A friend of a friend needed guidance in his new marketing gig.
Two months prior, he took a marketing job at a big gas and pipeline company and he was already feeling overwhelmed, pulled in different directions, and uncertain about how he fit into the organization.
So we chatted a bit.
📞 Me: “What have you been focusing on in the past two months?”
Pause.
📞 Him: “I’ve been doing different things. I’ve been building a social media presence, working on some new marketing collateral, creating content, testing a few ad ideas, and a few other things.”
Hmm, a bit all over the place, but I continued.
📞 Me: “What are you optimizing for?”
📞 Him: “What do you mean?”
I rephrased it.
📞 Me: “At the end of the quarter, when you sit down with your manager, on what metrics is he or she going to grade your performance? How will you know if you’re doing a good job or not?”
He wasn’t really sure. And the truth is, many of us aren’t. Many of us have no idea what we are optimizing for in work or life.
If you don’t know what you’re optimizing for, you don’t know which activities to focus on and which ones to avoid. So you try to do all of them and end up wasting a lot of time on stuff that won’t get you where you really want to go.
Alice: Which way should I go?
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Cat: That depends on where you are going.
Alice: I don’t know.
Cat: Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”
There’s no right or wrong answer until you’ve identified what you are optimizing for and what destination you are seeking.
If I’m optimizing for building strength, then my fitness routine should primarily be built around weight lifting activities, not long runs on a treadmill.
If I’m optimizing for fast career growth, then I’d be more inclined to work at a startup, say yes to longer hours and more challenging projects, and avoid working at large, stable organizations with limited upside.
If I’m optimizing for being the best father I can be, then I’d more likely to spend my evenings playing with my kids instead of hanging out with my friends.
Everything is a series of choices and compromises.
You can’t optimize for everything at once. You’ll be pulled in too many directions, have a harder time making decisions, and ultimately get stressed out and overwhelmed from the weight of it all. Instead, you want to choose what you’re optimizing for right now and let that guide you down a path.
By choosing what to optimize for, you choose what path you want to take and what compromises you’re willing to make along the way.
Ask yourself –
Are you optimizing for the short-term or long term?
Are you optimizing for speed or perfection?
Are you optimizing for growth or stability?
Answers to these questions will help you zero in on your destination.
If you want to be effective in any endeavor, you need to identify what you’re optimizing for. You need to choose the path you want to take. Once you dial that in, you’ll be more confident that the activities you’re putting time and effort into are moving you in the right direction.
And when it’s time to change what you’re optimizing for, that’s a choice you have and it’s one of many you’ll need to make in your life.
Go choose your path.
Good luck.
✌
