Like many others, I find this site a valuable aid to getting myself sorted and organised; it does help you think and examine what your priorities are and where you want your life to go, and the community is so supportive and friendly it makes the two aspects – goal setting with friendly support – very effective. The helpful tips, advice, recommending of websites and books, putting together of teams – it is a site that encourages in so many ways.
With regard to prospective employers viewing entries though, I agree with spoko. Immediately you view 43 things as a tool in helping you to gain employment, your attitude towards the goal setting will change. I strongly feel that writing up 43 things knowing that prospective employers are looking is inhibiting and defeats the whole ethos of the site – a place to freely pour out all the life changing and the ridiculously minor actions we want to take to improve ourselves and our lives.
There is a vast range of goals on here, from the serious to trivial, life changing and simply fun. People feel completely free to put whatever matters to them, whatever actions, skills, attitudes they want to change. Would people really put ‘stop picking my fingers’ or ‘stop being lazy’ if they knew prospective employers were looking? A person with a nervous habit of picking their fingers may otherwise be highly motivated, organised, achieving, reliable. They would probably seriously hesitate to put this one on the list! Yet it is important to them, it might be a sign to them of their own nervousness, and painful too! The goal would not be a true reflection of themselves. With the ‘stop being lazy’ there is the worry of how an employer would interpret this. Is it a bad thing to want to stop doing this? Would they immediately be thrown off the pile as soon as the word ‘lazy’ is seen? Or would he see it as a good sign, that they recognise it is a problem and want to do something about it.
At any one time people may choose to have the more trival goals up, to then move on to more serious ones at a later date. I think it would be wrong for an employer to think they have a true picture of someone based on their entries on this site.
The idea of a work place where you feel totally free to be yourself is exciting. There is a suggestion that someone who may not want to be totally open about themselves is hiding something, but who really reveals absolutely everything to work colleagues? I am actually too open, it is actually a problem I’ve had to fight as it leaves you so vulnerable. Another very real problem is that sadly, bullying in the workplace goes on to quite an extent in this country, and there are bullies who will gleefully use the information on here to dominate others. People talk on here of drink problems, self-abuse, taking legal action against employers – this site helps them to set the goal up AND get support from this remarkable, uplifting community. I have some doubt that they would include these goals if they knew employers would be looking, and they would then lose out on the wonderful support given on here.
I am sure your intentions are to create a more open, honest environment in the workplace Josh, and the fact that you have helped to create such a life changing, positive, enabling and empowering site for people, to me is evidence that you have a good heart and good principles. I am sure you meant well in your suggestions, and in your defence of the suggestion, but it is because we feel so safe and relaxed on here that the idea is alarming, and secondly, sadly not everyone in the world is so considerate and caring.
As a final note, I am actually being altruistic in making these points, because my ambition is to form my own company. None of this will concern me, and I shall continue to use the site as before, but I am concerned for those who might restrain some of their true goals if they need to bear this idea in mind.
However… if there any publishers/event planners/media arts employers out there who think my ‘love my body’ or ‘clean the house’ entries are amazing, do contact me!!
