How can you continue doing fulfilling work? One approach is to keep following your creative compass. You can start by doing something you really care about. You can then focus on calmness, clarity, creativity and concrete results. Let’s explore how you can follow this path in your own way.

1) You can do something you care about.

So what is the kind of work you care about? You may love cooking, renovating houses, encouraging people, running workshops, solving customer problems, creating beautiful things, leading pioneering teams or whatever. Sometimes you may also be motivated by finding something to care about – however small - ‘within the job’. This can be a detail - such as polishing a door knocker – which then sets the professional standards for approaching the rest of the job. You may also be motivated by a personal life-theme. For example, I care about helping people to succeed. So I may return to this driving force if I ever feel tired when doing 6 mentoring sessions during a day. Refocusing on this compass encourages me to give everything to help the mentees to succeed.

Try tackling the exercise on this theme. Describe a specific activity you care about that you would like to do in the future. Try completing the following sentence – then go onto the next stage.

The specific activity I care about
that I want to do in the future is:

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2) You can be calm and clear.

Calmness often provides clues to our ‘A’ talent. We often feel calm in situations where we feel in control and able to deliver concrete results. Great performers, for example, demonstrate ‘grace under pressure’. The footballer enters a ‘bubble’ when taking a decisive penalty kick. The negotiator remains cool when trying to free hostages. Let’s return to the activity you care about that you want to do in the future. Can you think of a time that you felt calm in a similar situation? What did you do right then? Perhaps you relaxed and rehearsed well ahead of time. Going into the situation, you focused on the results to achieve and then did superb work to deliver the goods. How did you stay calm? How can you follow these principles in the future?

Clarity is crucial. You will have your own way of establishing clarity – the real results to achieve – when doing your chosen activity. Sometimes this calls for ‘buying time’, gathering information and clarifying the goals. The paramedic who arrives at a pile-up on the motorway, for example, is confronted by chaos. They ask: “What can we do to save people’s lives? What must be done to ensure that, as far as possible, people make a full recovery? What must we do to free people from the wreckage?” “Sounds logical,” somebody may say, “but sometimes you may have multiple goals. How do you settle-on your priorities?” One approach is to quickly brainstorm all the results you want to achieve. You can then list these in order of priority. Looking at the specific activity you care about, how can you establish the short, medium and long-term goals? Try completing the following sentence that focuses on your calmness and clarity.

The specific things I can do to be calm and
clear when doing my chosen activity are:

*

*

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3) You can be creative and get concrete results.

How can you deliver the goods? Great performers quickly work out the strategies for reaching the goals. They consider: a) The ‘conventional’ solutions - the tried and trusted ways that have worked before; b) The ‘creative’ solutions - the imaginative ways to achieve the goal. Exploring the various options, they consider the consequences - the pluses and minuses of each route - then settle on their conclusion. Committing to their chosen route, they do superb work until they achieve the goal. Let’s return to the activity you care about. So far you have stayed calm and established clarity. How can you be creative and deliver concrete results? Try completing the following sentence.

The specific things I can do to be
creative and deliver concrete results are:

*

*

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There are many ways to do satisfying work, but on some occasions we may also find ourselves feeling unfulfilled. Then it can be good to go back to basics and ask: “How can I do work I care about? How can I be calm and clear? How can I be creative and deliver concrete results?” We can then get back on track by following our creative compass.

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