It's the rest of it.

Hi Arcadians,

I was recently talking to a friend, and an Arcadia member. “Work is the easy part. We are all very good at what we do. The rest of it, family, presence, boundaries, choosing how you show up. That is what we need to pay attention to” Shannon said in our conversation.

After hearing her say this, I have not been able to stop thinking about it. Shannon was not saying that work is mindless and we can just show up. She was saying we have spent so much of our life learning how to work, learning how to be good at our jobs. There are endless playbooks and strategies and philosophies on how to be better at what we do. Find a mentor. Read a business book. Learn from someone who has done it before. Join a business community.

Maybe this is the exact reason why so many of us lose ourselves in our jobs. Because there is a roadmap. There are clear metrics and predictable outcomes. Do this and, achieve that. And of course we all work to get paid, to make money and to make a living. We find our identity in these jobs. We take pride in how good we are at what we do. And there is nothing wrong with that.

But “the rest of it” is so personal and different and unique to each of us that there are no playbooks. The accolades are not as obvious and the work is ambiguous. Which makes it much easier to ignore.

There are thousands of self-help books, parenting books, finance books, fitness books. Yet all of it is personal. And none of us are logging in to a parenting program or a health program for nine hours a day the way we log into our jobs. No one is holding us accountable with performance metrics on how we show up for our spouse or our kids or our friends. Which means it is up to us to be extraordinarily diligent with our time and attention. To choose to focus on “the rest of it.”

I find myself agreeing with Shannon that work is the easy part because society is set up to make us good workers. But how many conferences or trainings have you attended on being a better spouse, a better friend, a better parent? How many keynotes have you heard on well-being and presence instead of pipeline and performance? Titles come and go. Money is a currency that flows. But “the rest of it” is what we truly have to show for at the end of the day, and yet it is what gets the last of us.

Shannon is our Arcadian of the Month, and through this conversation she shared what she is most proud of: “To have capacity at the end of the day for the people I love and the life we are building. That is an achievement. It might be the biggest.”

At Arcadia, we believe that better people make better leaders. And better people are whole people. They are more than their title. They are more than their salary. They are people who are building a legacy and pursuing their own version of greatness. Join us.

Here is Shannon’s full interview, and it’s worth a read.

Be Great,
Sam