The shifting sands of motivation

I spent most of the past two decades chasing the wrong goals. It’s a sobering realisation.

Now I have a clean slate (I exited my business Clarity in January) I’m working hard to make decisions through the prism of what actually matters to me.

‘What actually matters to me’ remains a somewhat hazy set of ideas, however, made fuzzy by 20 years’ pursuing goals I now know to have no real value.

They were shiny distractions masquerading as meaningful goals.

I started my first company — a PR consultancy I rather grandly named ‘Ubiquity’ — 20 years ago from my university digs. The impetus to start this business was to fund a 21 year-old’s goals and aspirations.

They now seem comical in their simplicity: I wanted to chase girls (which I did very unsuccessfully); play football (which I did somewhat successfully); and get my degree with as little time and effort as possible (which I did very successfully [NB. I’m not proud of this]).

After graduating I started other various other businesses. And the underlying drivers and motivations for these ventures — and more generally my various life decisions — shifted over time.

The biggest theme was my preoccupation with creating the optics of success and status. I wanted to project to the world an image of someone who was accomplished. I was the guy jetting around for terribly important meetings. The guy with fancy offices in multiple locations. With a large and growing team of employees.

This was pure ego. Total bullshit.

Now that I contemplate the shape of my life at this inflection point, I know none of these extrinsic motivations matter in the slightest: they are extremely seductive but ultimately meaningless. There’s a vapid, empty feeling associated with pursuing them.

Today, as I consider my prospects and explore new opportunities, my motivations are much more intrinsic in nature:

• I want to spend the majority of my working hours doing ‘deep work’. Work that is inherently satisfying.
• I want the output of whatever I do to be exceptional. An uncompromising commitment to excellence in everything I do — big and small — is the goal.
• I want to be helpful. To be useful. I want to make a positive difference to the lives of people I touch.
• I want to work with people who inspire and stretch me. I want to work with people who give me energy, not deplete it.
• More than anything, I want to create the optimal conditions to be the best father, husband, son, brother and friend I can be.

After two decades of chasing the wrong rewards, I have a mountain to climb. Some of my habits are ingrained. I still find myself falling into the traps of the past. I remain, at times, complicit in creating the conditions I say I don’t want (to borrow Jerry Colonna’s brilliant insight).

I share this all force a degree of accountability and, hopefully, in the spirit of helping others ask the same questions and interrogate the validity and value of their own drivers.

Believe me, it’s so easy to get swept away with the extrinsic, ego-driven, bullshit motivators and forget to really interrogate and commit to living a life guided by the things that really matter.