Find Your Great Work

Many books have been written touching upon personal productivity or finding a better work life balance. One of the elements of to become more productive is to choose the work you do and equally important choose the work not to do. In “The monk who sold his Ferrari” Robin Sharma talks about “the ancient rule of 20”. Tim Ferriss elaborates on Pareto’s law in “The 4-hour work week”: 80% of the output results from 20% of the input. Both of them apply these rules in order to make choices.

Michael Bungay Stanier takes it from a bit different angle with his coaching methodology “Find Your Great Work”. Michael recognizes three basic levels of work: Bad Work, Good Work and Great Work.

Bad Work being a waste of time, energy & life, doing it once is one time too many. Good Work is the familiar, useful, productive work you do and do well. The real thing is about Great Work:

The work that matters, inspires, stretches and provokes. This is both a place of deep comfort - “the flow zone” - and discomfort. The comfort comes from its connection, its “sight line” to what matters most to you. The discomfort comes because the work is new, is challenging and as a result there’s an element of risk and possible failure - and it is work that matters, work that you care about.

Michael wrote a very nice, “napkin-size“, book about finding your great work. Like a map will help you to find your way in a city you have never been before Michael methodology uses 12 underlying maps to help you define your own Great Work. Before exploring these 12 maps Michael makes some remarks, as there is no perfect mix. Great Work over time becomes comfortable, familiar and will decay towards Good Work. On the other hand we are all human beings and sometimes lure for the easy stuff, there Good Work has it’s attraction, as it is safe and relative easy. Over the years we grow in roles and will be in different situations, hence we will have a different mix of Great and Good work.

The book is an easy read, it makes you think about the things you do. I experienced it very helpful to put the book aside so every now and then and allow myself some time to ponder over what I just read and what it means for me. It is fun to do the exercises and as you go through the book you will learn that “Doing the exercise is a good thing“.

When you are looking for ways to focus more on your own Great Work, I would highly recommend reading Michael’s book. It can be ordered directly from Michael’s “[u] Great Work Store[/u] “, it is reasonable priced and also for international shipment has a pretty fast delivery. The maps that Michael discusses in his book can be downloaded as free templates from his Find Your Great Work [u] website[/u] .

What is your Great Work?

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Contributing

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  Elmira Johnson

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  Jennifer Collins

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  Ajit Utagikar