Do don't be

I had a boss once who didn't do much of value. He read quoted whatever book he read. 

It was easier to feel good about being part of the latest fashionable (but unproven) may of thinking, than actually doing good stuff.

It was easier to feed the ego than craft good work. 

It was easy to recognise because I'd beeb there too in a much smaller way. 

Many, many years ago I had a bit of a wobble. I forgot myself.

It was back in the golden age of planner blogs.

There was a big community, I was part of it and amazingly one or two people liked what I wrote.

I got invited to the odd conference, even to speak.

I was offered jobs by people I'd never met. 

And for a little while it went to my head. The validation from BEING someone meant I focused less on DOING something. 

I became a little entitled. Not much mind, I'm not really that kind of person, I'm the kind who always fears getting found out.

Still.

It was seductively easy to be frustrated when my thinking was questioned, just because a few hundred people liked some post.

It was tempting to just copy a clever post from someone else, rather than putting the work into my own thinking. 

It was so easy to not bother with genuine insight because insights were out of fashion (they were trust me on this). 

Or feel validated by spending Friday morning in a cafe with loads of clever planners, rather than actually working. 

I nearly became a strategic smart arse. 

Thankfully I caught myself, but this was a lesson well learned. 

We all face this kind of choice at some point.

Do you want to be BE something or do you want to DO something.

Are you going to EARN or are you going to PRETEND.

There is so much bullshit in the industry, with so many talking heads ready to share un-earned wisdom, it's really easy to fake it.

Quote a few books, write a few opinion pieces, follow some proprietary process that looks good on paper.

Be the rock star singing songs someone else wrote. 

Let your ego deceive you. 

Of course, if you are more bothered about who you are in life than what you might accomplish, this is fine.

But once you give in a little to your ego, it begins to eat you alive. You begin to BELIEVE you are not pretending.

That's when you're fucked.

Because if you're not compelled to do the very best work and move things forward, you'll be replaced.

Either by someone who talks a better game or someone who can actually do the job. 

Perversely, if you forget about striving for recognition an do things worth recognising, you get the plaudits anyway.

You just know you earned them.

A little fear goes a very long way.

Ego is an eventual dead end. 

Comments

[Will]

This is a very important post. Fell into this trap post about 2-3 years into my career.

Happily, I was able to get out of it, but as you say, it was so seductive.

[Northern]

Glad you resisted the call of the dark side