sci-fi author, beatmaker

Tag: GTD

The System is the Result

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Goals are useful. A goal points you in the direction you want to go, gives you a metric by which to measure progress, and ideally provides the motivation to get there.

But goals don’t produce results. A behavioral system (including automated behaviors) produce the actual results. Your system of diet and exercise will produce physical and health results. Your system of saving and investing will produce wealth results. Your system of communicating and being kind and generous to people will produce relationship results.

They may not always be great results. That depends on the quality of your system, your compatibility with the system you’ve chosen, and how effectively you implement it.

I’ve managed to overcome health problems by tweaking my diet and supplements, and those system continue to work well for me. I feel pretty good about my saving and investing system too. My chess system, on the other hand, needs a lot of work. I only know a few openings, I fall into simple traps, and I too often impulsively make the first decent move I see without considering other options. But I’m working on it.

Writing, chess, and racquetball are three skills I’m actively developing. Some of the work is just doing the thing a lot. Learning new techniques and practicing those techniques — actively pushing the boundaries of your skill and paying the learning tax — is a big part of getting better. So where does the system part come in? What does that even mean?

How to Discover Your Life Purpose, Set a Primary Goal, and Stay On Track

Unless you are the Remover of Obstacles and Lord of Beginnings, you’ll probably need to pick just one goal at a time.

In my last post I wrote about why I think setting goals is important. I addressed some of my own reservations regarding goal-setting. Is ambitious goal-setting selfish? Is it obnoxious and annoying to others?

I suggest you read that post first. But if you’re ready to get into the details, my five step system for exploring life purpose and setting a primary goal is below.

It’s a long post, but it’s the whole deal. I’ve come to this system after decades of diversions and hard-won experience. So get a fresh cup of coffee, and welcome to my world.

Step 1: Soul-Searching, Purpose & Calling

Seneca’s reputation may suffer as a result of self-promotion guru Tim Ferriss quoting him so much. But before the Seneca backlash is in full swing, I’ll get this relevant quote in:

Force Multipliers In Life

Force multipliers in effect.

A force multiplier is something that increases effectiveness.  The term has military origins — factors like high morale, advanced technology, or brilliant tactics could all be considered force multipliers.  The Mongols used horse archery, silk underclothes (to prevent infection from piercing wounds), and a fearsome reputation as force multipliers.

Applied to life in general, what kind of factors function as force multipliers?  What areas of life, if improved or optimized, make us more effective in every other life area?

The Inefficacy of Using Physical Objects as Reminder Flags

Last week I stayed at my friend’s place in Seattle — a sort of writing retreat to work on my novel.  I made huge progress on the book, took long walks in some of the area old-growth forests, ate fantastic food, and relaxed — a good week.

My friend, in addition to being a gracious host (he might even qualify as a patron of the arts — we’ll see how my book turns out), is one of the neatest people I know.  Not neat as in neato, but neat as in meticulously clean.  His house is spotless.  Granted, I arrived minutes after the housekeeper had cleaned the place, but it’s obvious he’s organized and keeps his house in order.

Really?

This is something I aspire to.  Coming home, I immediately started cleaning our place — after you’ve been away you see your own abode (and its grime) with fresh eyes.  With a toddler in the house, cleaning feels like running up the down escalator — as I’m scrubbing the countertops she’s scattering playing cards on the floor; as I’m picking up the playing cards she’s leaving a trail of cheese crumbs in another room.  Still, at the moment, the house looks and feels pretty clean.

All this got me thinking about stuff, and how we process stuff in our lives.  The idea in particular I was thinking about — I think it’s from David Allen’s book Getting Things Done — is that it’s almost always a BAD idea to put or leave something on your desk or workspace as a reminder that you need to do something about it.

Unless you have a freakishly low number of things that you need to do in your life (that makes me think of Doris Lessing’s creepy story “To Room Nineteen”) then using the “put it there so I remember” method will lead to nothing except a messy desk.  In the more severe cases, this method can lead to a kind of personal geology; strata of object/to-do-item matrices teetering in unstable stacks.  After the initial layer becomes visually obscured, the “reminder” function ceases to operate and the entire layer devolves into undifferentiated junk.

Not my wife's desk.

What is the alternative?  My wife, frustrated with her own less-than-orderly workspace, happened to ask me that very question this morning.  (As an aside, I’ve been trying to get her to read the David Allen book for about seven years.  Periodically she’ll accept the book and place it on her desk, where it will sit, unread, until buried by other papers and items.)

Since I’d been thinking about the subject for the last couple days, I had an answer ready: don’t use stuff as a reminder; instead put the thing (whatever it is) away, and put whatever action is required on your to-do list.  Kia immediately understood and implemented the idea, and within half an hour her desk was transformed into a postmodern minimalist’s masturbation fantasy.  Okay, not quite, but it looked clean and organized, with only one pile of papers.  The rare book she needed to return went to the bookshelf.  Her passport (which needs renewing) went to the drawer.  And so on.

Most of the time I accumulate things to do faster than I can do them.  This imbalance is reconciled by the fact that some things never get done.  I’m fine with this reality — there will always be more possible actions than actual actions in life.  If it’s not going to get done, I’d rather have the doomed to-do item be represented as a line of text in my calendar software than a piece of crap on my desk.  The extra typing is well worth it.

Find the little kid.

In some cases, putting the object away (like returning a book to your bookshelf) may not even reduce the chance that you see it and remember to do something with it.  This comes back to the zero percent chance that the visual reminder trigger will work if you put anything on top if it.

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