I listen to Gary Vaynerchuk regularly. One of his recurring mantras is that he’s going to buy the NY Jets someday. That someday is a long time from now. I enjoy what he says when people ask him what he’ll do after he buys the Jets. Gary says that it’s hard to know because his favorite part is getting there. He loves the process.
I’ve been thinking about the process lately. The process has been my focus for one of my commitments. I lead a committee at church whose goal it is to formulate a building project that the congregation can get behind. We’re a small church and everyone’s input is important. There are many different ideas of what kind of project the church should do. There are also strong feelings about how much the project should cost.
For better or worse, I volunteered for the gig. I could see that without a good process, things could go sideways quickly. That’s not to say that I’m the only one who could lead the committee well. I don’t have strong opinions about the specifics of the project, so that’s an advantage for me. Since major events like a building project have the potential to be divisive in a church, my main goal is to have a good process. Even though no one will get exactly what they want, we want to emerge on the other side with everyone feeling like their thoughts and ideas were given real consideration and care.
Our committee has been meeting every other week for most of the year. So far we’ve been setting the ground work. We’re all excited to talk specifics and look at drawings and plans, but I keep going back to the process. Setting parameters, establishing goals and milestones, and communicating regularly must come before looking at plans and drawings.
Our committee has our first milestone presentation this weekend at church. I’m excited to update people about what we’ve accomplished so far and where we’re going; to give them the opportunity to confirm that we’re headed in the right direction and to give nudges to redirect if necessary.
In the end I still don’t really care what size or scope the project takes. I’m enjoying the process.
Unlike Gary Vee, I don’t have any specific long term goals like buying a major sports franchise. I have some vague notions of goals that mostly revolve around travel. I’d like to go to Prague. I’d like to take my kids to Kazakhstan to see the friends we worked with in 2001-2 and to show my kids where we spent almost a year. I’d like to go to Costa Rica and Patagonia and Thailand and many other places. Combined, that’s a lot of travel that will take some saving to do. However, each trip on its own isn’t a monumental goal.
Saving for my kids’ college is one of my goals. I tell them that our laundromat is their college fund. I have spreadsheets of projections of income and expenses and how much will be left over each year to invest for their college tuition. More importantly for today and tomorrow is that I like owning the business. I like getting dirty cleaning the car wash. I enjoy tidying, sweeping and mopping the laundromat. My favorite moment is when I’ve just spent time and hard work cleaning and I see the results. I like knowing that the next person who comes in will have a nice place to wash their car or clean their clothes. It’s only been a year, but it’s still exciting and enjoyable.
Running the business is the process to get to the goal (college tuition).
My kids are at ages where they’re talking about what they’re going to do for a career and where they’re going to go for college and what they’re going to study. Personally, I think this is too early to focus on those specific details. There is so much time before they need to make those decisions. Keep the options open wide. Enjoy the process of learning and exploring your interests.
There are over 3000 colleges in the US and there are many colleges in other countries that should be appealing to US students. I don’t want to guess at how many careers there are today. I bet 25% of them won’t exist in 7-10 years when my kids will graduate from college. There are also probably thousands of careers that don’t exist that will be appealing to them by the time they’re in and out of college.
Goals are important and I enjoy setting them. I’ve done well over the years setting short and mid-term goals, usually 1-3 years. I’m not good at setting goals that are longer time frames. Maybe that’s because I haven’t taken the time to enjoy the process of getting to those longer goals.
I’m going to keep thinking about what big long-term goal I’d like to choose. For now, in all of my endeavors, I’m trying to remember to enjoy the process.
Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay