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The ultimate success metric: One question to start asking yourself




Travel for me always entails a mental retreat. Even if it’s with friends or family, there’s always an element of shutting off business-as-usual and turning the mind to broader things, for clarity.



The big takeaway that has stuck with me for the past fortnight is one question that has become the ultimate success marker for myself.


This question helped me:

  • clarify decision-making principles

  • come to terms with opportunity cost

  • decide on what my path forward could look like


For much of April, I found myself harried, grouchy and incredibly disorganized as I took stock of the year, started putting together some new offerings, made plans for the longer term, and lined up more meetings.


In that lack of headspace, I kept turning to my spreadsheets - revenue, audience and client OKRs, and other business KPIs.


But ultimately towards the end of my trip, I realized it came down to a single question:


Will I like and respect myself?


I don’t mean self-love and acceptance, which is a foundation for self-esteem.


I mean:

If I were to meet myself now, or 5 years from now, or at the end of my life - would I be someone I wanted in my inner circle?


This meant delving into what I respected in others, and figuring out what my values were and how to stick to them, so that my answer would be YES.


For me, it came down to:


  1. OWNERSHIP : being more proactive in managing my emotions, behaviour, responses and influencing possibilities - not ceding control to others or to circumstances

  2. AUTHENTICITY : not doing something simply because others were doing it successfully, if it didn’t feel like me

  3. ABUNDANCE : not taking a transactional or zero-sum mindset when interacting with others, while respecting my own time, needs and energy


This has helped me:


  • Turn two programs I initially regretted signing up for, into opportunities to deepen my skills and international community

  • Feel upbeat rather than anxious or resentful when talking to others who could potentially be competition

  • Reset my daily routines and priorities for the rest of the month, to get better outcomes

  • Make more thoughtful use of conversations

  • Remember why I’m running the experiments and projects I’m doing now, so I can properly commit to them



This is going to look different for everyone. But perhaps it’s worth asking:

When do you like and respect yourself?


I asked someone this a few weeks back back, and she was stumped.


She was looking for a new career path, and wanted to know how to find it, and what it could be. Career was important because it gave her an identity.


When I asked what her current identity was, she shared anecdotes that suggested she was well-liked at work, thoughtful, dedicated, a team player, enthusiastic and open-minded.


But when I asked what her identity was beyond work - who are you - she didn’t know.


She could tell me how others responded to her, what they appreciated about her, and what her strengths at work were.


But she couldn’t tell me when she last liked herself.



Decoupling identity and work


Why does it matter?


After all, work is likely to be a big part of our identity, for most of us - it gives us structure, gives us a title, clear responsibilities, direction.


But being clear when you like and respect yourself is important because:


  • Work is not always going to be there for you

  • Your job is designed to meet business targets - building your identity around this means you hand over power to someone else to decide who you are

  • It helps you figure out what work you actually want to do

  • It helps you figure out how you want to do it, what tradeoffs you might make, and why

  • Knowing who you’d like to be, helps you build a direction that isn’t dependent on circumstances



For some people, work isn’t even a part of their identity, even if they take pride in it - it doesn’t matter what they do there, because if they suddenly lost their jobs, they would still know who they are.


But for many of us, it is.


That’s ok.



Three starting points:


  1. We do regular reviews at work - but do we get 360 feedback from friends and loved ones? Pick a couple whose “review” would matter.

  2. When do you like and respect yourself, regardless of what others have said about you?

  3. Make a list of principles that help you in dilemmas. Values are one way - here’s one of the better values tests I came across recently. It’s a shortcut and far from perfect, but can be a clue.

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