Ground Truth Introduction
If professional goals are various destinations of professional development, I see professional ground truths as the rules of the road: guiding principals to standardize behavior and keep you safe on your way to those goals.
What makes my ground truths good enough to share?
First of all, they work great for me (and this is my blog)! But, in their infancy, these ground truths helped me build a babysitting empire in high school. At the age of 16, I had built a network of over 60 families that I babysat for.
As the ground truths evolved, they helped me graduate at the top of my class from the University of Virginia in 3 years with a degree in statistics while working as an RA (and somehow maintaining a social life).
Now, after about 2 years in the workforce, I can say they have helped me find fulfillment and promotion in my career, learn a LOT, find more life balance.
At the risk of sounding cheesy, I really think the journey of finding your ground truths is as important in having them written out. I also think they may look different for every person. But, I’ve been asked to share them before, so here they are below.
My Professional Ground Truths!
1. Quick and Centralized Access to Resources (5 clicks)
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This means being able to get to every single weekly function of the project in less than 5 clicks. What does this look like?
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When I was babysitting in high school, everything I needed to know about my jobs, clients, and marketing was on my phone in 4 apps. Facebook was my marketing platform, my Contacts App was my client database, and Calendar/iMessage was my baby-CRM.
When I was a busy college student and working, I kept a bookmark folder in my browser for every class, club, and work project. I was able to access any syllabus, learning platform, RA budget spreadsheet, or event planning document at anytime in under 5 clicks.
Today for my 9-5, I follow similar practices and make sure all job resources are well documented and accessible. Good project management (internal or client-facing) should help with this by giving all team members a central place to access project resources. Either way, I use my browser’s Bookmarks Bar to hold a folder of links per project or effort, even one for professional development.
2. Excellent Time Management
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I keep a central calendar and stick to it. I review it daily and proactively reach out about conflicts. What does this look like?
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For babysitting clients in high school, I only canceled on a job once out of literally thousands. I was able to do this through keeping a babysitting calendar that had my school and sport hours blocked out with every single babysitting job as an event with standardized fields. Unless the job was weekly, I often texted clients the day before the actual job for confirmation and parking details.
These days, I dedicate 15 minutes in the morning to write down my day’s calendar events (social, focus blocks, exercise, meals, work meetings, etc) in order as a daily “Overview”. I take a peek at the next day’s too and reach out in case of any conflicts. While my initial overview often changes as the day goes on, writing it down in the morning holds me accountable to maintaining it.
I’ve recently started time blocking a bit, where If I have a heads-down task that I need to do, I block it off in my calendar. This helps me manage my own time and helps my teammates find my availability accurately when I’m not immediately available.
3. Keep a Living TODO List
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Anytime I agree to do something for someone, I jot it down alongside when I promised to get it done by. I cross it off when done. What does this look like?
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This will look different for everyone. My TODO list now is written down on a daily basis (with rollover from the previous day) in a notebook I keep at my desk. It could also be electronic. At the end of the day, it looks like a list of meeting action items, small tasks I have agreed to do throughout the day, and reminders (like logging my time).
4. Be Kind to Yourself and Others
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This one is pretty self explanatory, but may be the most difficult. I’ll tell you a little bit about what it’s looked like for me over the years.
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I am notoriously hard on myself. I literally quit playing basketball after 4 years at 9 years old because I could not shoot 100%. It’s taken some time to realize how toxic perfectionism is, even if it has “helped” me reach some of my goals.
Now more than ever, I extend a lot of kindness to myself. When I “mess up,” I like to question if it’s really even a mess up in the grand scheme of things. Is someone’s life in danger? Is my safety or career on the line? Then I often consult my support system, think a little about how I can do better next time, and make sure I do it.
When someone else “messes up,” I try to treat the situation similarly as when I mess up and respond accordingly. I think that everyone goes through pretty hard stuff, and I rarely find myself around people who do bad things intentionally. With this in mind, a general empathetic approach just makes sense to me.