Replace “success” with “contribution”

In The Effective Executive, first published in 1967, Peter Drucker stressed the importance of mastering several learnable disciplines. They include

• Manage your time and your energy, not your work
• Know your priorities
• Do first things first
• Do not multi-task
• Focus on (leverage) strengths, both yours and others’

He then asserts that, above all, it is imperative to “replace the quest for success with the quest for contribution.”

The critical question is not, therefore, “How can you achieve?” but “What can you contribute?”

Some people seem obsessed with “success” and, worse yet, with success measured according to how others determine it. Their obsession with obtaining approval or at least acceptance is unnerving.

Drucker would urge them to focus on (a) what they can contribute and (b) what they must do to contribute even more.

Meanwhile, Oscar Wilde would add, “Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.”