Living With Craft Is Not A Luxury. It Is A Discipline.

The way craftsmanship is portrayed today is completely and utterly backward. First, craftsmanship as a concept is almost exclusively referred to as a calling. The not-so-subtle suggestion is that those who haven't heard the call, have no Craft. And the even less-subtle suggestion is that while we should be finding our purpose in life, everything is laden with meaning. The idea of craftsmanship has been so fetishized, there’s even a parody about making toast.

Which brings me to the second way that the current portrayal of craftsmanship is backward — it’s characterized as a luxury. This means both that the practice of craftsmanship is something we are occasionally allowed to indulge in luxury and that craftsmanship should feel like a luxury. Whether it is buying local from the butchers, dairy farmers, or bakers at the local farmer's market, or buying well made products from tailors and tanners--only a certain segment of the population participates. When we spend more time talking about the craftsmanship behind well-made leather boots than we do about how well made boots perform and enable us getting out into nature enough, we’ve wandered pretty far from anything that can be remotely considered craftsmanship.

While Craftsmanship is definitely fueled by purpose and unfortunately a luxury to some, true craftsmanship is a discipline. It is a way of being in the world, where how you approach life and work is a form of elevated, personal self-expression.

Genuine thinking and self-expression happens through doing and repeating—craftsmanship requires effort. The craftsman’s muscle memory is inscribed with the discipline of being in deliberate practice. This notion of craftsmanship is not a call to the return of overt craftsmanship (of the leather apron variety) to consumer culture.  It is a call to finding your Craft – through grit, resilience, tough-mindedness, a deep and personal understanding of your priorities, and a respect for both yourself and the people you choose to surround your life with.

Living with Craft is:

• Turning off the TV instead of watching another episode of whatever you are watching because the alarm is going off at 5am so you can get to the gym.

• Declining a second glass of wine when you're out to dinner. It might even be declining the first drink and opting for water.

• Maintaining boundaries by saying “no” to the thing you don’t want to do or the person you don’t want to see, even if someone is going to be angry at you.

• Maintaining financial independence.

• Doing work that matters.

• Letting other people take care of themselves.

Working with Craft is:

• Choosing work you want to labor over.

• Maintaining fascination with your work by reflecting on and approach it from various angles.

• Maintaining boundaries by saying “no” to things that take away from you continuing to develop skills and experiment in your Craft.

• Maintaining a unique perspective.

• Making deliberate choices in both life and work that will help you advance in your Craft.

• Surrounding yourself with people who nurture and stretch you.

Looked at this way, craftsmanship is actually kind of boring. It is about showing up, day in and day out – whether you get a result from your labors or not.

Craftsmanship is a discipline, because it takes discipline to do the things that are good for us instead of what feels good in the moment. It takes even more discipline to refuse to take responsibility for other people’s emotional well-being. And it takes discipline to take full and complete responsibility for our own well-being.

Craftsmanship is not something you do once in awhile when the world gets crazy. When you get the boss from hell, or a deal doesn't work out, or you've had a long day of meetings – you don't escape your life to go make cheese at the base of a fjord (yes, more than one client has had that fantasy!). It’s what you do day in and day out that matters. It’s taking care of yourself in a way that doesn’t require you to “indulge” in order to restore balance. It’s making the commitment to stay healthy, engaged by what you do, and finding meaning in your work as a regular practice.

When you truly find work you choose to labor over, you are actually in a much stronger place to help others, give back, and mentor. You will be a happier parent, a more grateful spouse, a fully engaged colleague. Those who take care of themselves have the energy to take care of others joyfully because that care-giving doesn’t come at their own expense. And those who take care of themselves also have the energy to work with meaning and purpose toward a worthy goal. Which means they are also the people most likely to make the world a better place for all of us.

I help individuals and teams engage in and connect more deeply to their careers.

Are you looking to restart, transition or up-level your career?

How do you keep track of your personal development and career goals?

I developed the Becoming Personal Development Journal as a way to keep my milestone goals, progress, and overall thoughts on my own development in one place. Sure, I have my blog to do that, but after inadvertently deleting my blog of ten years when I switched to a web site, I realized the impermanence of ideas. Plus, writing something by hand requires discipline and it’s discipline that comes into play when you are trying to achieve a bold goal.

Through this journal, I wanted to inspire my clients to stay motivated and maintain their momentum as they were rolling off engagements with me.

I started using early versions of the Journal two years ago. I had quit my job to finish my doctorate, was fresh out of my final defense with my committee, recovering from some very painful surgery, and felt a bit rudderless. Because I started this process for myself in August 2015, I made the journal undated. Change starts the day you decide it starts. You do not have to wait till January  to get started. In fact, it’s almost better if you do start at an odd time of the year since you are not distracted by three months of holidays. I noticed that my clients felt a bit overwhelmed with papers and information I had pointed them to during our time together. Many didn’t have a system for keeping their learning in one place. I experimented with PowerPoint and worksheets, with varying degrees of success. There are several worksheets inside the Journal that will help you get organized, focused on your goals, and really learn about yourself as a catalyst and leader. These are informed by both my research and my experiences coaching.

