100 Business Days Out: Day 30- Slight Movement

Today I made some movement in what I am doing by deciding to join the Board of Glassdoor.com. The people, the idea, and the need for the technology/product is so strong that I felt deeply that it was something which I wanted to be involved. But that is not what I want to write about. What I want to express is the feeling that I felt with the decision. With this decision I felt a very real inner excitement about what I can do and what this opportunity means. Of course it is a great thing to have in front of me, but what is really great is that since I have been saying no to so many good choices in front of me that making this decision is a multiplying feeling of satisfaction. This just reinforces to me that when someone is making career decisions that it is better to be in a place where you can step back and see the landscape and have multiple choices before making a decision. This runs counter to conventional wisdom where it is better to have a job when you are looking for one. That probably still holds true from a hiring or recruiting perspective but from the decision-making/candidate angle I don’t think it holds up any longer. Especially for those who know they will have multiple choices. It is hard to make decisions with all the noise, pressures, priorities sitting on our desk and shoulders. It is not until you can sit in the quiet of the morning or the stillness of the evening and let your mind drift that you can make the best decisions. And when it comes to those decisions that are going to effect time away from family, friends, ourselves, the risk of not making a good decision come with high stakes. I am glad I have found some quiet to date and I am looking forward to more over the next few months. And I am also glad I have made some movement that has come from this quiet period. If you have not found your own quiet time, do. An hour, a half hour, whatever you can find, will give you better decision making and better reflection on what is important and what is not. And when it comes to decisions on how you will spend the most precious resource we have; time, then taking the time to make the right decision is imperative.