Are you a flashlight or a laser beam?

I was discussing life with a friend the other day. At one point, he made a very poignant comment, and I paraphrase, “I used to be a laser beam, now I am a flashlight.” Apparently his SO had made that observation when he was re-tooling his professional life to move into a more cloud-focused, Azure-centric posture. What he meant was that his professional goals in life at one point had been very focused, and now they were not.

This lack of focus was causing him untold amounts of angst, job-hopping, and general dissatisfaction with any position offered. He was flailing in every aspect of his professional life.

What can we learn from this real-life episode? You must have a plan. Your plan needs to be specific. Plans must be in writing – what my friend had done at one point was to veer off his written plan, and he never re-worked the plan – which resulted in his having a scattered approach. The scattered approach resulted in his having no clear path to success.

So, the lesson is to have a specific written plan for your life – and part of that plan is periodically reviewing the plan, along with adjustments to the plan. Sounds just like you are running a project, yes? And you are, it’s just that in this case, the project is you! What could be more important than that? And the skills you bring to your customer projects are the same skills you can exercise on yourself.

As a reminder, "SMART" objectives are:

• Specific

• Measurable

• Agreed/Achievable/Attainable

• Realistic/Responsible/Receivable

• Time-bound

If you need some help in getting your life and professional goals written, take a look at this: SMART GOALS. If you are looking for some light reading about goal setting, refer to Stephen Covey, Stephen Covey again, Brian Tracy’s SMART goal worksheet, and then look at the big picture from Peter Drucker, which should also get you thinking about another concept known as Management by Objective (MBO) or Management by Results (MBR). You can read about MBO here, and MBR here. The aphorism "what gets measured gets done," is aligned with the MBO philosophy.

P.S. Be careful about buying the MBO philosophy wholesale – there are some leadership factors that make MBO work or not work.

YMMV