Goal Based Productivity

Posted on: 04 May 2011

Categories: Aspire, Unifiq, Vitamin-R, Public Space, Goal Management, Time Management, Focus, Focusing, Mac, Apple, OS X, Snow Leopard, GTD, and Productivity

I’ve talked before about task management and I stand by what I wrote there, specifically, that The Hit List is my favorite task management program. However, if I stopped there I would be ignoring the bigger issue with productivity and why a lot of productivity schemes fail: they ignore the larger issue of goals as a motivating force. With this in view, a few weeks ago I revisited the subject of my own productivity to fine tune it even more and the result has been tremendous.

The Problem with Most Productivity Schemes: The Level of Focus is Too Low

When I say that the level of focus in most productivity schemes is too low, let me first say that often these same systems do make provision for a higher level of focus that typically includes: life vision and goals. However, it seems that because most software tools focus on the task level aspect of these systems, often, so do the people who use them.

The problem with focusing on tasks is that it is very easy to start majoring in the minors. You only have a certain amount of time in a day and it is important that your time is mostly spent on those things that are most important to you. One way of identifying those things as most important to you is to identify your goals. Setting goals is one step below setting a life vision, but I won’t get into life vision today.

Tasks Can Deflate, But Goals Motivate

Some of you are already wondering: ok, goals are important, but you still have to implement them with tasks and software that helps you manage tasks is therefore of primary value because I keep my goals in my head, I don’t need to “manage them”. This is an interesting thought, because it is one I used to believe and, in fact, it is sometimes true. By sometimes I mean: sometimes you wake up and are very focused because of sequences of events in your life and on those days you don’t need to be reminded of your goals, i.e., of what is important to you. I mean, really, it seems so stupid that we wouldn’t always be doing what is most important to us right? Well, yes, but the human mind has an almost unbelievable proclivity to migrate toward things that are not important to us, i.e., majoring in the minors. The reasons for this are manifold and I don’t want to get into the psychology of it, but it is almost universally true.

What is interesting, in the research that’s out there, and in my own experience, is that when you focus on tasks without first explicitly making the connection with what is important to you, you will be far less likely to stay focused and motivated. I have found that when focusing on tasks, you begin to feel slave to the tasks themselves.

Conversely, focusing on goals and then diving into focused work based on the same results in a highly focused, motivated session. I say session rather than specifying ‘work session’ because your goals may, and indeed should, include non-work related goals too.

What is interesting, and what got me to re-evaluate my productivity system/process is this idea that I had that when you work on something really important to you, the next steps are often (not always) sort of obvious to you. If they aren’t immediately obvious, you can easily discover them quickly with a little research and analysis. The point is, often you don’t have to enumerate every little task that you must do. Task management software encourages you to do so, just because it is there and seems satisfying to do so. It feels like getting things done, but it isn’t unless it is a task that you would truly forget and even then I would suggest that you could just as easily take notes (or mindmap) on those rare items.

When you focus on goals and carefully maintain your goals on an ongoing basis, instead of managing tasks, you focus at the right level – the level where clarity, real priorities, and motivation lie.

Aspire to Work on Goals: Finally Good Tool Support for Goal Management on the Mac

I searched for goal management software that fit the spec that I had fleshed out in writing. The reason I have actual formal specs on goal management software is because I am considering developing a software application in that area and have already spec’d out how I wanted it to work prior to researching what was available on the market. I know exactly what I want. While I still have not found exactly what my spec describes, I found a couple apps that are great and that I use everyday. The first, is goal managment software called Aspire from Unifiq.

The thing about goals is: you can’t have too many of them. You have to be careful about this. Goals aren’t tasks. Initially, when you start managing your time based on goals, you may get the two confused a bit. The reason for this is that you’ll still be thinking of tasks. What is interesting here is that often people don’t focus on goals because it forces them to realize the limited nature of time. That can be uncomfortable for some. You aren’t going to have tons of goals, at least that you realistically hope to achieve. That last part is important: that you realistically hope to achieve. Presumably, if you are focusing on things that are important to you, then you intend to be successful in those goals. You wouldn’t want to water down your probability of being successful with them by having so many that none get your focus, right? See, tasks are relatively meaningless, but goals, goals are aligned with your deepest desires for your life.

So how many goals is ‘too many’? This is dependent on the individual. Only you can answer that and it will be based on your goals in particular, but no matter who you are, it will be finite.

