How on Earth do people get things done?
I really don’t know how some people achieve anything in their private lives – myself included. I got so fed up with myself for constantly forgetting things that I needed some way of ‘sorting myself out’, especially at a point in my life when time itself was precious and limited.
Yes, there are people who can keep track of all the things they need to do, organise it and then implement it efficiently (I know these people exist – I live with one!), but I found that requires a high cognitive load and I always became frustrated with myself.
Personal objectives and personal agility
Over the past year, I’ve improved the art of writing objectives and the art of getting things done. But what I’ve also noticed – even with myself – that there is sometimes an assumption (perhaps even a hope) that if I just do some tasks towards an objective, then the objective will be (hopefully) be achieved. Not so!
Essentially, a strategy required!
The objective needs to be clear, ambitious and measurable. Every task needs to be aligned with an objective and clearly work towards getting me closer.
A good reminder
I’ve now started doing a mini-lift-off for each objective (brainstorming ideas on my whiteboard). I am to properly write the measure of success and to brainstorm some initial ideas of how to get closer. After that I can start populating my backlog and even includ a few check-ins. That’s part of the personal agility.
Why aren’t we strategic?
So how come we naturally don’t create strategies for achieving a personal objectives?
I think that, often, we defer the creation of the objective and strategic implementation to someone else.
There may even exist the assumption that the only way to achieve something is through an institution! For example, to become an [X], you need to do a course [Certified X]. Or, if I want to be good at maths, I need to follow a course of maths, and someone will certify that I am now good at maths.
A couple years ago, I wanted to become a teacher. The University of Exeter provided a year’s course which guided me towards that objective – a qualified teacher. As it happens, in order to teach in a state school, then the qualification is needed. It was also helpful to have somebody to assist on a very complex journey like that.
However, in such a process, I don’t have the opportunity to create an objective nor figuring out how to work towards it. It was all done for me, like at school.
There are a great many things that people want to achieve outside of formal qualifications that require a really clear objective, some planning, some agile behaviours and some really focussed time and energy.
Perhaps it is our schooling that puts us into this mindset (that if we just “work hard”, then objective will be achieved – and “we’ll get good grades”).
It’s not like that in the real world and I don’t know how many people achieve things?
As I said before, there are many people do achieve many great things, perhaps through persistence and a high cognitive ability. But my own impression, is that objectives can be achieved through the principles of agile (empirical process of visualisation, inspection and adaption), and shouldn’t necessarily require high cognitive load. I’m remnided of the Chinese wu-wei principle – passive achievement.
It requires having a clear north star and applying some personal agility and some radical focus and I’ve been on this journey for the past year now.