Values › Accountability › Dedication
Core value · Accountability family
Dedication
Wholehearted effort over the long run
Also covers Devotion
What does dedication mean as a core value?
Dedication as a core value means giving sustained, wholehearted effort to something you care about, and keeping it up for years after the early excitement has faded.
Some things get the best of your attention for years. Dedication is that kind of wholehearted effort: the athlete training through winter, the parent at every match, the researcher still chasing the same question a decade on. It has a devoted quality. You turn up, give the thing your full self and keep giving through the dull middle. What marks it as a core value is that the long haul feels meaningful to you.
What does dedication look like in practice?
- You practise the piece one more time after everyone else has gone home.
- You’ve volunteered at the same charity for years without anyone asking you to.
- You spend your own evenings improving a skill your job barely requires.
- You keep investing in a struggling project because you believe in what it could become.
- You notice small improvements in something you’ve worked at for a long time, and they matter to you.
When is dedication overplayed?
Dedication can turn into a devotion that crowds out everything else. The work, sport or cause gets your best hours, and the people around you get what’s left. Because the effort feels virtuous, it’s hard to see when it has become a way of avoiding other parts of life. Tying your identity tightly to one thing can also make a setback there feel like a personal collapse. Healthy dedication gives wholeheartedly while keeping a life that doesn’t depend on it. It can help to ask the people closest to you what they’d like more of, and take the answer seriously.
Often confused with
Dedication vs Commitment
Commitment is sticking with people and promises. Dedication is the depth of effort you give, usually to a craft, cause or goal.
Dedication vs Hard work
Hard work is putting in effort, whatever the task. Dedication is effort given to something you care about deeply and sustained over the long run.
Dedication vs Passion
Passion is intense feeling for something, and it can flare and fade. Dedication is what keeps you giving when the feeling has gone quiet.
Questions to sit with
- What have you given years of effort to, and what would you do differently if you started again?
- Who pays for your dedication, and when did you last ask them how it feels?
- If the thing you’re most dedicated to disappeared tomorrow, what would be left of how you see yourself?
More values in Accountability
Keeping your word and owning the outcome.
About the author
Matt Rutherford is a Career and Leadership Coach. The Values Finder is the same exercise he uses with his coaching clients. He also writes Stuff that MattRs, a weekly newsletter with practical ideas to help you think clearer and work better.
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