1. Professional Contentment - How content you are in your current and future career potential
   
2. Financial Contentment - How content you are in your current and future financial status
3. Family Contentment - How content you are in your family relationships
4. Health Contentment - How content you are in your physical and mental health
5. Leisure Contentment - How content you are with quality time spent on leisurely activities
6. Legacy Contentment - How content you are with the legacy you are leaving behind should you die today
7. Relational Contentment - How content you are with relationships built and maintained with friends and loved ones
8. Spiritual Contentment - How content you are with your spiritual life

Since developing the seminar I've found multiple uses for the content including helping a colleague assess a major career change and, most recently, using it as an annual personal planning tool which is what I'd like to talk more about. At the beginning of the year many of us embark on some goal to achieve, i.e. lose weight, get a better job, etc. I am an advocate of doing so, with two distinct requirements:

1. The goal setting exercise should holistically look at your life as opposed to just one aspect of your life,
2. The goal should be expressed in terms of what you can be realistically content with by the end of the year, not some overly-lofty goal that deep down you know won't be able to achieve.

In meeting those two requirements, this year I decided to look at my life from the vantage point of each of the eight drivers of contentment and come up with 1-2 items that I would be content with achieving by the end of the year. I have more aggressive goals in some areas and less in others. The point isn't to try to work myself to death trying to achieve a hyper-aggressive goal that deep down I know I won't be able to meet; it's being realistic about what I think I'd like and need to achieve.

To help you in your planning, I've included a simple Excel spreadsheet that you can use to help you in your planning using my eight drivers of contentment with my compliments.  The spreadsheet contains four columns; I've included an example entry for "Health Contentment":

1. The contentment area
2. How important that contentment area is to you (Extremely Important, Very Important, Somewhat Important, Not So Important, Not At All Important)
3. What result you would like to achieve by the end of the year
4. What you need to do to achieve the result.

As you embark on your goal setting journey remember to keep a few things in mind:

• Be realistic about what you commit to do
• Evaluate your progress on a regular basis
• Be persistent
• Don't be afraid to change your goals if something in your life changes.

Lastly, while this can be an effective tool to help you develop good goals, at the end of the day it's only a tool. You've got to take action and be disciplined to achieve the goals you set out to do.

I'd love to hear about your journey; email me at content@lonniepacelli.com.

Here's to a contented and happy new year!

I’m a huge fan of sausages. Whether it be Italian, bratwurst, chorizo, kielbasa, or andouille, I love the seasoning and the snap of the casing when you bite into it. Now I know that the stuff that goes into sausage is of the most undesirable parts of the animal including organs, guts, head, and other parts that I prefer not to think about. I have never had the opportunity to see sausage being made, and as a matter of principle; I don’t want to because I know I’d be grossed out and it would ruin my appetite each time I enjoyed a banger. I choose to remain blissfully ignorant about the sausage making process.

Just about every seasoned project manager has experienced at least one failure in his or her career. I am always skeptical of the experienced PM who says "I've never failed".  They're either lying or don't have experience. Some of my best (and most painful) growth as a professional occurred because of a failed project. Project managers can redeem themselves and maintain credibility by doing the following:

Recently I ran across a situation that reminded me of leaders needing to delegate responsibility while remaining engaged with what the team is doing.  At one of my former employers we had a particularly thorny issue which required multiple groups to work together to address.  It was important that I delegate resolution of the issue to the team, but it was also important that the team had a glimpse into some of my thinking on the issue.  When I delegated the issue to one of my managers for resolution, I also articulated some guiding principles that the team needed to keep in mind while resolving the issue.  What this allowed me to do was not only provide some considerations for the team to noodle over while coming up with a resolution to the issue but also empower the team to make the decision as to what to do about the issue.