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I am a small business Conversation Consultant and public speaker that uses the power of the internet to leverage your success. Productivity in Context is a web magazine focused on Productivity and tools for organizing. Make this your headquarters for improving your life and work through increased mindfulness, education, and workflow practices.

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While working on my Master Plan this past week I did a bunch of research on how to define my goals and plan for success. I came across a couple of resources that really resonated with what I am working on accomplishing.

The first references, of course, were Getting Things Done and Ready for Anything by David Allen, in order to create the workflow mindset. Then a search of the internets took me to Two Weeks to a Breakthrough by Lisa Haneberg. Finally, I found the book Living with Less by Mark Tabb.

After all of this reading & working through the Goal Setting Tutorial from Goal Setting College the Master Plan is ready to be deployed and engaged. In Ready for Anything Allen discusses how Energy Follows Thought:

“Putting your mind to something activates both the subject and the object of your thinking. The body neurologically begins to respond as if the thought is true, and ideas start living a life of their own. Thoughts can occur a second time much easier than the first. Merely having thoughts is one thing. Conciously feeding them is quite another. You are powerful all the time, by way of your attention and intention. The question is, Toward what are you pointing that power? “

In order to achieve our goals we must focus on them; in order to focus on our goals, they must be clearly defined. Once they have been defined we can create an Action Plan for getting them done. We can track our progress and correct our path when we see that we are getting off track.

All three of the resources that I used for this exercise worked together, complimented each other, in helping me to clarify, define, and plan actions for each of  my goals, from @3-5 years to the @Next Actions list. This synergy has made the project’s resolution much better than it would have been otherwise. I also feel very motivated to actually carry our the Next Actions on my list, which include the steps recommended by Haneberg in her book. I am definitely looking forward to a breakthrough…

The building blocks of Haneberg’s program include the power of intention, and sharing your goals with others (more on this in a forthcoming post).  As a corollary, Allen provides a tool for focusing on your goals, recommending three tips for improving your productivity in achieving them:

1. What tricks do you use to make yourself more productive?
2. What could you put in front of your mind more regularly that would serve you? Where would you put it?
3. Imagine something you’d like more of today. Have that thought as many times as you can in the next hour.

And I will share my answers:

1. Capturing everything on my index cards, then using my worksheets for the Weekly Review.
2. Simplify, simplify, simplify.
3. More ideas about where to dispose of all of the extra “stuff” that I do not need at home.

What are your answers? Leave a comment.

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/5mgpeo. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen