“Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.” - Khalil Gibran

Over the past week, I’ve had the delightful opportunity to spend time with some young friends who were visiting us from Canada and one of the topics of our conversation was how I intended to spend my time once I retire. I’d come home from work to hear wonderful stories of their adventures seeing San Francisco, Yosemite and Sequoia National Park for the first time and this lead to some discussions of the volunteer work I have done in Yosemite for more than 25 years.

My friends assumed, correctly, that one of the most important things for me in retirement would be to continue to make a difference. We talked about my interest in doing more volunteer work in the national parks and working to help children and adults learn to read. We also talked about some very social activities, like making music with friends, and some more solitary and contemplative pursuits like writing and composing. I hope to spend a fair amount of time on creative pursuits like woodworking, art, and blacksmithing, too.

Conversations like these always seem to help me as I prepare for retirement and I appreciate that friends have an interest in what will come next for me. Now that our friends have begun their journey home, I find myself thinking about our conversations and about the stages of life we all experience. I listened to them and remembered earlier stages of my life and I imagine they listened to me, and listen to their parents, and think about the changes they will some day experience when they are my age.

All of this reminds me today of a Hindu way of describing the stages of life that has seemed very useful to me since I first encountered it some forty years ago. While I don’t pretend to have a deep understanding of Hindu belief or philosophy, and while I am sure I would not agree with all of the teachings in texts like the  Manusmṛti that provides one of the earliest descriptions of this system

the simple idea that there are a four clear stages to life, and four key goals, has been interesting and helpful to me for many years.

The Ashram system describes four Ashrama, or stages, of life: Brahmacharya (student life), Grihastha (household life), Vanaprastha (retired life), and Sannyasa (renounced life). As a student, the young person is in a stage of life focused on learning, practicing self-discipline and learning to live in the right way. I remember this part of my life and appreciate my parents, teachers and friends who helped me learn and grow. As a householder, a person spends their time and energy enjoying family life, attending to their duties to their family and society, and working to earn a living. The householder also takes responsibility for children, students, and elders.

As I prepare to move from that stage of my life when I have primarily been a householder and to enter retirement, I am grateful to my family and friends for the rich and rewarding experiences I have had as a father, an uncle and great-uncle, a worker, a boss, and especially a spouse and a friend. I’m glad that I’ve had the chance to work to provide for my family! I’m also very glad that my roles as spouse, father, uncle, great-uncle and friend will continue in retirement. I’m ready to let go of being worker and boss and hope to one day be a grandfather, too.

In the Ashram system, the retired life allows a person to gradually withdraw from the world, freely share their wisdom with others and prepare for the final stage of life. For my part, I hope, and expect that the process of withdrawal will be very slow and gradual. While I am ready to set aside the duties of my profession, there are many new things I look forward to engaging in with my time and energy and I am especially looking forward to having more time with my loved ones.

Some day, I imagine I will be ready for something akin to sannyasa when I will focus more and more on leaving this world in the best way. While I have watched some who have gone before me live through this stage of life, I have much to learn before I will understand it better. I hope I will have many years to do that learning.

In these Hindu teachings, a life lived in this way helps a person fulfill four key aims: Dharma (living in the right way), Artha (meaning and purpose), Kama (the aesthetic enjoyment of life, love, and emotional fulfillment), and Moksha (liberation, freedom, self-realization and self-knowledge). If I were to live a life that allowed me to find, and balance, these things, I’m certain that would be a life very well lived!

As I prepare to move to the next stage of my life, there is work I look forward to doing that I will be more free to do by not having to earn a living. In addition to volunteering in the parks and for literacy, I’d like to work for gender equity, climate change and sustainability to help ensure that all our children, grandchildren, and their children and grandchildren, live in a world better than the one we inherited from our parents. These are ambitious goals I’d have to pursue with a certain amount of faith as we will surely not live to see all the results of our efforts.

I also look forward to more time with nature, hiking and stargazing, to more meditation, music, laughter, love, and quiet times with family and friends. I’ll be preparing over the next 22 months. I know I have so much to learn and I’m sure there will be challenges and surprises in this new stage of life. I’m pretty sure I’ll be ready for those!

