Getting Things Done
Page 26
The Significance of Applied Outcome Thinking
What I want to emphasize now is how learning to process the details of our work and lives with this clear and consistent system can affect others and ourselves in significant ways we may not expect.
As I’ve said, employing next-action decision-making results in clarity, productivity, accountability, and empowerment. Exactly the same results happen when you hold yourself to the discipline of identifying the real results you want and, more specifically, the projects you need to define in order to produce them.
Defining specific projects and next actions that address real quality-of-life issues is productivity at its best.
It’s all connected. You can’t really define the right action until you know the outcome, and your outcome is disconnected from reality if you’re not clear about what you need to do physically to make it happen. You can get at it from either direction, and you must, to get things done.
As an expert in whole-brain learning and good friend of mine, Steven Snyder, put it, “There are only two problems in life: (1) you know what you want, and you don’t know how to get it; and/or (2) you don’t know what you want.” If that’s true (and I think it is) then there are only two solutions:
• Make it up.
• Make it happen.
This can be construed from the models of yin/yang, right brain/left brain, creator/destroyer—or whatever equivalent works best for you. The truth is, our energy as human beings seems to have a dualistic and teleological reality—we create and identify with things that aren’t real yet on all the levels we experience; and when we do, we recognize how to restructure our current world to morph it into the new one, and experience an impetus to make it so.
We are constantly creating and fulfilling.
Things that have your attention need your intention engaged. “What does this mean to me?” “Why is it here?” “What do I want to have be true about this?” (“What’s the successful outcome?”) Everything you experience as incomplete must have a reference point for “complete.”
Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.
—Dr. Samuel Johnson
Once you’ve decided that there is something to be changed and a mold to fill, you ask yourself, “How do I now make this happen?” and/or “What resources do I need to allocate to make it happen?” (“What’s the next action?”).
Your life and work are made up of outcomes and actions. When your operational behavior is grooved to organize everything that comes your way, at all levels, based upon those dynamics, a deep alignment occurs, and wondrous things emerge. You become highly productive. You make things up, and you make them happen.
The Magic of Mastering the Mundane
My clients often wonder how I can sit with them in their offices, often for hours on end, as they empty the drawers of their desks and painstakingly go through the minutiae of stuff that they have let accumulate in their minds and their physical space. Aside from the common embarrassment they feel about the volume of their irresponsibly dealt-with details, they assume I should be bored to tears. Quite the contrary. Much to my own surprise, I find it to be some of the most engaging work I do with people. I know the release and relief and freedom that sit on the other side of dealing with these things. I know that we all need practice and support and a strong, clear focus to get through them, until we have the built-in standards and behaviors we need to engage with them as they demand. I know how significant a change these people may experience in their relationships with their bosses, their partners, their spouses, their kids, and themselves over the next few hours and (we hope) days and years.
It’s not boring. It’s some of the best work we do.
Multilevel Outcome Management
I’m in the focus business. As a consultant and coach, I ask simple questions that often elicit very creative and intelligent responses from others (and even myself!), which can in turn add value to the situation and work at hand. People aren’t any smarter after they work with me than they were before—they just direct and utilize their intelligence more productively.
The challenge is to marry high-level idealistic focus to the mundane activity of life. In the end they require the same thinking.
What’s unique about the practical focus of Getting Things Done is the combination of effectiveness and efficiency that these methods can bring to every level of your reality. There are lots of inspirational sources for the high-level “purpose, values, vision” kind of thinking, and many more mundane tools for getting hold of smaller details such as phone numbers and appointments and grocery lists. The world has been rather barren, however, of practices that relate equally to both levels, and tie them together.
“What does this mean to me?” “What do I want to have be true about it?” “What’s the next step required to make that happen?” These are the corner-stone questions we must answer, at some point, about everything. This thinking, and the tools that support it, will serve you in ways you may not yet imagine.
The Power of Natural Planning
The value of all this natural project planning is that it provides an integrated, flexible, aligned way to think through any situation.
An idealist believes that the short run doesn’t count. A cynic believes the long run doesn’t matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.
