Making It All Work

The major component that has been missing to make this game play-able across the entire spectrum of your life, however, is the training to finish your thinking.

Approaching work is a game, and one that’s fun to play, as long as we know the purpose, the boundaries, the contents, and the rules. When any of those parameters are unclear, we develop unnecessary stress and are ineffective. But if, on the other hand, a bullet-proof, trusted process is in place which you know you can apply whenever needed to clari

Loss of control and perspective is the natural price you will pay for being creative and productive. The trick is not how to prevent this happening, but how to shorten the time you stay in an unsettled state.

“What-if ” and “as-if ” scenarios are common exercises. Having a team collaboratively write a major article in some well-known national or international publication, extolling the success the team or company has achieved, as if it has already happened, always produces interesting results. Though the assignment may sound somewhat artificial, “unreal

We start this process with a client by merely surveying his physical environment—what’s on, in, under, and around their desk? What’s on the shelves, in the cabinets, in the drawers, in the files, in the closets? What’s in his briefcase? What’s on the walls and bulletin boards and whiteboards? Anything that isn’t supplies, decoration, reference mate

In brief, you just need to decide whether something is actionable or not, and then determine the outcomes and actions required for those things you’ve committed to move on; for those that don’t have an action tied to them, decide what’s trash, what’s to be reviewed later, and what’s to be classified as reference.

The Areas of Focus horizon is not one that requires as frequent a review as projects and actions. Its contents are not meant to be finished. They are markers for ongoing areas of your life and work that generate projects and actions as well as many ad hoc activities that simply maintain these areas at some satisfactory standard.

If you don’t pay attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves.

The Organizing Categories

What we’re truly striving for is the permanence that we can count on, amid all the change and flux. And the most permanent, secure, and stable thing we can possess is a foolproof way to deal with impermanence, insecurity, and surprise.