"We take care of our health, we lay up money, we make our room tight, and our clothing sufficient; but who provides wisely that he or she shall not be wanting in the best property of all--friends?” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

As I return to work after our recent vacation with dear friends, I am very aware of what matters most to me in life. My idea of a successful career is one where the work I do provides enough for my family and time for me to spend with them and with friends.

A neighbor of mine recently lamented that too many of us strive for financial success at the expense of all else. He said to me “It seems the goal is to work hard and die rich.” I said to him, that I’d prefer to work hard enough to support what really matters and die happy. I'll never be wealthy but, if I am successful, I will live a life that is rich in the love of my family and friends.

Another friend recently asked me how I know whether I am successful, how this has changed over time, and what were the main things I have learned in the course of my career that made a positive difference. I thought her questions were very good and I enjoyed thinking about my answers.

For me success has come to have a lot to do with balance. While I have had other executives tell me that work/life balance just doesn't seem possible, I'd consider surrendering on that issue to be failure. So, I consider myself successful when I am able to provide excellent service to my university, balancing requirements with resources, while remaining fully present and engaged with my loved ones. Ultimately, I am a man who works in IT and success means giving the life I live with my loved ones first priority.

My definition of success hasn’t really changed all that much over the years. I've always valued family first. Very early in my career, success for me was more about finding ways to move up the value chain at work so that I could earn a better living. There were also times later in my career when I got out of balance trying to provide more to the university than was reasonable. Working an average of 50-60 hours a week in an effort to meet the expectations of "doing more with less" during a budget crisis contributed to some health problems and helped me refocus on a healthy balance.

Some of the key lessons I’ve learned are these. Ultimately, we can only do so much. Taking time to understand priorities and set clear expectations is valuable and necessary. I can remember saying to a new boss of mine "What we can do, we will. What we can't do, we won't". Sometimes it's that simple.

I've always struggled with saying "no" and that is still true today. What I have managed to learn is how to shape what I am saying "yes" to instead. When I can't say "yes" to the initial ask, I can talk about options and what is possible, or what is a reasonable step toward the ultimate goal. Most often, we can arrive at something that is helpful, appreciated, and achievable.

Roy Disney said, 'It's not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.' I've learned that this is entirely true. We strive to do what is right and that simplifies so many things. Part of this is remembering that we are people working together to accomplish meaningful objectives. Doing what is right with a group of people you respect can be very rewarding.

The greatest measure of success in life for me is love. My purpose in working is to care for those I love and to afford myself the opportunity to express and experience love in my life. They say you can't take it with you, and I'm sure this is true of material wealth. When I die, the things I have accumulated will be left behind. I believe there is one thing that goes on and that is love. The love I've shared with my loved ones will continue, both here on earth and on out into the universe of whatever comes next.

Most of this is a deep mystery for me but I'm quite sure about the infinite permanence of love. In love, my beloveds and I are together everywhere and always, even beyond the end of space and time. We always have been and we always will be. The appearance of separateness is an illusion associated with the way we experience the universe as human beings. I believe there will one day be a physics and cosmology that help explain this. For now, it will seem like metaphysics. So be it.

This past week has given me time to spend with some of my dearest loved ones, time to relax, and some quiet time to reflect. I return to work with renewed energy and a renewed awareness to why I do the work I do.

"Let choice murmur in your ear

And love murmur in your heart.

Be ready... here comes life."

Maya Angelou

As I post this entry to “100 Mondays”, I am on vacation with family visiting our loved ones in Canada. I wrote the thoughts below during some quiet moments over the Fourth-of-July weekend so that I could honor my choice to put my family and loved ones first while we have this time together.

Each day, we make thousands of choices. There are simple choices, like what word I choose to use next in this essay, and difficult choices, like how to respond to a difficult personnel situation. There are trivial choices, like whether to have coffee or tea with breakfast, and vitally important choices, like whether to stay in a job or seek a new opportunity.

Some choices affect no one but ourselves and others will impact the organizations, and people, we serve, or the lives of our loved ones. There are choices we make in the happiest moments of our lives and some made in our deepest moments of crisis or despair. Some of us face choices that mean the difference between life and death for ourselves or others.

