Opportunity vs. Obligation Mode Thinking

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How are you functioning?  Is it purely about “maintaining a system that someone else invented?”  Is it “reactively doing what you have to in order to get things done without building capacity for future work?”

Those are both “symptoms of obligatory living.”  Those are both about obligation mode.

Here’s the thing.  If you want to make a difference at crowd’s edge…you must shift from obligation mode to opportunity mode.

I love this paragraph from The Accidental Creative:

A big factor in shifting from obligation mode to opportunity mode is thinking regularly about how you are investing in your capacity to do better work in the future and taking accountability for your own creative growth (p. 182).

For starters…are you doing what we talked about yesterday?

Can I tell you something?  You will never break free from the status quo by tweaking the way it’s been done before and marginally improving last year’s model.  Breaking free, reaching the widening 60% who will never be reached by the attractional model has everything to do with opportunity thinking.

What do you think?  Want to argue?  You can click here to jump into the conversation.

2 Comments

  1. Mark Prasek on August 17, 2011 at 5:20 pm

    Never thought of it that way before. Gotta get off the treadmill.  Thanks



  2. Anonymous on August 17, 2011 at 5:26 pm

    Right there with you Mark! Thanks for jumping in here.

    mark