Project 52: Week 15 (4/4/24)
Gerald Doyle
Human Centered Design and Innovation: "You know, I believe it's sometimes even good to be ridiculous. Yes, much better. People forgive each other more readily and become more humble, ..." Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot
Our invitation and reflection ...
“People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy.”
“Attention is like energy in that without it no work can be done, and in doing work is dissipated. We create ourselves by how we use this energy. Memories, thoughts and feelings are all shaped by how use it. And it is an energy under control, to do with as we please; hence attention is our most important tool in the task of improving the quality of experience.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
"Let us think about this today. It will do us good. First: what is going on in my heart? What am I thinking? What am I feeling? Do I pay attention to what comes and goes or do I let it go? Do I know what I want? Do I test what I desire? Or do I simply take everything? Beloved, do not believe every spirit; but test the spirits. Often our hearts are like a road that everyone takes. This is precisely why we need to test and ask ourselves if we always choose the things that come from God, if we know what comes from God, if we know the right criteria by which we should discern our desires and our thoughts. And, we must never forget that the true criteria is the Incarnation of God." ~ Pope Francis
We are delighted to continue with a year-long offering... ~ Gerald Doyle
Welcome to Week 15
Burnett and Evans: Lifeview and Workview
As we’ve mentioned elsewhere in this series, we love to recommend the work of Bill Burnett and Dave Evans of Stanford to our Tri Cosain journey participants.? A great way to get their thinking is their touchstone book, Designing Your Life, one of the critical career resources we consistently recommend to our fellow travelers.
To capture insights that we describe as touching both inspiration and career vision, Burnett and Evans (B & E for short) invite their students and readers to create two crystallized views of the world: a Lifeview and a Workview. The suggestions we’ll be quoting here are from Designing Your Life , Chapter 7: Building a Compass.
To start, they invite their students to write down a Workview.? They write, “[W]e need to discover what work means to you. What is work for? Why do you do it? What makes good work good? If you discover and can articulate your philosophy of work (what it’s for and why you do it), you will be less likely to let others design your life for you.”? B&E don’t specify a length for the two initial views, but, as you will see soon, they create some other constraints that call forward a thoughtful and reflective but not laborious or obsessive exercise.
After the Workview, they invite us to write down our Lifeview. They write, “Lifeview may sound a bit lofty, but it’s not—everyone has a Lifeview. You may not have articulated it before, but if you are alive, you have a Lifeview. A Lifeview is your ideas about the world and how it works. What gives life meaning? What makes your life worthwhile or valuable? How does your life relate to others in your family, community, and the world? What do money, fame, and personal accomplishment do with a satisfying life? How important are experience, growth, and fulfillment in your life?”
After writing out your Workview and Lifeview, they invite us to write a reflection on each. Essentially, the reflection is like a second, more advanced draft of each view. B&E suggest these reflections should each be at most 250 words long and take at most 30 minutes to prepare. So now we have some (flexible) constraints on the size and length of the views.
They write about the Workview reflection: "A Workview should address the critical issues related to work and what it means to you. It is a list of what you want from or out of work and a general statement of your view of work. It’s your definition of what good work deserves to be. A Workview may address such questions as:
“In the years during which we’ve been helping people with this exercise, we’ve noticed that a Workview is a pretty new idea for most people. And we’ve noticed that when people get stuck on this exercise, it is because they are just writing down what they’re looking for in a job or an employment situation, which is a “job description.” For this exercise, we’re not interested in what work you want to do but why you work. What we’re after is your philosophy of work—what it’s for, what it means. This will essentially be your work manifesto.
“When using the term “work,” we mean the broadest definition—not just what you do to make money or for ‘a job.’ Work is often the most significant single component of most people’s waking lives, and over a lifetime, it occupies more of our attention and energy than anything else we do. Accordingly, we suggest you take the time to reflect and articulate what work and vocation mean to you (and perhaps what you hope work means for others as well).”
They write about the Lifeview reflection: "The key thing is to write down whatever critical defining values and perspectives provide the basis for your understanding of life. Your Lifeview is what provides your definition of what have been called “matters of ultimate concern.” It’s what matters most to you.
“We realize that these are somewhat philosophical questions, and we did just mention the “G” word. Some readers will see God as unimportant; others may have wanted us to address this upfront as the most important issue. You’ve probably figured out by now that design is values-neutral, and we don’t take sides. The questions, including the ones about God or spirituality, are given to provoke your thinking, and it’s up to you to see which ones you want to try to answer. They are not talking points for religious or political debates; there are no wrong answers or Lifeviews. The only way to do this incorrectly is not to do it at all. Besides that, be curious and think like a designer. Ask the questions that work for you, make up your own, and see what you discover.”
As you may imagine, in a faith-based community, the spiritual dimension of the Lifeview may be critical to many.
After preparing the two reflections, which, as we suggested, might be second drafts of the views themselves, B & E invite us to consider the coherence of the two views.
They write, “Our goal for your life is rather simple: coherency. A coherent life is one lived in such a way that you can connect the dots between three things:
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“Read over your Workview and Lifeview and write down a few thoughts on the following questions (please try to answer each of the questions):
“Take some time to write up your thoughts on integrating your two views. Our students tell us that this is where they often get the biggest “aha” moments, so please take this part of the exercise seriously and give the integration some thought. In most cases, this reflection will result in some editing of one or both of your views [emphasis from Tri Cosain]. By having your Workview and Lifeview in harmony, you increase your clarity and ability to live a consciously coherent, meaningful life—one in which you are, what you believe, and what you do are aligned. When you’ve got an accurate compass, you’ll never stray off course for long….
“So now you have an articulated and integrated Lifeview and Workview. Ultimately, these two views give you your “True North.” They create your compass. They will help you know if you’re on course or off course.”
In our Tri Cosain language, we find B&E’s Workview/Lifeview exercise to be a great way to crystallize, in synergy, a sense of personal inspiration and a vision of the potential of work. We invite you to try their exercise and record and retain the results. We also invite you to discuss your crystallizations and experiences with other people you value and trust, perhaps your mentors, colleagues, MasterMind group members, or your Life Design Team if you have one (see related articles in this series).
One variation or reflection from us: we often meet people who say, “I have no idea!” when we invite them to crystallize a sense of inspiration or vision. This might be your reaction to the B&E exercise questions. If it is, we invite you to try them anyway. In this context, a great way to start is to do the work in a spirit of imagination or play. Another way you can imagine or allow a creative or playful “version of yourself,” perhaps one that represents only part of your total outlook. Doing the exercise for the first time commits you to nothing; it only opens doors for reflection, discernment, and exploration. Your views can be private to yourself and revisited and evolved at any time. We hope they will be!
As always, I am ready to accompany you in creating and refining your Lifeview, Workview, and any related Tri Cosain exercises.
Please be invited to Week 15 of our year-long series of installments, introducing our framework perspective Tri Cosain , Irish Gaelic for three pathways: inspiration, learning, and career.
Listen to and watch TED Talk – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – Flow – 2004
You might also enjoy listening to and watching a few summaries of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow:
As always, we are pleased to accompany you on this journey.
Monday, 4 March 2024
P.P.S. We also look forward to sharing our learnings and practices with associations we admire and our neighbors in the Midwest-- America's Urban Campus ( David Baker ), the Associated Colleges of the Midwest , the Associated Colleges of Illinois , and the Association of Independent Colleges of Art & Design ; please connect with me to set a time to speak.
Tri Cosain materials are developed with my colleague and friend of 40+ years, Scott Downs.
Copyright Scott Downs and Gerald Doyle, 2023/24
Residing in Chicago, Gerald Doyle provides ministry placement research and consulting for Career Services at the Catholic Theological Union ( Herbert Quinde and Christina Zaker ), as well as career services and coaching to students, families, and community members at Wolcott College Preparatory High School . He advises several tech companies, including Upkey ( Amir Badr ) and GetSet Learning ( Eva Prokop ); he has also joined TSI - Transforming Solutions, Inc. ( Dan Feely )in their Higher Education and Career Services practice.
Scott? Downs, a former investment banker, management consultant, and entrepreneur, now works as an Agile coach, seeking to call forward great leaders and great organizations based on great cultures. He is a consultant with Expleo Group and is an associate of the TrustTemenos Leadership Academy.
Scott and Gerald are co-founders of Tri Cosain, a practice that weaves inspiration, learning, and career for leadership in life and work. Gerald and Scott co-authored 9 Questions for Leadership in Life and Work, Conversations of Inquiry, and several other volumes in the Tri Cosain series. Their work embraces equity, inclusion, diversity, and well-being as foundations for personal leadership.
Human Centered Design and Innovation: "You know, I believe it's sometimes even good to be ridiculous. Yes, much better. People forgive each other more readily and become more humble, ..." Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot
7 个月Al Nunez A Happy Sunday to you. Thanks for the invitation to (re)visit Week 15. In (re)reading the Week 15 reflection and in this morning's walk with Carlos (again, our daughter's dog for those other than Al who might be reading this thread), I've thought to reflect on the following question: ~ How does work -- my work, specifically -- relate to the individual, others, and society? Two lines of reflection have?partly resulted from a conversation with Rev. Hugh at DePaul University, a member of the Vincentian Fathers; his question focused on what has been "unconscious to us." So, the thread has been about what ways my work -- or the engagement of projects -- has contributed positively to others?in generative ways -- creating more freedom, more prosperity, and enabling others to reach their dreams... and in what ways my work sustained systems (products, processes, and people) that are unjust, inequitable, and more extractive in nature. It's easy not to think about the latter. Therefore, it's essential to build friendship and dialogue with others who are different from us and hold different and opposing opinions so that we can see ourselves once, twice, and thrice, and here are challenges to our practices.