This post summarizes chapter 13 called The Power of Outcome Focusing as well as the subsequent brief Conclusion.
As you begin to use the principles and tools outlined in this book in your day-to-day life, your personal productivity can increase tremendously. They really work in the arena of the ordinary things we must deal with daily. 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. At the core, there are only two problems in life:
- You know what you want, and you don't know how to get it
- You don't know what you want
If this is true, then there are only two solutions, i.e. (a) specifically define what you want and (b) make it happen. In this context, everything you experience as incomplete must have a reference point for "complete". Once you've decided that there is something to be changed, you ask yourself "How do I now make this happen?", "What is the next action?" and/or "What resources do I need to make this happen?".
What is 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. The value of all this natural project planning is that it provides an integrated, flexible, aligned way to think through any situation. 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 assessing 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 are the essence of productivity.
However, even when only portions of the model are inserted, tremendous benefits can ensue. Even the slightest increase in the use of natural planning can bring significant improvement. It all 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.
In conclusion, "Getting Things Done" has probably validated much of what you already knew and had been doing to some degree before. Nevertheless, it might make it easier for you to apply that common sense more systematically in a world that seems to increasingly confound us with its intensity and complexity. It 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 to whenever you need to.
To consistently stay on course, you have to commit to building the following habits:
- Keep everything out of your head
- Decide next actions and outcomes when things first emerge on your radar, rather than later
- Regularly review and update the complete inventory of open loops of your work and life
Don't be surprised though, if it takes a little while to make them automatic. Be patient and enjoy the process. :-)
Based on: David Allen (2001), Getting Things Done, Penguin Books, p.249-259.
