Michael Bungay Stanier has done something that has never been done before by any other personal development author. He has created a “workbook” that I have actually completed in its entirety. Self improvement books love to have you do writing exercises but most of the time I just end up conducting the activities in my head. Do More Great Work by Mr. Bungay-Stanier is the first book where I actually sat down and completed each exercise, on paper, from beginning to end.

Obviously, Michael is doing something right. His goal is to have you figure out what your Great work is and how to spend more time doing it. Using his terminology, our lives are made up of Good, Bad and Great work. Good work is what you spend most of your day doing. You can think of it as your job description, actually. It is the routine work that you know how to do and probably do quite well.

Bad work is that mind numbing, soul crushing, pointless work you sometimes find yourself doing. Revising the cover page of your TPS report or sitting in on the 3rd staff meeting of the day are great examples of Bad work. If you could somehow find a way to never do Bad work again, you would probably be a very happy person.

Lastly, Great work is the work that truly matters. It inspires you (and others). It stretches, provokes, and excites you. It’s the work where you find yourself getting “in the zone” and losing track of time. Great work is often uncomfortable because you are in uncharted waters and there is a potential for failure. Nonetheless, Great work is what truly matters and this book tries to help you figure out what your Great work is and how you can get started on it.

The book is broken down into 12 maps that help you analyze and identify different aspects to developing your Great work. My aim is to share these maps, along with my results, over the course of several posts. Obviously, I recommend that you pick up the book as you follow along because Michael has filled it with a myriad of helpful tips, suggestions, and theory behind his methodology. However, my aim is to make this series of posts intelligible even if you don’t have the book.

Map 1: Where Are You Now?

Click here to download a copy of Map 1.

Map 1 helps you figure out what your current distribution of Bad, Good, and Great currently is. It asks you to list examples of each type of work and estimate how much time you spend on each. For my purposes, I consider my “work” to be blogging, coaching, finding a teaching job, and my own personal development. Since I don’t have a typical office job with a specific description or responsibilities my “work” is going to be quite diverse.

A few examples of my Bad work are:

• Mindless surfing (Twitter, Reddit, etc.)
• Mindless working out (working out w/o a purpose)
• Mindless watching T.V.
• Filling out endless applications for teaching jobs.
• Administrative stuff such as scheduling posts, finding pictures, and editing guest posts for thesimplerlife.net
• Dealing with administrative work for the hockey team

A few examples of my Good work are:

• Researching specific drills for hockey practice.
• Reading educational books
• Editing my writing
• Leaving constructive comments on other blogs
• Focused networking on Twitter/Facebook
• Scouting and recruiting for the hockey team.
• Brainstorming topics to write about.

And lastly, a few examples of what I consider my Great work are:

• Writing for my blogs.
• Planning and coaching a hockey practice.
• Interviewing people for thesimplerlife.net
• Dissecting and analyzing game video for the team I coach.
• Running.
• Brainstorming new projects and products.

The distribution of these activities, unfortunately, is somewhere around 30%-50%-20%, respectively.

What surprised me about my results?

Surprisingly, I had a hard time coming up with examples of both Bad and Great work. On the one hand, it’s encouraging that it is difficult for me to identify Bad work. I’ve taken great strides in the past few years to safeguard my attention and grow my self discipline to the point where I don’t spend a lot of time on Bad work. On the other hand, it is concerning that finding examples of Great work were equally difficult to come by. Not only was it difficult to figure out what my Great work currently is, but when I was honest with myself I realized the amount of time I actually spend on these activities is disconcertingly low. I suppose the reassuring bit of this whole exercise is that I seem to be a great candidate for this book; I’m not totally clear on what my Great work is and I don’t spend enough time doing it! Do More Great Work indeed!

I hope you’ll join me for the next installment and analysis of Map 2, “What’s Great?” We will begin figuring out what Great work looks and feels like in your own life.

In the mean time, pick up this book, check out Michael Bungay Stanier’s blog, and share your thoughts and comments with me via whatever means you want!