Given my predilection for self help literature, I made a mission statement after rereading Covey’s Seven Habits. Two months later, I realized that I couldn’t recall it off the top of my head.
To share and experience the variety and richness of the world….so that we can experience the simple pleasures of life together.
Since that wasn’t working, I searched around my computer and came across this old Simon Sinek “Why statement” that from a few years ago.
TO make continual incremental improvements SO THAT everyone’s daily lives are better.
However, this was too mechanistic. I enjoy making things better, but to completely focus my life around kaizen was artless.
Lately I’ve been playing around this slightly hedonistic mission statement.
To gently enjoy and improve the world so others can too.
It is a little tighter, and the “to…too” is cute. However, this latest version still isn’t elegant because it is is juggling multiple items:
- Enjoy
- Improve
- Gentle
- Others
Three mission statements into this exercise, it is worth noting that all of them have a slight outward focus. I don’t feel a strong urge for service, but I know life can’t be just about my own solipsistic pleasure.
Curiously, the first two statements were unintentionally combined for this most recent iteration. I want to make the world a little better, but it would be disrespectful to not enjoy the fullness of life. We ought to be good stewards and good guests during our sojourn.
Hopefully, the statement will be further refined in a future iteration. Maybe I’ll condense it by misusing a foreign language (et frui meliorem), or just simplify it further (mutual delight and refinement).
But good enough is good enough. I’ve learned in design that part of the process is jumping scales, even if one level isn’t perfectly refined. Instead of shaving away at the mission statement. It will be more fruitful to ponder “Horizon 4” in GTD parlance.
How does this working mission become a vision for the next three to five years?