So, it is important to focus on goals and the number of goals should be reasonable because you are only recording those that you fully intend to achieve (while making allowance for changing goals as you age and develop as a person). I find that Aspire accomodates this well. In fact, suffering from ‘task-itis’ as I was when initially reframing my time management around goals, I was put off by the inability of Aspire to accomodate more goals on its ‘goalscape’ (I like to call it) view. I even emailed the developer asking about that and suggesting he change that. He nicely replied, with what I thought he might: by making the point, as above, that to have too many goals, is to not follow a best practice pattern for goal based motivation. Not his exact words, but that was the point and I can now agree to that. Let me tell you why I can agree to that: a few weeks of using this approach in practice. Let me just say, that we do ourselves a disservice by imagining that we can do everything. It is fun to think that way, but I am finding what is more satisfying is to decide to identify, focus on, and work toward those things that are most important to me and for which I have enough time to complete (or be successful at, considering that some goals never ‘complete’). Of course, it isn’t like I didn’t work on goals before (or you wouldn’t be reading this blog, for instance). It is just that with more experience as an entreprenuer, actually just as a human, I have found that to focus on goals almost exlusively is far superior and has many positive side effects. These side effects include:

• Less stress

• Go to bed at night knowing you made progress on those things that really matter to you

• Good feeling about being a better steward of limited time, i.e., not wasting time

• Higher satisfaction

• Actually reaching your goals. Imagine that!

Goals, Obstacles, and Solutions

Here is a little movie provided by Unifiq about Aspire in which the developer quickly describes the software. It’s a good quick introduction:

I think Aspire has boiled down goal identification and the ‘goal landscape’, if you will, to its essence. Further, what I like about it, and one of the requirements I had, was that goal priority be reflected in the relative size of reified goals. In other words, I want goals that are more important to me, or for which I am currently focusing, to be metaphorically and visually ‘bigger’. I am a visual thinker, so I like this approach. I also like the ability to identify obstacles and solutions associated with each goal. This is actually a paradigm shift. At first my obstacles read like tasks, e.g., ‘learn how to install and configure wordpress’, ‘rewrite site in Ocaml’, etc.. As I understood more the developer’s intent, I began to recast those obstacles as, for example, ’don’t know which cms I’ll use for new project’ and ‘site is slow and I want to use a non-imperative language this time for lots of good reasons’ respectively. The solutions then become things like ‘install wordpress’ and ‘rewrite site using OCaml and Oscigen’. See the difference? By identifying obstacles, you document the problem rather than merely documenting the solution (as task management systems typically do). For all that interstitial information that falls between goals, obstacles, and solutions, Aspire’s notes feature comes in handy. Notes are easily accessed on any node of your goalscape.

So We’ve Got Our Goalscape, Now What, What Do We Do? Goal-Based Time Management

Of course, when you actually sit down to focus on one goal at a time to get some work done you need to manage your time well in accordance with that goal. Aspire won’t help you with that. This is where the rubber meets the road, but it isn’t correct to say ‘ok, well we’re back at tasks, it all boils down to tasks anyway’. I think we’ve already established the importance of your frame of reference. You are a human, not a robot and your psychology/viewpoint matters deeply. To ignore it is to not put oil in your car, so to speak. You have to address that deeper part. And we have with Aspire. But now we need to manage time in service of our goals because time is where we live. And yes, I found a nice time management app to suport me in this, it is called Vitamin-R.

What I like about Vitamin-R is that its features are geared toward time management with a bent toward goal focus and completion. If you haven’t first come from the understanding of the importance of goals then Vitamin-R may well be lost on you. Elsewhere online I read one individual initially say they thought it was “featureless”. This was sort of funny, and I actually can’t see how anyone would say that even without an understanding of the premise on which it is designed, but nevertheless, it is important to know that Vitamin-R is carefully designed to support goal directed work. A quick read of the user manual that comes with it explains the rationale behind their design.

Here is a screencast the Vitamin-R folks put together that describes the utility of the software:

I encourage you to check out Aspire and Vitamin-R. They both have free trials. I use them every day now and I have to say focusing my work more rigorously around my goals is proving to be effective, especially having a system to formally support this. The benefit of having this system in place and using it daily is that its value kicks in when you are feeling distracted, overly curious, tired, or unfocused, for whatever reason. Many days you won’t feel the need because using this system will keep you focused on important work for a few days after stopping its use, but after a while it is easy to digress.

Another important point when changing your paradigm as I’ve discussed above is to recognize that you actually need down time too. Vitamin-R helps this happen by enforcing breaks. I find that it is important and energizing to take one full day off a week too. I do that on Sundays. No work, just rest. That is an important piece in my productivity puzzle too.

I hope you are inspired by this post to take the time to identify what is really important to you and then commit to working on those goals. You’ll feel great and your satisfaction will skyrocket.

Enjoy!