Define Success Before It Defines You
You’ll Never Get What You Want Until You Know What You Want
To be successful at anything, you have to define success first. I used to think I always did that until I was recently reminded that I didn’t.
A few weeks back, a colleague and I were talking about working on a project together — something between a fun little time-waster and a billion-dollar empire. This was our third live discussion, and we had come to the conclusion that between us, we had the resources (talent, time, money) to do something excellent.
Then she threw me off balance with the “why?”
“Why would we do this?” She asked. And then she explained that unless we truly had a handle on what success for the project would look like, we couldn’t nail all the uniquely differentiating, preparative aspects of the project that would essentially determine success or failure before we even got off the ground.
Oh yeah, I thought. Let’s make sure we’re not speeding into a brick wall.
Be careful what you ask for
To be 100% honest, until she made me think about it, I would have told you that I had most definitely considered why I wanted to do it, and then I would have listed off a bunch of wrong reasons for my why.
