This is the second blog post in a series about my experiences working through the Productivity Field Guide by David Sparks, available in the Plus and the Standard editions. I intend to write 10-12 posts covering each of the major topics in the Field Guide.
In this post, I want to help you identify your roles and write your Arete “best possible version of yourself” statements. To do so, I will describe how I worked through the process. This is the most exciting and difficult part of this process, a journey of self-discovery and setting life intentions.
I’m describing my approach and process, not to say you have to do it exactly like I did and reach the same results, but to provide a model to give you an idea of one way you can do it. It’s to help get you started in your process. You have your life and what you consider important; your roles must reflect these.
Using The “Carrying Water” List To Help You to Identify Your Roles
In Part 1: Getting Started With a “Carrying Water” List, I described the process of writing down my activities for a few weeks to see accurately what I spent my time doing.
The next step was to start grouping these activities under life roles. So, for instance, my activities of doing laundry, making meals, paying bills, and cleaning my bathroom are all elements of the role I’ve decided to call “Household Manager.”
I wrote all my “carrying water” items in an Apple Notes document. As I identified roles from my list, I wrote the role’s name and placed the activity under that role. That helped me to visualize what roles I’d created and what activities still lacked roles I needed to develop.
It’s a “bottom-up” approach that is practical and realistic. Since I had identified my roles three years before the Productivity Field Guide was published, I had a head start on this process. However, I still found this exercise extremely valuable. The first time I identified my roles, it was more of a “top-down” approach in which I focused on naming the roles in my life. It seemed to me a more nebulous approach than starting with a list of my activities and then creating the roles out of that list.
a. Identifying New Roles, Including an Aspirational Role
As a result of reviewing my “carrying water” list, I realized that some of my activities did not fit in any of my existing roles.
I was journaling about my thoughts, cultivating gratefulness in my morning routine, and thinking a lot about the big questions in life, like “What is the purpose and meaning of my life?” and “How can I best live my life?” I was reading a lot of Stoic Philosophy about living in a way that resulted in happiness and tranquility.
I decided to combine these activities in the role I named “Spiritual Person.” Due to my conservative Christian religious background, I struggled with using the title “spiritual.” I had only used this word regarding religious experiences. However, I learned the word is employed in a much broader sense and decided to use it.
My “carrying water” list showed that I periodically donated money to charitable activities. I also realized that I wanted to volunteer some of my time in a public service role. I’d done this in the past and wanted to do so again. I named this role “Serving Altruist.” To me, the word “giving” describes my active participation.
The “Serving Altruist” role is an example of an aspirational role. I was not involved in public service volunteering when I created this role. But it was an aspiration. After designating this role, I have volunteered as a National Park Service volunteer, helping serve the public at the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, about an hour from where I live in South Dakota. Creating the role helped motivate me to realize my aspiration to serve, which prompted me to find a volunteer opportunity.
b. Renaming Some Roles
In several cases, I renamed roles to describe them better.
The “Household Manger” role I described earlier was initially called “Responsible Person.” As I went through this exercise, I realized that it wasn’t as much a description of the role as it was a description of how I acted within that role and all of the others, for that matter. So I decided to rename it “Household Manager.”
I renamed my “Creator/Teacher” role “Teaching Enthusiast.” Teaching seems inherently an act of creation (in researching, preparing, and delivering), so there was no need to use the word creator in my role description. Also, “creator” is a little too trendy of a word for my tastes. Finally, I’m not just a teacher; I love teaching either in writing or in person, and I’m enthusiastic about teaching.
I also renamed “jimOS” to become “Productive Person.” I have a distinct role in managing my life, which helps me become a better person as I strive to live up to my Arete, or “best possible version of myself” statements for each role. I use the systems described in the Productivity Field Guide to regularly review my roles and Arete statements and to plan projects and habits that help me to improve in each role.
Don’t necessarily be satisfied with the first name you assign to a role. Be creative and try out some different names to see what resonates with you.
c. Too Many or Too Few Roles?
One question many people participating in the Productivity Field Guide Plus Edition webinars have asked is, “How many roles should I have?” David Sparks typically answers, “As many as you can comfortably manage.”
Ultimately, it’s not a question someone else can answer for you. It’s what you are comfortable with and can manage in weekly, monthly, and quarterly reviews. You want to have enough roles to cover all the essential things you do but not a separate role for each activity.