The way I make choices has changed significantly over the past 35 years. Although my basic values haven’t changed all that much, I have learned a number of things that have helped me make better choices. Most of these are pretty basic life lessons, but it seems it took me some living to learn them.

One of the earliest lessons I learned is that we are much more together than any of us can be alone. The most exciting, and rewarding experiences in my early years were working with teams delivering amazing results for clients in the savings and loan industry. There was lots of overtime, situations where we had to invent new solutions in the course of a weekend, and moments when it felt like we were sending a rocket to the moon. I learned that the best choices for me would be those that let me be part of something greater than myself.

A much harder lesson to learn was that each of us is responsible for our own happiness. It took years of my not being able to make others happy and of not being made happy by what others did for me, and a failed marriage, to learn this one. I fought this learning but, in the end I learned to choose what will make me happy and, what was much more important, to fully accept the responsibility for the results of my choices. Now I can choose to do things for others because it brings me joy to do so, and I can experience joy in the things others choose to do for me, without expecting that we will make each other happy.

I’ve long understood that money isn’t everything, but I’ve learned how freeing it can be to choose those things in life that are so much more important. Working in education is not the path to wealth, but the working to make a real difference with colleagues who care about this work has been a good choice. Given the choice of pursuing a higher-paying job in another city or staying with the woman I had fallen in love with, and her children, it was clear that more money paled when compared to more love.  I’ve chosen to be with family and to have less stress over money. The less stress thing hasn’t always worked out, but I’m very happy with my choice.

Then a day came when my wife and I faced a choice between money and freedom. Her job stress was climbing while her satisfaction in her work was declining and she had the opportunity to accept a volunteer role that would allow her to work in her passion. With the help of a good financial advisor, we were able to tighten our belts a bit, define a better budget, and make that work. I can honestly say, we’ve never regretted the choice and it has enriched our lives immeasurably for many years now.

While I haven’t done a very good job of learning to say “no”, I am learning how not to say yes to things that are wrong for me. Earlier in my career, any new opportunity to make a greater difference received an automatic “yes” from me and I figured I’d be strong enough to take it on and make it work. Today, I realize that some of the making it work needs to be part of the decision-making process and to include making it work for me. Recently, I am choosing opportunities to make a more measured contribution that are healthier for me.

As I begin considering what I will choose in retirement, I imagine there are still life lessons waiting for me. I’m sure I’ll still need to work on when to say “no” and when to say “yes” and that this new adventure will unfold in ways that surprise me. I still remember being at a concert where Bob Dylan and the Band played “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” and I’m still sure I agree that “He not busy being born is busy dying.” I look forward to being busy being born for many years to come.

"Sometimes thoughts could not be helped, for they were live and unpredictable things with hidden motivation of their own." - W.O. Mitchell in "Who Has Seen the Wind

Today, I find myself thinking about motivation and how essential it is to understand what motivates us, the people we lead, and the leaders we follow. In my career, I have found it easiest to understand my own motivations, and more challenging to understand what motivates the staff and leaders I serve as a manager. Adding to the challenge of understanding the motivations of staff is that they are at different stages of their careers, play significantly different roles in the organization, and have differing priorities depending on their own goals and personalities. While I can gain insights into the motivations of our leaders by listening to them and reviewing strategic plans and other documents, I believe the factors that motivate them are relatively complex and I am less aware of their personal objectives. In addition to pursuing broad goals like student success, they face pressures from state and federal officials, donors, and system-wide priorities. I will listen to understand them as well as I can and I will wish them well.

I gain some insights into staff motivation by considering how my own motivations have changed, and remained the same, over the course of my working life. During the earliest portion of my career, the opportunities to prove myself, demonstrate my problem-solving skills doing interesting work, have access to training, and advance to more responsible positions were more important. Once I had established myself, being trusted to act independently and opportunities for professional development that would help me grow as a manager gained importance for me.

Throughout my entire career, I have been motivated by a desire to make a difference, to be included in relevant decision making, and to work for leaders I can trust, and who trust me. Stability that helps me offer my family security and overall satisfaction and happiness have been very important to my being able to give my best and consistently seek to provide more value. Today, as I plan the end of my career in IT, having the respect of my peers, and the opportunity to help position those I work with, and the initiatives we are pursuing, for success in a way that will extend beyond my planned retirement are especially motivating to me.