Using the Becoming Development Journal
I make it easy to get going with this journal. I Set up your weeks starting on Mondays and ending on Sundays. Each week, you’re prompted with a question to make you think about your goals and how you plan to get them done. You have space to write the things you are working on (like noticing your attention in meetings or with certain people, noticing your decision making and the quality of your thinking, and even noticing how you felt that day). Some people might develop symbols for some of these concepts. Smiley faces makes a good one for mood. A numerical rating system can also quickly denote how your day is going. I provide example entries to help you get started.

There are a lot of extra sections in this journal, including different approaches to managing stress, avoiding burnout, and a lot more. Over time, see if you utilize the whole journal or only focus on specific sections.

Why Journaling Works
It’s been said that writing down your goals makes them more concrete. Pysch Central has a great article about the benefits of keeping a journal. I noticed that as I logged my goals and the milestones to getting there each day, I learned more about myself, what I do well and where I struggle. I became an effective coach to myself at a time when I couldn’t pay anyone to care. More importantly, the things I want to avoid altogether are there, staring me in the face. I become my best accountability partner. Here, I can be completely honest with how I’m doing and notice trends along the way. Friends are great, but they are soft on us. Managers are great too, but when given a choice to talk about the status of the business v the status of you, they will opt for the business. They generally have extremely limited bandwidth for deep conversation on your personal development. We all have those times in our lives when we need support coupled with an accurate reflection of where we are at.

Using this journal has been helpful for me and my clients. While I love writing about concepts related to coaching on the blog, it’s so much easier to flip a few pages through the journal. A few weeks ago, I had spike in networking activities. Thanks to the Becoming Development Journal, I was able to pinpoint that it happened as a result of being asked to write an article for a local newspaper, which resulted in an invitation to speak on a panel. From there, several meetings sprung up, and in one of them, I received some valuable advice that gave me something to think about in terms of my approach to getting business.

What are your development goals for the coming month? Do you use a journal or a similar method to log your progress?

Best Practice: 3 Reasons you should be logging your personal development

Purpose: developing perspective around a personal, self-accountability practice.

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Whether you are just starting your career, or thirty years (or more) into it, a personal development journal has many benefits. Until recently, I never logged my development. Sure, I had several moleskin notebooks for note taking in meetings. But my personal development, the thing that occupies my life’s focus, had little more than whatever annual reviews I completed that were dictated by the company I worked for. I knew my Compa-Ratio, seniority level, weekly status goals, overall training plan, etc. But I never had anything printed out and tracked daily like I did when I was training for big physical goals. There has never been a reminder to reflect deeply consider my behavior or the quality of my thinking on a daily basis. When I was training for something big, I would cross off each day as I narrowed in on my goal. But when it came to developing myself, it felt more like I was at the mercy of a benevolent manager, enough promotion budget, or the politics of the organization.

Here are the top 3 reasons I have adopted and continue this practice with myself and my clients:

1. Goal Setting 

Aiming for and working towards good goals that motivate you helps keep things interesting. It helps you to continue to improve and take charge of your growth. Once you reach one goal, set another. Push yourself, maybe even more than you want to.

2. Progress

Feeling discouraged? Do you not notice improvement? If you are keeping a development journal you will be able to look back and find what may be holding you back. On the other hand, your development may be going great! If so, you can go through your journal to see what is working for you and keep it up. Logging progress can also help you to determine future goals.

3. Accountability

Having a development journal can help to keep you dedicated when you’re having one of those ‘I don’t wanna think about it’ days, and we all have them! On days when I don’t feel like reflecting on myself I will read though my journal. Remember that day you had a great meeting or won over a skeptical stakeholder? Or the long, all day session where you presented material several times and nailed it? All of this info should be in your journal. Your ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ of developing will all be there too, and it isn’t going anywhere. It will be right there waiting for you to complete it. It is like having an accountability buddy with you!

When I didn’t see a development journal that I would use or recommend to my coaching clients, I wrote one. It is 12 months, undated so you can start page one at any time of the year. It includes everything from development tips to quizzes, to note taking sections to take all the information in. You have pages dedicated to your goals and to your upcoming milestones (i.e., a meeting, a speech, a difficult conversation, a key deliverable, etc.). It focuses on offering a holistic framework for you to get the most out of your development journal as possible.

You can write directly in the book. Highlight different activities in different colors, or use symbols to quickly communicate your progress. It’s not meant to be a tome, and trains you to be succinct. For ideas on how to start, check out posts on developing a Morning Practice, Evening Practice, and what it means to Maintain Tension.

Do you log your personal development? If so what do you include?

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Alongside technical skills, people who can master a range of subjective skills are better able to influence, deal with ambiguity, bounce back from setbacks, think creatively, and manage themselves successfully in their pursuit of mastery. Learn more about skills of modern craftsmanship.