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Even though my life theme is "I Wanna Be Me When I Grow Up", I still struggle with what I want to be when I grow up - or rather with how I want to spend my time on activities that really matter to me. And whenever I spend time pondering this, I come back to the idea of roles.
When I read and study productivity, many systems take a roles-based approach. When I start listing out my roles, at a high level, I can summarize the most important ones to me as a best friend, daughter, sister, dog mom, aunt, niece, cousin, friend, and child of God. There is also a current role that pays the bills right now. That one is small business owner - and sometimes that one gets wide with lots of things under it like consultant, coach, content creator, and teacher. I also give my time to the church in the worship team and as (right now) part-time treasurer and finance chair and I occasionally weave on the loom as a
part of that ministry.
I hate role-based systems because they force me to come clean with myself about all I'm trying to do and how I can't do all of it. Lately, some balls have been falling on the floor and rolling away. And, it's mostly in the roles I feel shoved into rather than those I took on willingly. I don't say no well, even though I coach other people on it all the time. And, the fact of the matter is that these roles where I am not shining right now are also ones where I'm focused on doing the role rather than being the person that role calls me to be. I'm happiest when I'm nose in a book, reading or learning something or when I'm engaged in a deep and meaningful conversation with another person. I love solving problems and helping people get through their day just a little bit easier than they thought they would when the day started. Those roles allow me to be my best rather than focusing on doing and achieving. Perhaps it's a weird and subtle difference that only makes sense in my head.
I'm headed to Australia a bit later this week for a multi-week trip with my sister and nephew. As part of managing my anxiety about the 15-hour plane flight, I have a list of plane tasks I've been making. One of those is to work on my Q2 plan, which always includes a list of my current roles and evaluating how those align with my values. And, I know going into it, that there are going to be some hard conversations ahead as I remove myself from a couple of roles that just aren't a part of how I want to live my life right now. I'm trying to look at the good news of those 30 hours round trip in the air as an opportunity to hopefully sleep a little, but also to do some deep thinking and reflection about how to move away from some activities I'm not enjoying and that aren't
helping me live out my life theme of I Wanna Be Me When I Grow Up.
When was the last time you made a list of the roles in your life? What serves your values and your goals well? What isn't serving you anymore? Do you have tips for how to remove yourself from those roles gracefully without hurting the relationships? |
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Some Other Things You Might Find Interesting
What I Published This Week
- The sixth installment in the Obsidian Tasks Mini Series went live on all channels. Check it out in Circle or on YouTube if you only want the video version.
- I'm continuing to work on my hours for my Accredited Financial Counselor certification. This week, that included beginning to explore how I might use video and other social media tools to engage with an audience. That led to putting up a short on the 5 Pillars of a Healthy Financial Life. Remember: If you or anyone you know would like free financial coaching/counseling, please schedule or have them schedule a free, no-obligation appointment here.
What's Coming Up?
No events happening due to my travels.
Build a Robot
AI is changing how we work - and I've been hoping it could actually reduce the amount of "busy work" that I do for a long time. I've been spending a good bit of time the last few months exploring two classes written by friends of mine - David Sparks and RJ Nestor - on the role of AI in your work.
I like David's calling it a robot and I've built my own Robot Kara that actually (mostly) published today's newsletter for the first time for me. All the content is still my original work, but the robot did all the behind the scenes busy work including helping me proofread, copying and pasting content from Obsidian into Kit and Circle, updating links in my note to make sure I can always find these in the future, and much more.
Again, the content is still mine. Writing these is the part I love.
But the challenge for me has always been this behind the scenes formatting and busy work. In the process of doing the work, the robot is also writing its own procedure manual to make sure it can do this for me again reliably in the future! It's truly miraculous!
Here are the preview videos both RJ and David have on this topic and when I return from my trip, I'll be scheduling a demo walk through of what I've done so far to help you get started if you'd like to do so.
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