Keeping one's markers aligned
Tuesday, September 1, 2009 at 22:03 I was interested to read in the papers recently that some research had shown that people find it very difficult to walk in a straight line in uncharted territory. Most of us in such a situation would aim for a landmark in the distance, but this still results in considerable wandering off the straight. The result is that when you reach the landmark you may be pointing quite a few degrees off course, and the next landmark you pick will not be on the original line.
The secret, known to people like the Native Americans, is to line up two landmarks. When you do this you can easily proceed in a straight line just by keeping the two landmarks aligned. When you reach the first landmark you know you are facing in the right direction so all you have to do is to pick another landmark.
It struck me that this applies to how we go about getting to our goals in our business or personal life. If we aim for just one landmark we are likely to wander about and end up facing in the wrong direction. If we line up two goals then we are much more likely to proceed in a straight line to our desired result.
Let’s give an example of this. We often hear that networking is very important for building a small business. So some people go overboard with networking. They join networking associations, attend lots of events, talk to loads of people, and may even organise their own events.
Then they become disillusioned because their business, far from expanding, is suffering from the amount of time they spend away from it at networking events.
What has gone wrong?
The answer is that they have only lined their actions up on one landmark. They have taken on board that “networking is good” and have therefore lined up on the networking landmark:
——————-> Networking
The result is that they have just concentrated on doing more and more networking without really considering what the purpose of it all was.
If they had remembered that the purpose of the networking was to expand their business they would have approached the networking in a different more focused way:
——————-> Networking ——————-> Business Expansion
As an exercise, you might take a look at some of your goals to see whether they are properly lined up. For instance what might the difference be between these two?
——————-> MBA
——————-> MBA ——————> Promotion to Higher Management
or these two?
———————> Going to gym
———————> Going to gym ———————> Increased energy for work
Wherever you suspect that an activity which should be supporting a higher goal is taking on a life of its own, it’s a good idea to carry out this lining up exercise.
Reader Comments (15)
Very interesting. Is this akin to setting behavioural objectives to meet an outcome / goal ?
<< Is this akin to setting behavioural objectives to meet an outcome / goal ? >>
I'm not sure what you mean by that in this context. It's a case of ensuring that in the hierarchy of goals your lower goals continue to be in line with your higher goals. Jiru in his/her comment has got it just about right.
Thanks for this. Will follow your day tomorrow with interest as to be honest I am someone who has not yet caught the bug of auto-focus, and have found myself preferring the old closed list approach with diary...
Your wife's story is a very good example of how this works.
And of course whatever time management system we use needs to be aligned with our higher goals too - otherwise we just end up processing endless trivia. Mind you, I expect there'll be quite a bit of trivia tomorrow!
Recently I've taken to writing goals with each of my tasks and I like it. So far it helps motivate me to work on things. I think also it will help with identifying better goals and consequently adjusting my efforts to suit.
Success needn't come from push and drive with incredible energy. This is drama. Push and drive and struggle often serve more to dissipate excess energy than alignment with elegant action. Or serve to compensate for anxiety, insecurity of self-doubt.
Too much significance around a goal - or using it to boost your own significance, status or self-worth - becomes something else: using a goal to grow yourself. Issues around your self and your own capability or anxiety about the world around you you are all imbalanced energy which will need dissipating somehow.
Single-mindedness is the key. It balances. Balance allows thinking well and acting in balance.
Calm knowing and expecting will reduce emotional excess, allowing smoother alignment.
http://markforster.squarespace.com/forum/post/2697729#post2698739
It's given me some ideas to incorporate into my "emergent goals" process. http://markforster.squarespace.com/forum/post/2672785
<< Wherever you suspect that an activity which should be supporting a higher goal is taking on a life of its own, it’s a good idea to carry out this lining up exercise.>>
As we discovered with some of the previous standing-out systems like AF1, they can sometimes fall into "wandering" and processing lots of trivia. But trying to force an alignment with pre-determined goals usually just generates resistance, eventually to the whole system. Do you have any thoughts on how to incorporate this alignment process into a system like Simple Scanning?
<< Do you have any thoughts on how to incorporate this alignment process into a system like Simple Scanning? >>
My main thought is that I need to find a better system for High Intensity Time Management than Simple Scanning. I've thought up a couple of systems which are faster, but unfortunately they have tended to lack direction when the list gets past a certain length.
I'm just starting a new one which I have high hopes for at the moment, so I hope to be able to report back positively on it soon.
Speed and direction are a difficult combination to achieve but I think it is necessary in order to find an answer to your question.
More soon!
http://markforster.squarespace.com/blog/2017/12/30/testing-an-hitm-system-1.html