Fitness and Purpose

Continuing with the theme of integration (see Work/Life Balance? That's so Seventies!), I work in the Quality profession, contributing to the development of medicines by assuring compliance and integrity of clinical studies. Quality is often defined as "fitness for purpose" (see Wikipedia's Quality, first paragraph), the production of something in such a way that it meets its intended need.

The concepts of fitness and purpose are integral to the art of impact. They equate to building skills and then applying these to a challenge (see Requisite Variety ), the core elements for finding flow, impact and happiness.

Many of us spend a lot of time improving fitness, sweating at the gym, building muscles. This is a positive practice, but to realize the full benefits of any training, fitness must be connected to purpose - why are we investing time in fitness? What do we want to achieve? The reasons vary, it may be simply to look and feel better, to compete in a sports event, or to prevent illness or injury. Getting as clear as possible on purpose is the common denominator that allows us to improve the quality of our lives and break down work/life barriers. Purpose in the quality world is what the customer wants, it's the value added by our endeavors; any activity that does not add value should be examined and discontinued. This is also how to get strong impact, by removing all unnecessary motion in order to produce a clean, focused strike, unimpeded by useless motion. Purpose is what we are trying to achieve and how we intend to get there, it's the foundation that allows something meaningful to be built (see Just Like an Arrow). For example, purpose can be described a simple acronym like "SEAL": Service, Adventure, Entertainment, Learning. For me this is easy to remember and is powerful in laying the foundation for decisions and direction, always asking myself - does this provide  a service? Is there an adventure to be had? Will I be able to entertain or be entertained? Will I learn something? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then I will go with it (see Go With!) and follow whatever road opens up. This applies across the board; for example the point of going to gym for me is to get better at karate and to experience the thrill and flow of martial arts, it's always an adventure.

Building fitness and skills while being clear on purpose enables us to feel good, learn, make good decisions and use serendipity to our advantage, being quick in accepting or rejecting opportunities. It also helps make the best of bad times, realizing which parts of the negative experience benefit us, how they are in-line with our purpose, for example in allowing us to provide a service or learn something, albeit the painful way.

Purpose can also be thought of as a story--our storyline, what we are trying to achieve--and fitness is a means of getting there. We should think of lives from time-to-time as being the story in a book. So make it exciting, look back and enjoy the read so far while eagerly anticipating the next chapter.

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