you. Ideally, your personal values and those of the company are in alignment, so that you have a relationship that meets the goals of both you and the company.
Daniel Pink talks about the importance of autonomy, mastery and purpose as being important elements of a happy and engaged employee. If these are present, you feel powerful, because power comes from having a sense of control over your own circumstances. If you have autonomy you have that. If you seek mastery and become more valuable, you will feel more powerful. And if you are fulfilling your purpose through your work you will feel even more powerful. This is true whether you are an employee of someone else or self-employed.
The opposite of this is the person whose work consists of following orders all day long and being told not just what to do, but how to do it. In this situation, the person is completely powerless and this can lead to depression and a host of chronic illnesses. Just ask anyone who hates their job if they can achieve autonomy, mastery and purpose through their work and I guarantee you that the answer is “no.”
Sometimes people wake up to this situation and decide to break out to where they can find these things. They look for another job, or they become entrepreneurs. They discover their true values and prioritize them and with courage and commitment, become determined to live them. If they don’t, they live lives of quiet desperation spending every day like Jack Nicholson in About Schmidt. What’s true for experiencing power is the same for experiencing powerlessness; they both build on each other. Experience power and you become more powerful so you experience it more often. Experience powerlessness long enough, and eventually you will feel helpless and the inertia to break free becomes overwhelming.
Scrum for Your Life is one way to discover what your priorities in life are and to live them every day. Whether you use this system or some other, I encourage you to do so right away. Make finding your priorities your first priority. Then your days will soar, your power will grow and I guarantee you’ll be happier.