Lipstick © Simon EvansDo you need what Stephen R. Covey calls a «Personal Mission Statement»? What for?

Let's leave aside what companies or political parties want to tell you about their so-called mission. Compared to these, drafting a Personal Mission Statement (and updating it from time to time) can be real fun. If you do it well, the statement will give you

• Orientation: What are the values that guide your life?
• Identity: How can you unfold your personality in a world that gets more chaotic, every day?
• Decision support: What should you stick with when you find yourself in a complicated situation?
• Sound relationships: What can other people expect of you?

How do you draft a great Personal Mission Statement? After some thinking, I arrived at a simple set of criteria. My statement shall be

• relevant and positive. My statement must have meaning now and here for me, not in a perfect but distant future or for mankind (whoever that may be) in general. I want inspiration for today and tomorrow instead of control after the event. My statement shall foster my independent thinking, it must not block it or drown it in clichés.
• universal. I just don't need separate statements for work, at home, relatives, neighborhood, dog, etc.. In addition, my statement should be attractive for others, too, not just because I like Kant's categorical imperative, but also because it's a simple lesson to be learned by everybody that you can't always have your will at the expense of others without tying up resources (and ultimately wasting them and the time you could have invested more productively).
• suitable for daily use. I want a personal mission statement that both allows for making compromises and establishing constraints for them. I'm not a slave to fundamentalisms, looking forward to flagellate myself for not being able to satisfy inhuman demands. On the other hand, I'm not looking for fluffy paragraphs that will never ever provoke any conflict.
• short. My statement must fit onto a single page. I'm not going to change it every week, but it must lend itself to be changed at any time, anywhere. You can't do this with a novel.

Well, what does that mean, in practice? How do I arrive at such a personal mission statement? Let's consider three steps:

1. Determine the structure
2. Finding your values
3. Determine principles from your values

Step 1: Determine the structure

There is no standard template for mission statements, but some proven approaches. Unfortunately, they mostly deal with issues that only companies are facing.

I'm quite sure that two sections are enough:

1. Values - your individual, written decisions about your criteria on what is good and what is bad for you and the culture you live in (I said bad, not evil).
   There is no place here for any «if» or «but». Conflicts about trade offs and clashes among values will be inevitable, but they shall not become part of your list of values.
2. Principles - guidelines you will follow when you choose your behavior for various domains of your life, according to your values.
   In general, «principle» is defined rather as a rule you think you can't violate without making your values suffer. To me, this view is too lopsided - principles that only forbid things aren't sufficient.
   Nor is a principle a strategy, a «long term plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal», as Wikipedia defines strategy. Principles are meant to establish values in your daily life and to protect them. This is an ongoing mode of living, not a goal.

These two sections ought to be sufficient for giving your actions a stable base. Of course, there are mission statements that include visions, goals, roles or even desirable behavior, too. In my view, however, such items wouldn't fit my criteria for a universal and short statement - I'd need to modify it more often and it would hardly fit onto a single page.

Step 2: Finding your values

I've already written about direct and indirect pathways to your values, so I'm just listing them here:

• Consider admiration
• Consider roles
• Consider dreams
• Consider moments of flow
• Consider moments of happiness
• Consider confrontations
• Consider sarcasm
• Consider paranoia
• Consider manias
• Consider pain

As an example, when I do that, values like simplicity, respect and learning come to my mind, among others. Let's do a quick check: yes, they're all relevant, positive, universal, suitable for daily use and short. Which values come to your mind?

Step 3: Determine principles from your values

Principles aren't platitudes. A platitude is a statement nobody having a little common sense would deny. Principles, on the other hand, are debatable, I guess precisely because they must already be applicable to a concrete domain of living.

«Those are my principles, and if you don't like them… well, I have others.»
Groucho Marx

Assuming the values simplicity, respect and learning: how can you obtain principles that guide your choice of actions and means in life?

To me, situations are key. Each one is unique. Most of them, and this is the strange part, are also familiar. This is why I can walk two paths to my principles: the path of the unknown and the path of the familiar.

The Unknown, or: the power of If I had only…

Review a couple of situations when you were really caught off guard. Situations when you did not behave according to your values. Situations that made you think (afterwards) «If I had only…»

Under unexpected circumstances, what did you do that violated, e.g., simplicity, respect or learning?

• Did a brand new gadget offer drown out your desire for simplicity, even though you knew you already own a similar device that serves your needs quite well?
• Have you been serviced so badly in your favorite restaurant that you felt you couldn't help but fire disrespectful remarks at the waitress?
• Knowing you were wrong, did you still feel the need to force your will upon a colleague, instead of acknowledging your mistake and learning from her?

Which principles could have helped you to avoid this? Thinking about the situations I just described, the following examples of principles come to my mind:

• One in, one out.
  I'm adopting the principle of buying something new only as a replacement for something old. I shall either donate, sell or throw away the older thing, immediately.
• Attack the problem, not the person.
  I'm adopting the principle of thinking clearly about what exactly is the problem that is disturbing me. I shall communicate precisely the problem, and only the problem.
• Be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
  I'm adopting the principle of placing trust in my colleagues, by default, to make sure I will learn rather than judge.

The Known, or: principles in context

There are a lot of intersections of people, places, situations, resources etc. that keep repeating throughout our lives. I call them contexts, precisely of the type David Allen describes in his method of Getting Things Done (GTD). By convention, Allen designates contexts by a prefixed @ symbol. I've written extensively about what is (not) a context before, so I'll just repeat the list here:

• People. Examples: @Joe, @Mom and dad.
• Roles and service providers. Examples: @Boss, @M.D., @Delivery/FedEx/UPS.
• Locations. Examples: @Desk, @Home, @Office, @Club, @San Diego Office.
• Errands. Examples: @Walmart.
• Recurring event agendas. Examples: @Weekly sales meeting.
• Recurring idle time spans. Examples: @Morning coffee, @Gym, @Jogging, @Commuting.
• Allocated time spans. Examples: @Reading, @Creative.
• Required resources or tools. Examples: @Online/Web, @PC-Offline/Mac anywhere, @Phone/Calls, @Email.
• Habits. Example: @Home.2Minutes.

Contexts are wonderful opportunities for deducing principles, since they repeat, by definition. What are the principles that come to your mind when you consider your contexts from the perspectives of simplicity, respect and learning? For instance, I can think of the these:

• Avoid multitasking.
  I'm adopting the principle of batching my tasks with respect to contexts, so their completion becomes simpler by avoiding task switching.
• Respect good work.
  I'm adopting the principle of noticing good work done by others and letting them know I cherish their performance. Especially with respect to services or professions I haven't chosen for my own career path.
• «First empty your cup.»
  I'm adopting the principle of focusing completely on my current task, so I can learn the most from it instead of framing new situations in my old views.

Start now!

It is obvious that it takes a while until you're satisfied with your Personal Mission Statement. I keep collecting new thoughts and insights that make me change my statement about twice a year. If the text doesn't fit onto a single page anymore, I force myself to shorten it.

How did you draft your Personal Mission Statement? Let us know in a comment, below!