#1311 - three words
Last Monday, my dear friend - and a great coach - Ian, reminded me of what3words.com. It's an elementary yet ingenious idea. They divided the whole surface of the world into 3-metre squares; they then gave each square a unique combination of three words. That's it. If you want to point to any specific place on Earth, you just need to share the three words of the 3-metre square where that place lies.
This service inspires Ian to ask people to share three words to describe how they feel. When I heard that, I remembered that we did something similar with my dear friend Luca - another great coach - a few years ago. We asked the participants of a program we were facilitating to share how they felt at that moment using three words. And then how they wanted to feel at the end of the program, again in three words. Comparing the differences between the two sets of words sparked a lot of awareness in everyone. It also helped them plot their journeys forward.
So, here's a simple exercise you can do to plan a journey. It may be your plan for next year, a project you are working on, a phase in your career or any other context in which you want to move forward.
Step one, describe where you are in three words. Only three words. The first three that come to your mind.
Step two, describe, again in three words, where you want to be at the end of your journey or in a specific timeframe.
Step three it's about plotting the journey. How do you get from here to there? What do you need to do to change from one word to another?