Effective organization has very specific characteristics. I noticed this today as I sat down and realized I had completely forgotten how I organized my information flow.

Upon looking at the plan, I was able to reintegrate myself into my system within a few seconds.

Here are the main characteristics of effective organization:

1. Your organizational procedure should not have more than 3 main steps
2. Each step should have no more than one major action

That’s it, and that’s how you keep it simple. 

Keeping procedures simple allows you to get back into your workflow quickly in spite of interuptions and unexpected emergencies.

If you only had 2 hours to complete an important assignment, what would you do?  If you only had 2 minutes to get ready for work, what activites would you prioritise so you didn’t show up at work looking like you just rolled out of bed.

Parkinson’s law was an observation that states that work will expand in order to fill the time available for its completion. Therefore, if you have 2 minutes to get ready for work as opposed to 20, you might opt to simply brush your teeth, wash your face and gel the heck out of your hair as opposed to taking a shower, spending 5 minutes staring at yourself in the mirror and cooking breakfast.

Simply stated, when you minimize the alloted time to complete a task, you will automatically begin to focus on priorities instead of activities to simply fill time.

Exercise

Think of something that normally takes you a long time to do, like cooking or gardening, and set an unrealisticly short time limit to complete it.

 Chances are, you won’t get the job done properly, however what you will notice is that you will attempt to cut out every other activity that is not deemed mission critical to the successful (or acceptable) completion of the task.

Repeat the activity at least 3 times using this unrealistic time frame and begin to determine what absolutely must be given more time to before opted to alot more time to a given task.

Eventually you will find that you will achieve an optimal time in order to complete the task and that this time is probably somewhere around half the time or less of what it normally took you to do it before.

-continued from [Part 1] 3 Reasons why we fail

I used to train like this on and off for 3 years until I finally figured out what I was doing wrong and changed my entire approach.

Here are the 5 things I did to take effective action

Step 1 : I clearly defined my goals and outcomes

Instead of making it a vague target, I created long term goals and short term goals. Long term goals allowed me to see where I wanted to end up eventually and short term goals allowed me to stay focused if i lost sight of the long term goal

Step 2: I created easy action steps to achieve each short term goal and took action

The keyword here is easy. The reason for this is because i knew that if I didn’t make it easy, there was a high probability that I would not follow through on it on a daily basis.

Step 3: I paid attention to the results of my actions

By having short term goals and keeping my actions simple, I was able to stay in control of my outcomes and see whether they were working or not.

Step 4: I changed my approach when things weren’t working

Finally, if I decided that what I was doing wasn’t working, I’d change my approach. With short term goals and applying easy steps, I believe that results of any initial action towards a goal should be noticable within a week or less depending on what you’re doing.

My general rule now is that, if I can’t perceive results from my goal within a week, the chunk is too big and I need to set a smaller goal.

Step 5: I got good coaching and advice

Technically, this should be your first step. I on the other hand went the lazy route and missed this important step till much later on whereby had i done it would have saved me an immense amount of trouble and pain.

Before you can head for a goal, you need to be pointed in the right direction, and in order to do that, you should find someone who has achieved the goals that you desire to reach and ask them for advice. If you’re too shy to find professionals, then do some research on the internet to see who is considered an expert and find out if they have any dvd programs or written any books. Information these days is everywhere, you just need to know where to look.

Just to show you that I’m not full of horse s**t and that I actually practice what I preach, below is the plan i used to get myself out of the slump i was in and start building momentum towards achieving my goal.

Step 1: Clearly define my goals and outcomes

For this step, the long term goal is still similar, but more well defined. It used to be:

“To be strong and have stamina”

Now it is:

“To have a strong back and knees for good posture and support, reduce body weight to reduce strain on back and knees, and to increase my energy levels through cardio vascular exercise”

This was what it was when I started and it has evolved since I started taking action and learning more while seeing results.

Step 2: I created easy action steps to achieve each short term goal and took action

When I started this regiment, this was me. I had rolled shoulders that was causing my right shoulder to remain injured and I had not been able to do any hard exercise with it for more than a year. I had a weak lower back and injured it easily.

My knees were weak and would get tired if I stood up for too long (I’d injured my left from overtraining years before and I dislocated my right knee cap 3 years earlier playing soccer).

I weighed 68kg, which was not too bad, but I was flabby with weak core muscles. I was moody during the day and had low energy due to lack of exercise (so I thought at the time but later found it to be related to nutrition).

 So with all this, I was sure that it was a lost cause, though i was determined to make it work. Age was catching up with me and I decided that if i didn’t start doing something and doing it correctly NOW, I’d be stuck in this endless loop of trying and giving up.

