I read thousands of RSS feeds every year. It is where I mine for bitcoin, . . . uh huh, I mean I mine for insight and information and tools to help my clients move forward in their leadership development. I have noticed a number of trends over the years and one that is becoming clearer and clearer is personal optimization as the actual goal of development material being written about out in the wild.
But leadership is about helping others move forward. We need leaders to help us navigate the difficult and complex, not the easy. So development from where I am sitting/standing is more about character and skills and empathy and learning, than it is about optimization.
Personal optimization leads us down the wrong path, it is the wrong direction I think. It is in the words of Mark Manson a sickness. He says it like this " . . . you will feel that you’re perpetually entitled to be comfortable and happy at all times, that everything is supposed to be just exactly the . . . way you want it to be. This is a sickness. And it will eat you alive. You will see every adversity as an injustice, every challenge as a failure, every inconvenience as a personal slight, every disagreement as a betrayal. You will be confined to your own petty, skull-sized hell, burning with entitlement and bluster, running circles around your very own personal Feedback Loop from Hell, in constant motion yet arriving nowhere." (From his book "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck" p.13)
You don't want to live in this place. Instead you want to make a difference, to matter, to accomplish the important, the lasting, the sustainable change that will help others move forward. Care about this, rather than about your own personal optimization. It will make all the difference in someone's life.
But leadership is about helping others move forward. We need leaders to help us navigate the difficult and complex, not the easy. So development from where I am sitting/standing is more about character and skills and empathy and learning, than it is about optimization.
Personal optimization leads us down the wrong path, it is the wrong direction I think. It is in the words of Mark Manson a sickness. He says it like this " . . . you will feel that you’re perpetually entitled to be comfortable and happy at all times, that everything is supposed to be just exactly the . . . way you want it to be. This is a sickness. And it will eat you alive. You will see every adversity as an injustice, every challenge as a failure, every inconvenience as a personal slight, every disagreement as a betrayal. You will be confined to your own petty, skull-sized hell, burning with entitlement and bluster, running circles around your very own personal Feedback Loop from Hell, in constant motion yet arriving nowhere." (From his book "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck" p.13)
You don't want to live in this place. Instead you want to make a difference, to matter, to accomplish the important, the lasting, the sustainable change that will help others move forward. Care about this, rather than about your own personal optimization. It will make all the difference in someone's life.