Some of you may wonder why I haven’t mentioned compensation. While I have respected colleagues who don’t agree, I simply don’t think that money is an effective motivator. Although I work to make a living, it isn’t the money that motivates me to do good work and strive to make a greater difference. Instead, I agree with those who would describe money as a satisfier. While I have always appreciated increases in my salary, and especially those that recognized the special value of my efforts, the impact of these on my motivation has always been short-lived. I have found it easy to get used to each increased level of income. Once this occurs, that salary becomes the new normal and ceases to motivate me. In the later part of my career, I’ve taken on much greater responsibilities with no additional compensation or, in one case, an increase that was clearly not enough to compensate me for the added stress and effort of more responsible duties. I was motivated to accept these challenges because they allowed me to make a difference and reflected the respect and trust of the leaders I serve.

While I don’t think money is a motivator, I do think that dissatisfaction can be and I know that it has been for me and for colleagues I respect. This can take the form of being dissatisfied with salary and I think this confuses the way we discuss money as a motivator. While I don’t believe more money will motivate people to increase the value of their work for long, I do believe that dissatisfaction with too little compensation can motivate people to prove they deserve a raise. Unfortunately, this situation is also one that often prevents us from retaining valuable employees. They can resolve their dissatisfaction by finding a better job elsewhere.

Another way we confuse money and motivation is to think that recognition in the form of financial bonuses or greater investment in an employee means that the employee has been motivated by the money. I don’t believe this is what takes place in these situations. Instead, I think the money represents in a tangible way, and helps communicate, the respect, appreciation, and trust we feel for the employee. What is motivating is this feeling of earned respect, appreciation, and trust. I think the desire to retain, and expand, these deeply important intangible gains is the motivator.

The most important examples of dissatisfaction as a motivator in my career have had nothing to do with money and I’ll provide two examples. Feeling dissatisfied with the negative impact that stress was having on my health, my family, and the quality of my life, I was highly motivated to identify changes I could make in the way I do my work that would allow me to reduce the stress I experienced while maintaining my ability to make valuable contributions. To reduce my dissatisfaction, I sought help from a therapist, made changes in the number of extra hours I spent at the office, or working at home, and redoubled my efforts to use my time at work wisely.

My feelings of dissatisfaction with the way IT was governed at my university, and with the value IT was able to provide as a result of our governance, motivated me to work for over 15 years to support a change that would see the creation of a CIO role reporting to the president. This was  the “flip side of the coin” to being motivated by making a positive difference. Because I was dissatisfied with the difference we were able to make, and with the respect and recognition being provided to the IT professionals I managed, I was highly motivated to work for a change. Our new CIO will start this fall and I will remain highly motivated to ensure the new approach is successful.

Our insights into the inner lives of others, including their motivations, are limited. Often, we act based on the belief that their thoughts and feelings must be essentially similar to ours and then watch the results to see where this belief is supported or proven incorrect. In my professional life, I have become convinced that many other IT professionals are motivated by many of the same things that motivate me. They seek the opportunity to do interesting, and challenging, work that allows them to prove their ability to solve problems and deliver valuable solutions. While the notion that their are no problems, only opportunities, may seem too optimistic even to me, I can’t tell you how many IT professionals I’ve met who respond strongly to the spirit of the old Journey song “Only Solutions”.

IT professionals want to work for leaders they trust and to be directly involved in the decision-making process by providing insights based on their knowledge and experience. They want to be respected, valued, and trusted because they have earned these things. They want to be relevant, to have enough stability to feel secure about their futures, and to make a difference. They want to be happy.

Ultimately, I think that most of us are motivated by similar things. This challenges those of us in leadership positions to find ways to provide opportunities, recognition, and rewards that speak to these motivations and to celebrate with our teams when we achieve our goals. Coming back to my own motivations, the last thing I’d want to have included in my epitaph is “He meant well…” I want to DO well, to make a difference, earn the trust and respect of my colleagues, and be happy. I don’t think retirement will change that.