The Plan Plan - No, it's not a misprint.
Organizing is an important skill we don't talk about enough. I'm often the last person to even bring it up, because organization in space is one of my most obvious weak points. Nevertheless, time organization and project organization are things I know a little about. Perhaps it's the musical training, and the other arts I've dabbled in throughout my lifetime, that have helped me be a "Big Picture" kind of guy, but regardless, these kinds of skills can be learned.
Reference: Getting Things Done by David Allen.
In Allen's book, the focus is on organizing yourself and your life so that you can reach the goal of uncluttering your mind. He believes that we are most efficient when we can concentrate on a task at hand without all the nagging undealt-with activities that we allow to get in our way. As in most books about self-organization, statements like these are common and seem pretty self-evident. The reality, though, is that people like me need them to bring our attention in focus.
His primary emphasis is on a trusted "container" of information we maintain and refer to all the time. It can be a calendar, an agenda book, a file box, or an electronic device that mimics these functions. The point is that it must be relied on ("trusted") so much so that takes the burden of thinking out of your brain and puts it in the trusted place. [I'm thinking Dumbledore's Pensieve here.] Once you have this trusted container, it can be referred to as needed to tell you what needs to be acted upon next. In other words, you become organized by determining the Next Action. And you determine the Next Action by becoming organized. The majority of his book then gives examples of concrete ways to do this.
I'm reminded of an old episode of Gunsmoke in which an itinerant preacher, played by David Wayne, has come out west to build a new church. In his interactions with Festus, he continually uses the phrase "what we need first..." which is one way to employ Allen's methods in our lives. If you know the first thing you need, you also can know what action(s) will be required to obtain what you need. In the TV story, the first thing he needed was a place to put his church. When Festus started asking about all the other things he was going to need, the preacher cut him off, saying, "I don't need those now. I just need to find a place to build my church." When the preacher found where he was going to put his church, which was on the outskirts of a very tough and wild town (that clearly needed a church in its midst), the preacher could now say, "what we need first is a wagon." Festus, of course, objected.
"A wagon? But you're going to need people to help build the church."
"I've already got you and me. I need a wagon."
"But you don't have any money. Nobody here's going to give you a wagon."
"Then we go looking."
If I recall, they find a wagon with a broken wheel at the foot of a ravine. "What we need first is a way to fix this wheel." Once they fix the wheel, they take the wagon into the woods and collect some fallen timbers, which was the next "first thing" they needed, and so on. As they set to work, townsfolk stop by to jeer, but others stop by to help, and eventually the church is built. Then, the next thing they need is a bell to call people to church. Festus, who by now is a resigned convert to the step-by-step approach advocated by the preacher, comes across a bell from a surprising source and brings it back to the preacher, who mounts it in the steeple and rings out the call to worship. It's a very instructive episode.
Another story along these lines is the old tale called Nail Soup (or Stone Soup), in which the visiting soldiers create a marvelous soup out of their "special" nail (or stone) - and the myriad little ingredients the townsfolk offer to fulfill the "one thing" the soup needed the soldiers deemed necessary at that point in its cooking. In each case, one Next Action is called for and the result builds to a magnificent success, the sum of all its pieces. This, too, is a very instructive tale because it underscores how organizing a big task into little steps based on the one thing that needs doing first can lead to great success.
Folk wisdom is filled with similar kinds of advice passed down in the form of sayings, maxims, proverbs, and, um, fortune cookies. One that comes to mind is this one: "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time." Or "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." One of my new favorites is this one, attributed to Anatole France: “To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.”
Think about that. In all these examples, the real key is the belief that by focusing on just the next thing needed, and by acting on it, something good is going to come of it. That's powerful, and empowering.
Reference: Getting Things Done by David Allen.
In Allen's book, the focus is on organizing yourself and your life so that you can reach the goal of uncluttering your mind. He believes that we are most efficient when we can concentrate on a task at hand without all the nagging undealt-with activities that we allow to get in our way. As in most books about self-organization, statements like these are common and seem pretty self-evident. The reality, though, is that people like me need them to bring our attention in focus.
His primary emphasis is on a trusted "container" of information we maintain and refer to all the time. It can be a calendar, an agenda book, a file box, or an electronic device that mimics these functions. The point is that it must be relied on ("trusted") so much so that takes the burden of thinking out of your brain and puts it in the trusted place. [I'm thinking Dumbledore's Pensieve here.] Once you have this trusted container, it can be referred to as needed to tell you what needs to be acted upon next. In other words, you become organized by determining the Next Action. And you determine the Next Action by becoming organized. The majority of his book then gives examples of concrete ways to do this.
I'm reminded of an old episode of Gunsmoke in which an itinerant preacher, played by David Wayne, has come out west to build a new church. In his interactions with Festus, he continually uses the phrase "what we need first..." which is one way to employ Allen's methods in our lives. If you know the first thing you need, you also can know what action(s) will be required to obtain what you need. In the TV story, the first thing he needed was a place to put his church. When Festus started asking about all the other things he was going to need, the preacher cut him off, saying, "I don't need those now. I just need to find a place to build my church." When the preacher found where he was going to put his church, which was on the outskirts of a very tough and wild town (that clearly needed a church in its midst), the preacher could now say, "what we need first is a wagon." Festus, of course, objected.
"A wagon? But you're going to need people to help build the church."
"I've already got you and me. I need a wagon."
"But you don't have any money. Nobody here's going to give you a wagon."
"Then we go looking."
If I recall, they find a wagon with a broken wheel at the foot of a ravine. "What we need first is a way to fix this wheel." Once they fix the wheel, they take the wagon into the woods and collect some fallen timbers, which was the next "first thing" they needed, and so on. As they set to work, townsfolk stop by to jeer, but others stop by to help, and eventually the church is built. Then, the next thing they need is a bell to call people to church. Festus, who by now is a resigned convert to the step-by-step approach advocated by the preacher, comes across a bell from a surprising source and brings it back to the preacher, who mounts it in the steeple and rings out the call to worship. It's a very instructive episode.
Another story along these lines is the old tale called Nail Soup (or Stone Soup), in which the visiting soldiers create a marvelous soup out of their "special" nail (or stone) - and the myriad little ingredients the townsfolk offer to fulfill the "one thing" the soup needed the soldiers deemed necessary at that point in its cooking. In each case, one Next Action is called for and the result builds to a magnificent success, the sum of all its pieces. This, too, is a very instructive tale because it underscores how organizing a big task into little steps based on the one thing that needs doing first can lead to great success.
Folk wisdom is filled with similar kinds of advice passed down in the form of sayings, maxims, proverbs, and, um, fortune cookies. One that comes to mind is this one: "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time." Or "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." One of my new favorites is this one, attributed to Anatole France: “To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.”
Think about that. In all these examples, the real key is the belief that by focusing on just the next thing needed, and by acting on it, something good is going to come of it. That's powerful, and empowering.