—Sidney J. Harris
Being comfortable with challenging the purpose of anything you may be doing is healthy and mature. Being able to “make up” visions and images of success, before the methods are clear, is a phenomenal trait to strengthen. Being willing to have ideas, good or bad, and to express and capture all of them without judgments is critical for fully accessing creative intelligence. Honing multiple ideas and types of information into components, sequences, and priorities aimed toward a specific outcome is a necessary mental discipline. And deciding on and taking real next actions—actually moving on something in the physical world—are the essence of productivity.
Being able to bring all these ingredients together, with appropriate timing and balance, is perhaps the major component of professional competence for this new millennium. But it’s not yet the norm in professional behavior; far from it. It’s still a daunting task to apply this awareness to all the aspects of personal and professional life. But even when only portions of the model are inserted, tremendous benefit ensues.
The feedback I have gotten over the years in my consulting, teaching, and coaching with this model has continued to validate that even the slightest increase in the use of natural planning can bring significant improvement. To see brainstorming about almost every aspect of their lives becoming a standard tool for many people is terrific. To hear from executives who have used the model as a way to frame key meetings and discussions, and have gotten great value from doing that, is gratifying. It all just affirms that the way our minds naturally work is the way that we should focus to make anything happen in the physical world.
The model is simply the basic principle of determining outcomes and actions for everything we consider to be our work. When those two key focus points become the norm in our day-to-day lives, the baseline for productivity moves to another level. The addition of brainstorming—the most creative means of expressing and capturing ideas, perspectives, and details about projects—makes for an elegant set of behaviors for staying relaxed and getting things done.
Shifting to a Positive Organizational Culture
It doesn’t take a big change to increase the productivity standards of a group. I continually get feedback indicating that with a little implementation, this method immediately makes things happen more quickly and more easily.
The constructive evaluation of activities, asset allocations, communications, policies, and procedures against purposes and intended outcomes has become increasingly critical for every
organization I know of. The challenges to our companies continue to mount, with pressures coming these days from globalization, competition, technology, shifting markets, and raised standards of performance and production.
“What do we want to have happen in this meeting?” “What is the purpose of this form?” “What would the ideal person for this job be able to do?” “What do we want to accomplish with this software?” These and a multitude of other, similar questions are still sorely lacking in many quarters. There’s plenty of talk in the Big Meetings that sounds good, but learning to ask “Why are we doing this?” and “What will it look like when it’s done successfully?” and to apply the answers at the day-to-day operational level—that is what will create profound results.
Empowerment naturally ensues for individuals as they move from complaining and victim modalities into outcomes and actions defined for direction. When that becomes the standard in a group, it creates significant improvement in the atmosphere as well as the output. There are enough other problems to be concerned with; negativity and passive resistance need to continually give way to a focus on the desired results at the appropriate horizons.
The microcosm of how people deal with their in-baskets, e-mail, and conversations with others will be reflected in the macro-reality of their culture and organization. If balls are dropped, if decisions about what to do are resisted on the front end, if not all the open loops are managed responsibly, that will be magnified in the group, and the culture will sustain a stressful fire-and-crisis siege mentality. If, in contrast, individuals are implementing the principles of Getting Things Done, the culture will expect and experience a new standard of high performance. Problems and conflicts will not go away—they remain inherent as you attempt to change (or maintain) anything in this world. The operational behaviors of this book, however, will provide the focus and framework for addressing them in the most productive way.
A vision without a task is but a dream, a task without a vision is drudgery, a vision and a task is the hope of the world.
—From a church in Sussex, England, ca. 1730
Conclusion
I HOPE THIS book has been useful—that you have started to reap the rewards of getting more done with less effort and stress. And I really hope you have tasted the freedom of a “mind like water” and the release of your creative energies that can come with the application of these techniques. Those who begin to implement these methods always discover there’s more here than meets the eye, and you may have begun to experience your own version of that.
I’ll bet Getting Things Done has validated much of what you already know and have been doing to some degree all along. Perhaps, though, it will make it much easier for you to apply that common sense more systematically in a world that seems to increasingly confound us with its intensity and complexity.
