Searching for Purpose and Fulfillment
And my path to finding my Ikigai
Towards the end of my stint in BigLaw, I was pretty miserable.
I was working under people I didn’t respect
I was expressly banned from working on passion projects externally that were all about helping others (and would have helped the firm too)
I was subject to all sorts of internal rules that I disagreed with
I was praised for not speaking up and criticized every time I spoke up
Basically, I was prohibited from doing the things that made me feel fulfilled. These were all things that I enjoyed doing, that I was good at, and that I loved doing.
Not exactly a recipe for fulfillment.
Side note: if you or anyone you know is new to managing people professionally, I’m running an affinity group for 10 people starting in July. It’s free, and it’s open to anyone in Canada. All the details are here.Finding Ikigai
I’ve been fortunate over the last few years to find a ton of things that check off all those boxes, and I’m even more fortunate to be able to be paid to do many of them.
I get to solve puzzles for clients and help them accomplish their goals
I get to run trainings for law firms that help lawyers do their jobs better and have more time for themselves
I get to help make the world more neurodivergent friendly
I get to build out my vision for what a law firm should look like and get to ignore what 95% of other firms are doing
To be clear, I’ve worked my ass off (as my wife and others can attest), and the journey to get there has been anything but linear or straightforward.
But I also recognize how lucky I am.
It took me a while to realize the things I like doing the most are helping others and mentoring/coaching.
Part of the confusion was probably my general hatred of people (or at least my hatred of dealing with certain types of people in certain situations).
But as I reflected back on what I like doing (and apparently did a lot of), it was always helping other people:
Coaching sports for years
Tutoring tons of people throughout university
Making things easier for people in university (including all sorts of wacky initiatives, along with lots of mentorship)
Helping people accomplish the things they wanted to accomplish
An Upcoming Initiative
One of the initiatives I’m most excited about is an upcoming affinity group for first-time people managers (it’s completely free - more details here).
We’ve run these before, and they’ve always gone incredibly well. I expect nothing less here.
But this one is more meaningful to me because it’s the first one we’ve run completely from a neuroinclusive lens, and it’s the first time we’ve partnered with a leading organization in the neurodiversity space to run it.
My general thesis is:
People suck at managing others, since they need to learn best practices and nobody teaches them
Most best practices are neurodivergent friendly
If we teach people best practices, it is better for everyone
Holy crap do I have a lot of lived experience of bad management for neurodivergent folks (and also lots of experience of good management based on running a very neurodivergent-friendly law firm)
It’s one of these initiatives that fits perfectly into my Ikigai. And I’m incredibly grateful for that.
If you or anyone you know is a first-time people manager (in their first year of managing people professionally), you should encourage them to apply to join the affinity group.
We can only take on a max of 10 people, so for once, there are truly limited spots available!
All the details are here.