Conscious Ambition Tips: Think differently to be more sustainably ambitious
Can engaging in creative practices help us on our journey of Sustainable Ambition? Can we apply them to live and work in more fulfilling and satisfying ways?
I’ve been curious about this given the creative journey of writing my book. While I’ve created **all my life in different mediums, the book experience and coming back to innovation work are what made me revisit creative practices, exploring them with new eyes. This renewed interest inspired me to speak with people in creative disciplines to learn more, and this month’s podcast episodes center on this topic. What I’ve learned so far is that creative practices can uniquely help us understand the goals we want to pursue, navigate the changes and evolution of our ambitions, and sustain us along the way.
This month’s first episode is with Doug Neill, founder of Verbal to Visual. Doug was the first in the series to remind me that different mediums, like using visualization and sketching, help us to think and see in new ways. We can see information in a new light, view problems differently, and unlock fresh insights.
Below in the conscious ambition tips, I feature Doug’s work, because I found his insights and tools to be inspiring and compelling—a playful, fun way to make us more conscious about our ambitions and our ability to build sustainability for ourselves.
Conscious Ambition Tips
The Networked Self.
I was grateful for Doug pulling this idea to the forefront for me and reminding me of it being featured in Tara McMullin's book, *What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal Setting.*
The networked self is a concept that comes from philosopher Kathleen Wallace and is a simple way to explore and claim multiple sides of ourselves and see ourselves as having multiple identities.
Doug shares an example and more here.
Bring your values to your work.
Writing about our values has a lot of positive benefits, according Dr. Kelly McGonigal, a lecturer at Stanford and author of The Upside of Stress.
Connecting our values to what we do creates motivation and meaning in our work.
A fun approach for exploring this is with Doug’s 6 Scoops exercise.
For me, it’s a way to make bringing our values into our work accessible. You might think it’s childlike, and that’s just the point! Bringing a little play and joy to connect to our work can, well, bring play and joy to our work. I think this would also be great to do with a cross-functional team working on a project together.
What’s a value that would make it into your 6 scoops?
On a current project, mine are: 1. creativity 2. curiosity 3. a growth-mindset 4. play 5. connection 6. patience
Manage your capacity and your effort by making it visible.
“Where I think visual thinking can support the pursuit of Sustainable Ambition is by helping you to see what those commitments are that you’re making and how they fit together.” — Doug Neill
A way to do this, as Doug shared in our conversation, is through a mind map, flowchart, or another visual diagram, sketching out different components of your responsibilities across your personal and professional lives. (As an example, I’m sharing a sketch of an ideal week for me, which is one of the exercises I have people do as part of creating a sustaining plan.)
With all you're doing in front of you, you can see: How are things connected? Where might you be over-committed?
You might find: “Once it's laid out there on the page in front of you, you kind of can’t deny it anymore. You can see, ‘Yeah, this is too much.’” — Doug Neill
With new information, you can make new choices.
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