November 10

Your Manifesto

Do you remember the movieJerry Maguire? Sports agent Maguire spent all night writing a manifesto about how dysfunctional his industry had become and how to fix it. He delivered copies to his entire company, hoping it would set the stage for a massive change. Instead, he was fired.

Did Jerry do the right thing? Well, sort of. Just going along with the way things are as a way of keeping the peace is no way to produce a body of work that you’ll be proud of later. However, making copies for every- one may have been a lapse in judgment.

Still, getting clear on your values and principles is important to doing work you can stand behind. I challenge you to write your own manifesto. It doesn’t have to be dozens of pages. It can simply be a list of five or ten principles that define how you will engage your life and work each day. They can be simple, and they only have to matter to you. However, they should frame up how you will make decisions each day and the princi- ples by which you will live, work, and produce. (Just learn from Jerry Maguire and keep this manifesto to yourself.)

Writing your own personal manifesto is a great way to clarify what really matters to you and to build a framework for making per- sonal and career decisions.

QUESTION

What are the principles of your manifesto? Don’t have one? Write it!