Stave off mediocrity with perspective and purpose

I read this little anecdote by Donald Miller a few years ago, and it’s always stayed with me:

“If you watched a movie about a guy who wanted a Volvo and worked for years to get it, you wouldn’t cry at the end when he drove off the lot, testing the windshield wipers. You wouldn’t tell your friends you saw a beautiful movie or go home and put a record on to think about the story you’d seen. The truth is, you wouldn't remember that movie a week later, except you’d feel robbed and want your money back. Nobody cries at the end of a movie about a guy who wants a Volvo.

But we spend years actually living those stories, and expect our lives to be meaningful. The truth is, if what we choose to do with our lives won't make a story meaningful, it won’t make a life meaningful either”

― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

Our work and lives are full of high-pressure goals and tasks equivalent to that Volvo. They're pressing, but they're boring. Each one feels important in isolation, but when we zoom out and look at our progress over several years, the importance has faded, leaving a string of meaningless mediocrity that wasn't worth the stress. Do you ever look back at your week, month, or year and wonder what you achieved? All that panic about the meeting, the outfit, the conversation - and for what? Did it count? Does it tell the story of your life?

In Essentialism, Greg McKeown describes the feeling of being "overwhelmed but underutilized," which always makes me think of that particular brand of end-of-day exhaustion where I can't list what I achieved that day. I reckon that's fine for a day, even a week. We all have Survival Seasons, times in our lives where things just need to get done, and we need to focus on survival. (If you have kids under 5, consider this your Survival Season!)

But I think we should be careful of letting that become our norm. Steven Pinker, in Enlightenment Now, suggests we remove ourselves from daily news cycles and take a wider view—50 or 100 years. If you took this view, he argues and read the headlines for the 50-year newspaper, you'd find it much easier to see how much progress the world has made.

The same is true for your life.

If you were writing the newspaper for this decade, what would the headlines be so far? How do you feel about that?

I've been working with local government leaders to expand their perspectives and consider the intergenerational legacy of their decisions. This is a major part of my book Local Legends. Public leaders have an incredible opportunity to participate in meaningful work that positively impacts the lives of others for a long time—but it’s easy to forget when they're captured by the daily dramas.

You don't need to be in public service to think long-term about your work and life. 

When you know your purpose and your values, you can choose to play a longer game.

You can set boundaries that free up the time and space in your work and life to do work that matters and arrive at the end of your day, week, and decade feeling good about what you've accomplished.

You've only got one life, and it's in your hands. Whether you're facing change, uncertainty, restructure, or redundancy , nobody else has the power to decide the direction of your life and impact. You're put here to do awesome things that only you can do - so don't let mediocre Volvo goals distract you.

If you need help rediscovering your fire or you're unsure how to bring your brilliance into your work, check out the next intake of Not An MBA, enrolling now. We help curious, creative, committed people light their fires again and do work that matters.