I have thirteen roles at present. You may have seven or fifteen. Whatever works for you is fine. If you have too many roles, see if you can combine some under one overarching role.
I have several hobbies. I like to day hike, do overnight backpacking trips, play war games on my computer, read historical fiction, do photography, and watch movies and series. I don’t have a separate role for each of these. Instead, I have one role, “Hobbyist,” in which I combine all my hobbies. This makes the role more manageable to review and plan for.
d. Identifying Roles Will Always Be a Work In Progress
In my first post in this series, I discussed the idea that your “carrying water” list would likely change over time. David Sparks talks about the need for us to develop “water radar” to identify new potential or actual activities we have.
Since our activities will likely change over time, our roles will also change. We may envision a new aspirational role that we want to bring into our lives or decide to take on a new role.
Sometimes, a new proposed activity may not fit any of our existing roles. This can be an opportunity to decide whether or not we want to take on this new activity. If it’s not something that is important to us, or we don’t have time to do it in addition to all of our other roles, we might decide not to add it.
Write Arete Statements for Your Roles
In the Productivity Field Guide, Sparks describes his college education, where he studied Ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, and his encounter with the Greek word Arete. He understands it as meaning “excellence in living one’s life.”
a. Write Ideal Statements for Each of Your Roles
A critical part of Spark’s roles-based system is to write your answer to the question, “What would it look like if I lived my best life in this role?”
Arete statements are intended to be aspirational statements describing your behavior if you lived an excellent life in the role.
They are ideal statements describing behavior we will likely never reach. They are ideals to aspire to and to evaluate your behaviors against. It’s OK that we’ll never be able to fully reach our ideals.
b. Write Your Statements in Bullet Points
I suggest you write your statements in the first person, describing the ideal behavior.
When I first did this exercise, I wrote statements like, “I should listen to my wife when she talks to me.” That was a mistake. It needs to be written as a positive statement of my ideal behavior, not an admonishment of what it should be. There’s a huge psychological difference between writing, “I should listen to my wife,” and, “I look Lanette in the eye and listen intently to her when she speaks to me.” That’s inspirational and an ideal to look up to and motivate me.
When I started three years ago, I wrote my Arete statements in paragraph form. Later, I changed them all to bullet points. I find bullet points stand out more as individual ideal statements, making it easier for me to remember and to carefully review them.
On the other hand, there’s nothing wrong with writing Arete statements in paragraphs if that’s what works for you. See my How Using Bullet Points in Life Role Descriptions Can Supercharge Your Reviews.
c. Rewriting My Arete Statements
As a part of the redo of my roles-based system, I rewrote my Arete statements for each role.
I intentionally didn’t review my previous work when I created my new “carrying water” list, identified my roles, and wrote my Arete statements. I didn’t want to be overly influenced by what I had done in the past. I tried to approach each role as brand new and write each Arete statement as though it were the first time.
As a result of my process, I found I repeated some of the same Arete statements I’d written in the past. But often, there were new ideas and new ways of saying things. This new set is more honest, practical, and down-to-earth than my prior statements.
If you’re doing this for the first time, try to be as open and honest as possible as you write your Arete statements. What would it look like if I lived my best life in this role?
d. You’ll Revise and Add to Your Arete Statements Over Time
When you write your Arete statements, they are not set in stone. As a part of my quarterly reviews (we’ll talk about those in a future blog post in this series), I specifically review my roles and Arete statements with the idea of making revisions.
They need to change over time to reflect our changing lives.
A Productivity System for All of My Life Roles
My goal and purpose in life is to become the best person I can be in each role. This is not just a “pie in the sky” kind of exercise but is meant to be practical. My roles and Arete drive how I live my life. My review system keeps my roles and Arete statements at the top of my mind and drives my projects and habits.
This blog post is about identifying your roles and writing your Arete statements. I discuss how I worked through the process and provide a model to give you an idea of how to do it. I also share some tips and insights on renaming roles, identifying new roles, and finding the right number of roles for you.
I suggested that identifying roles is a work in progress and that Arete statements should be written in bullet points. I also mention that Arete statements can be revised and added to over time. Ultimately, this system is meant to help you become the best version of yourself in each role.