As summer comes to an end I once again find myself in “prep week” – that short but essential time to get everything in place so that an amazing semester is inevitable. It’s one of my favorite weeks of the year because nothing is set in stone yet. The possibilities for Fall Semester 2022 are only limited by my imagination.
Getting Ready for What?
I think a great place to start is with the end in mind: if this semester is a wild success, what will things look like in December?
It’s not an easy question to answer. Editing is easy. Staring at a blank page and doing the hard work of having ideas takes a prodigious amount of effort. If everything is possible, then how do you decide which of the infinite options to pursue?
Work that Matters for People Who Care
In several of his books and podcasts, my favorite nonfiction author Seth Godin charges readers to “do work that matters for people who care.”
I can’t think of a better way to summarize my hope for the work I do – and the work that you’ll do too. We’ve all done busywork. We’ve all experienced a time where we worked hard on something only to be told “that isn’t what I wanted.” Think of this big goal as the inverse of that experience.
What Does ‘Ready’ Look Like?
I think getting ready has 3 main components:
1. Find the People Who Care
I love that I can’t do anything important in a vacuum. No successful startup was birthed in isolation. If we’re going to do work that matters for people who care, then first we need to find the people. They’re everywhere, but they all care about different things. The trick is finding enough of them who care about the same something.
2. Find the Work to Be Done
I work on things for students. Those are the people who care. But even that isn’t specific enough. I’ll have 500 students this semester. Finding the common ground is the hard part.
What problems will my students face? How do their circumstances affect the way they approach school? What do they need me to do because no one else can?
It’s important to remember that we cannot set ourselves up for success until we’ve identified what we hope to succeed at.
3. Build the Systems We Need to Do The Work
I tried to adjust my diet this summer. Every day went well… until late evening. I have discipline enough to eat well all day, but at 9:00 I want a cookie. If there’s a cookie in my pantry, I’m eating it.
Building systems that make success inevitable isn’t actually complicated. For me, it’s a metaphorical re-stocking of the pantry – removing obstacles (cookies) and replacing them with those things which automatically lead to success (fruit with yogurt is pretty delicious when it isn’t sitting next to a box of cookies).
Eliminate the clutter of your life – usually these are the commitments you’ve made to yourself or others which turned out to be busywork. Fill the empty spaces with the supplies and rituals which give you the energy and clarity to do “work that matters for people who care.”
Closing
The real deal is simple: we get one life. Approximately 25,000 days, or 3,600 weeks. Let’s make sure they count! The key is to look behind, around, and ahead so that you can remix past results with action in the present while planning for an amazing future.
I’ll be here cheering you on!
