I have this great friend. I’ll call her Franny. Franny’s fantastic — smart, funny, compassionate, loyal. Keeps a secret like nobody’s business. Notices your important stuff. Birthday? She always brings a cake. Just a straight up good egg!
But this straight-up good egg makes terrible, and sometimes very costly, decisions. She makes them again and again — in one specific area of her personal life, and it’s a biggie: money.
I think I’ve figured out, at least a little, what she might do differently if she wants to, but before I get into that let me tell you about the problem.
She cannot make good financial decisions — just can. not. do. it. This runs the gamut, from overspending on expensive designer handbags to quitting a job where she feels unappreciated without even a thought to where she’ll go next.
When I was starting out in business, I worked with a brilliant man, a media CEO. I was explaining an idea I had — a very exciting idea! — and in my excitement about my idea, it took me a second to notice that he was looking at me a little oddly: half-smiling, patient. I stopped talking.
“Okay,” Pat said, still smiling, “this is so that what will happen?”
This brought me up short and so should it have done, because of course I hadn’t given any thought to that at all. What did I want to happen? How would my idea bring us closer to achieving that goal? If we were successful in progressing toward that goal, what would be the next step?
A guiding principle in my life — a principle by which I try to live, anyhow — is that if I do the right thing in the moment, the future will take care of itself.
That’s true, but it’s only true if we have a clear general notion of where we’re headed — what, in general, we’d like to happen.
Let’s go back to Franny. Remember Franny? The good egg with bad money radar? Her.
Franny is reaching the end of a professional engagement. She has great credentials & is well connected in her professional community, but she wants to do something different. She’s going to sell vintage designer clothing.
“You’ve got great style,” I agree, “and you’d put together amazing outfits. But you’re going to sell vintage designer clothing so that what will happen?”
What does Franny want out of her next professional engagement? That’s not for me to say, but I do think it’s pretty important that she give it a think. Here are some possible alternatives:
produce $75,000/year
provide health insurance or other critical benefits
fulfill creative impulses or preferences
offer learning opportunities
have a predictable, steady income stream
serve as an important credential for a desired future step
Those are a solid start. Does selling vintage designer clothing tick off whichever boxes are important for Franny? Maybe. Let’s say it does. Then we have a next level of considerations. These are things that inform the reality of the situation. Practically speaking, what’s possible? What’s desirable? What’s preferred?
resources available / allocated to this
resources required
If this is starting to look a lot like a business conversation, there’s a good reason why. Working in business I became accustomed to thinking about not only my ideas but all the consequences and dependent variables associated with my ideas. In my personal life, not so much.
Franny is an unusual case. She’s making big decisions without thinking about consequences at all. Most of us don’t do that. We sit down with our partners or friends and discuss big decisions — where to send our children to school, where to live, where to work.
But we can benefit from more structure in these conservations, even if they’re only conversations we’re having with ourselves, internally. Asking ourselves a single, simple question when we consider decisions will help us avoid costly, time-wasting, and even dangerous mistakes.
We can be more measured, more thoughtful, and more deliberate in our decision-making.
We can move through our lives with a little more ease, if we ask ourselves — even if we never say it out loud: — I do this — so that what will happen?
Thanks for reading Turnaround Year. I hope you’ll share it.