Wednesday, October 25, 2006

What Role Do You Play In Life?

One of the Retrospective activities we've used a few times is a really simple one. It involves each participant deciding between 4 roles that they feel they're playing, in a certain context. The context could be the Retrospective itself, or the project or events that they're doing the Retrospective about, or anything else. Essentially you're considering why you're here, where here represents whatever the topic of the question is. And the results are almost always interesting.

The 4 roles to choose from are:

Explorer - someone who's here because they love trying out new things

Shopper - someone who will try out some things while they're here, but will only buy if it's exactly what they're looking for

Vacationer - someone who's probably not going to buy anything at all but is happy enough to be here because it's better than working

Prisoner - someone who's here only because their boss told them they had to be; otherwise they'd be somewhere else

I find it's a fun exercise to do whenever you're wondering about your own (or someone else's) commitment to something. I've learned that I'm almost never a Prisoner because those are the situations I just wouldn't bother showing up for. I seldom act as Vacationer because I don't have the free time to spend on something that's unlikely to yield any worthwhile results. So I spend most of my life being Shopper or Explorer.

How about you?

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