…And another thing

It is indeed. Knowing what you want gives you direction and helps you avoid dead ends. Often, when you are stuck and feel pulled in many directions and don’t know what to do, asking the question, “What do I want?” is the most important and useful thing you can do.

The phrase is deceptively simple, however. It’s a good idea to look at it more closely.

I said, “The main thing.” It’s not the only thing. It’s not sufficient, all by itself. After you decide what you want, then consider other things: obstacles, the effect of getting what you want on your relationships, how it might change you, what might happen as a result. These are important, too. They are just not the main thing, and not what you should worry about first. Often, we do put those things first, and get tangled up.

Then there’s “to know.” YOU have to know. Others don’t, at least right away. On a simple level, it’s not clear that everyone cares. And strategically, it often pays to keep it to yourself until you have thought it all out. You’ll need to do a lot of planning, once you figure out where you are going, and there will be a number of missteps and mistakes along the way. You can always involve others when you are ready.

Don’t forget that this is what YOU want. It’s very easy to blur in what others – your parents, friends, boss, spouse or S.O. – may want. That may be why you are asking yourself the question in the first place! Surprisingly often, it is not so easy to strip out the wishes of these people and to get a firm grasp on what you really want, minus the influences of others. They may well be fine folks. But they aren’t you.

And this is what you WANT. That’s not the same thing as what you need, or can afford, and there’s nothing that says you are entitled to it. The point is that if you know what you want you can focus your energies there, instead of frittering away a lot of time and effort. In fact, one way to be sure you know what you want is to see how much you’re willing to work to get it. If you really want something, you’ll put in the effort.

Answering the question, “What do I want?” is often much harder than it seems at first. But it may be one of the most worthwhile things you can do.

Went to the Past of Web Apps (POWA) conference. The best session covered the first tablet – used to launch the Ten Commandments. It became very popular in spite of being TOTALLY proprietary. Compared with earlier Templetops, it was mobile but still very heavy, and relied on inflexible hard-coding. Now, it did format side-by-side columns with a clean, table-free design, but they only displayed correctly in one browser – Mosezilla. The code itself was easy to learn, though, and represented the first universal set of standards.