What do you do, how do you feel when a project you’ve been working on is successfully accomplished? Basking a few moments in the satisfaction that you have completed it is quite acceptable and I would think – mandatory. However, when basking becomes excessive, this is as useless as wallowing in other more negative emotions. Regardless… after the time of basking is over, now what do you do?
Some people will have planned for this situation when they saw that the project they had been working on was in the winding down stage and already have a new project ‘at the ready’. Others look around somewhat baffled that the project has ended and aren’t completely certain what they do want to do now. I think the point is that the time that had been charged to the project now is open and available for whatever the ‘next’ is to be.
I know, for myself, what it can’t be – and that’s an important understanding too. I really dislike ‘make work’ – my definition of that is doing something to fill the time but the value is only to fill the time. Whatever I undertake next has got to have value, meaning, purpose, and there has to be a passion about actually doing (fill in the blank). These are my criteria but you need to know what yours are. What are the essential ingredients that you need to be in evidence before you move on to a new project?
There’s a great deal of satisfaction that one feels when the project you are working on results in an ‘accomplished’ status. No one wants to undertake their ‘next’ with less than those intangible ingredients that support and underscore the last accomplished. Whatever your passion is, it typically leads you in those areas that embody the intangibles. Regardless of the obstacles and problems you will face in the next project, without those intangibles being part of the project it will be extremely difficult to push through and continue.
Savor the accomplishment but do analyze it as well to identify those important ‘criteria’ for you that kept you going in the tough times and that lifted you up. If you do this then you can further.. ‘accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative’ as the song suggests.
