Don't stop growing

When I was asked “What matters most to you?” two years ago, I answered that it was my pursuit of self-improvement. It was true then; it continues to be true today.

Growth allows me to be a better, more effective self. Some of it comes from expanded knowledge, which widens my understand the world and enables me to solve bigger problems. Some of it comes from self-awareness, which allows me to focus on what I enjoy most. More of it comes from varied experiences, with which I continue to refine my world view.

My personal Growth framework Growth has 3 elements: Theory, Experience, and Reflection.

Theory: compiled from experiences of others; books; articles; talks; stories
Experience: applied theory; life encounters; real world joys and pains
Reflection: process of measuring and internalizing experiences

Malcolm Gladwell, through his countless social studies of people, summarized that “People are experience rich and theory poor.” That resonated with me, and I would add that Reflection is the crucial — also oftentimes difficult and painful — process of making sense of Experience. It’s this process of Reflection that underlies my growth.

At Google, I work on long-term projects that are ongoing; in the professional world at large, this is frequently the case. After all, the success of a business derives from having being able to do something very well over time. That means to an individual, the day-to-day is fairly consistent.

While there is certainly knowledge learning (over the last 2.5 years, I’ve become very familiar with the ads business), majority of my continued growth is in soft skills. These are learned through experiences of interacting with others, leading projects, and trial/error.

Over time, I realized I needed to make a conscious effort to measure, reflect on, and organize my experience.

I do it by:

Journaling weekly, writing down what I’ve learned in the past week.
Setting quarterly goals of the top 3 areas I want to develop, and measure against that. (I’ve tried monthly too, but the overhead is too much.)
Setting annual goals of how I want to see a tangible difference from the previous year.

Experiences and soft skills are difficult to measure quantitatively. This frustrated me immensely in the past (I’m one to believe that if it’s not measured, it didn’t happen), before I developed my own framework. While it’s difficult to see qualitative change overnight, it’s possible to observe a step change over 3-months to 1-year.

I leave you with an inspirational formula I adapted from a Quora answer, that highlights the power of compounding.

If you ask me what I’m optimizing for, I will tell you that I’m optimizing for growth and learning, at least for the next few years. I believe that there is ample time to execute and create.