My intent is not to add more to the plethora of modern theories and models about how to be successful. I have tried, on the contrary, to define the core methods that don’t change with the times, and which, when applied, always work. Like gravity, when you understand the principle, you can operate a lot more effectively, no matter what you’re doing. Perhaps this is the Leading Edge of Back to Basics!
Getting Things Done is a road map to achieve the positive, relaxed focus that characterizes your most productive state. I invite you to use it, like a road map, as a reference tool to get back there whenever you need to.
To consistently stay on course, you’ll have to do some things that may not be habits yet: keep everything out of your head; decide actions and outcomes when things first emerge on your radar, instead of later; and regularly review and update the complete inventory of open loops of your life and work. I hope by now you at least have established a reference point for the value these behaviors create. Don’t be surprised, though, if it takes a little while to make them automatic. Be patient, and enjoy the process.
Here are some final tips for moving forward:
• Get your personal physical organization hardware set up. Get your workstation organized. Get in-baskets. Create a personal filing system—for work and home. Get a good list-management organizer that you are inspired to play with. I also suggest that you give yourself permission to make any changes that you have been contemplating for enhancing your work environments. Hang pictures, buy pens, toss stuff, rearrange your work space. Support your fresh start.
• Set aside some time when you can tackle one whole area of your office, and then each part of your house. Gather everything into your system, and work through the Getting Things Done process.
• Share anything of value you’ve gleaned from this with someone else. (It’s the fastest way to learn.)
• Review Getting Things Done again in three to six months. You’ll notice things you might have missed the first time through, and I guarantee it will seem like a whole new book.
• Stay in touch with people who are broadcasting and reflecting these behaviors and standards. (We’re available. Visit http://www.davidco.com anytime for tons of free support material, conversations about these best practices, current information about supportive products and services, and access to our global network of people sharing the best practices in productivity. For anything, contact us at The David Allen Company at info@davidco.com or 805-646-8432.)
Have a great rest of your life!
Index
accountability
Acheson, Dean
action reminders
on calendars
dispersal of
most common categories of
organizing as-soon-as-possible actions by context
original items as
actions
current
four-criteria model for choosing
see also managing action; next actions
ad hoc project thinking
agendas
applied outcome thinking
archives
areas of focus lists
Aristotle
attached notes
back-of-the-envelope planning
Bayne, Stephen
beginning, see getting started
Bergson, Henry
bigger picture reviews
Boulanger, Nadia
brain, reticular activating system of
brainstorming
distributed cognition and
keys to
mindmapping technique of
software applications for
Brilliant, Ashley
broken agreements with yourself, prevention of
Buddha
Buzan, Tony
cabinets
calendars
future options and
review of
things to list on
Cantor, Rosabeth Moss
Chartier, Emile
checklists
at all levels
blueprinting key areas of work and responsibility
clarifying inherent projects and actions
for new situations
Chisolm, Brock
Churchill, Winston
clarity
cognition, distributive
Cohen, Daniel
collecting
gathering “incompletes” in
success factors in
tools for
collecting your “stuff,”
in-basket inventory for
mind-sweep and
preparations for
problems in
things to leave where they are
time required for
from various locations
collection habit
amount of collecting required for
negative feelings and
personal benefits of
and preventing broken agreements with yourself
relationships and organizations and
traditional time management vs.
commitments, see internal commitments, dealing effectively with
computers
computer software
contact managers
context
Cooper, Ann McGee
Cooper, James Fenimore
countertops
Covey, Stephen
critical thinking
“daily to-do” lists
daily work, threefold model for evaluation of
databases
day-specific actions
day-specific information
Day-Timers
decision catalysts
decision-making criteria, creation of
decorations
deferring
defining your work
delegating
systematic format for
tracking handoff in
desk drawers
desktop, clearing of
distributed cognition
doing
creating the option of
and four-criteria model for choosing actions
in processing “in,”
questions to ask yourself in
and six-level model for reviewing your own work
and threefold model for evaluating daily work
Drucker, Peter F.
dumbing down
Dumpsters
efficiency
Einstein, Albert
electronic note-taking
e-mail
databases and
in delegating
general-reference filing and
in-basket for
storage of
workflow from
emergency scanning