Details and life planning and details

Tonight is time to be brief. It is late and I'm still recovering from two days of jetting across the country.

Details

I had a catch up with a good friend and former colleague today. We were chatting about Garbologie, and she made the remark "So who's going to look after the details?" She went on to say that the ideas, the leadership are all fine for me, but details not so much.

And she is right. Given my druthers, I'd not be looking into the details. However, I have developed a lot since we worked together. While I am now a CEO, it is of an organisation that is so small that my second role is backup accounts person. I am an engineer by trade, and so accounts does not come naturally to me. Accounts (or perhaps more accurately, book keeping) requires a very particular focus on detail and getting each detail correct. I forced myself to learn this skill.

So I think I'll be fine on the details. In this journey of life, I was fortunate enough to pass through a role that contains both the leadership bits I love with the nitty gritty details I need.

Life planning

Thinking about the course my life has taken brought me to another remark from another person. His comment was along the lines that he admires my ability to plan my life. I found that comment a bit shocking. My life feels anything but planned. I don't believe I've ever sat down and worked out the job I mean to have in 5, 10 or 20 years.

As a result, I kind of dismissed the remark as him making sense of my career to date, which certainly does look like a rapid march to ever greater things.

But I then chatted about this remark (much) later with my wife, and she gave me some interesting insights. She concentrated more on how I have themes that I pursue, and I am quite clear in only staying in a role for as long as it services the development of those themes. I leave when my "Use By" date, or my contract (whichever is later), is up. And so in that sense the remark is quite accurate. I do have a clear picture of the theme I am developing. I don't know the specifics of how it will unfold, but I can make decisions as I move along.

Garbologie is the latest decision, and it seems right.

Details

Which spirals me back to a similar, but different, point to where we started.

I don't bother planning my life, if that is to be understood as mapping out a course to get to my destination. I don't believe I could have the information I need to do this. Details of your path are irrelevant beyond a relatively tight timeframe, as they degrade quickly.

Rather than a map, you need to know your destination. A mountain range to head towards, perhaps some boundaries to walk within. With this, you can make incremental decisions without knowing how they all map out.

A mountain range to head towards...
(picture of Hanging Rock, source Sydney Morning Herald)

To do this well, you need to understand details. Knowing the details of each particular decision is important. It means you move forward with wisdom, weighing the various pieces of data up and then moving. Evaluating. Moving. Evaluating.

A continual incremental walk which, guided by a grand theme, creates a path that looks for all the world like a very cunningly planned route.