New Year's Thought on Fulfillment

I think pretty much everyone has one or two rare/awesome/useless/off-beat talents. While working in the audit department of a semiconductor distributor, I discovered one of mine. The director of my department pointed out that 2 of our reports didn't match. I glanced at the numbers, said something like, "yeah, wow, we're off by 12 or 13 percent." He gave me a quizzical look and ran the numbers through his calculator: 12.8%. He gave me another quizzical look.

And I think I'll start using the word fulfillment more often. To most people it means something like accomplishing a task, finishing a project, or achieving a dream. Sometimes it just means doing something that feels good. But logistics people (UPS, FedEx) use it in a very concrete way, to indicate the point in time where the package arrives in the customers hands.

So here's my estimate of what it takes to reach most of those lofty life and career goals we all think about a lot: 

• Visualizing, planning, dreaming, organizing, reading how-to self-help books is about 5% of the job. 
• Showing up every day to get one more inch down the road toward fulfillment is the other 95%. 

Your mileage may vary, but not by much.