Anyway, here is what I did for my first step. I decided that in order to make it easier for my body to deal with exercise, I’d try to lose weight. To do this, I felt I would need to increase my metabolism, so that was step one ‘Increase my metabolism’.

Where are we now: Increase my metabolism

I wasn’t a big fan of running due to bad knees and back, so that was out of the question. Plus I knew that at that early stage there was no way i was going to run everyday and be writhing in pain when i got back. So what was the next thing i could do?

Watching You Tube, i was reminded that by eating 5 small meals a day I would be able to keep my metabolism up all day. So yeah, I decided that my first step to getting strong would be to eat, which was easy enough right?. Well, not exactly

Where are we now: increase metabolism > eat 5 meals a day

I thought I’d try and do what the guy on You Tube was doing and make omellettes and yoghurt and what not, but to do that every day before going to work proved to be a pain in itself and I was severely demotivated and not interested in anymore pain, which brings us to the next step.

Step 3: I paid attention to the results of my actions

In this case, while I should have been paying attention to the results of my diet, I paid attention instead to what i considered important at the time, and that was how I was feeling about following this plan. We often take for granted the need to enjoy the things we do in order to help ourselves, so i went to the next step.

Step 4: I changed my approach when things weren’t working

So I chunked it down again, saying that preparing meals had to be easy if i was going to do it daily. So instead of preparing different meals everyday and making omellettes in the morning and making shitake mushrooms

Where are we now: increase metabolism > eat 5 meals a day> make it easy

I also took into account things that I considered would not help me lose weight and eliminated those from my diet at least 6 days a week. These include white rice, white bread, soft drinks, sweets, chips and basically anything that was pure carbs with no other nutritious value.

In the end, this is what my plan looked like for at least 2 months.

Morning

8am : Glass of water and wheatgrass

9:30am : Peanut butter sandwich

Afternoon

12:30pm : Brown rice and assorted vegetables

3:30pm : Peanut butter sandwich

Night

7:00pm : Brown rice and more assorted vegetables

10:00pm : Glass of milk and maybe another sandwich or more rice and vegetables

Everynight when I cooked I would always cook more so that I would have food for the next day and I made sandwiches the night before so i could just grab them from the fridge the next day. This system managed to work for me and because it was simple, I kept at it.

Now, I did lose 3 kilos over the next 4 months, however the plan did eventually evolve to include some PROTEIN in my diet and exercise, 2 items of which I did not factor in during my initial plan due to my own ignorance, which brings me to my final point which in actuallity should be the very FIRST thing that you should do before even planning, and that is:

Step 5: Get good coaching or advice to point you in the right direction

While following my plan,  i attempted various forms of exercise that still hurt my body and was causing me great frustration. I also noticed much to the dismay of my girlfriend that I was getting extremely moody and very edgy towards the end of the day.

I thought it was stress, little did i know that it was because of my crappy diet that while was helping me lose weight, was essentially starving me of an essential nutrient, mainly protein. I’m still learning and reading as to how this helped my mood, but surfice it to say I felt the difference immediately after I downed a protein shake and in the ensuing days.

While i had thought my metabolism was getting better and that’s why i was getting thinner, the truth was that my metabolism was in the floor and i was losing weight because i had severely reduced my caloric intake (IDIOT). No wonder i was getting chills all day and had low energy, shoulda gotten a clue.

Finally, out of pure dumb luck, my Chiropractor was having a posture and nutrition workshop whereby I learned 3 simple exercises to strengthen my back and knees (Exercises that I do now and have since fixed my shoulder problems, lower back and  knee pains).

I also learned the importance of consuming enough protein daily in my diet (at the time i started taking more protein because i started with the weight training, that’s how i noticed by pure chance that the lack of protein was causing me to be chilly and moody. I verified this later after performing some research on protein to carb ratio and its ensuing effects on a person)

Conclusion and Lessons learned

For every effort you make, make sure the results are measurable so that you can gauge whether you are moving forward or backwards. Also, you are bound to screw up (just like i did), however this does not mean that you will have learned nothing from your mistakes.

My mistake was that I didn’t get good advice from the beginning and as such i made a few errors in my initial actions. However, i also did make some progress (managed to lose weight) despite missing an important component that affected me in ways i didn’t expect (mood swings).

Once you decide on your main goal, go and look for good proper advice. For instance, if you have big goals on getting strong but have problems all over your body (like me), don’t go asking your run of the mill Fitness Trainer whose just gotten his certificate and has absolutely no major experience in dealing with chronic injuries. Reading lots of books is NOT experience, it just means you can talk alot about stuff you have never used.

This makes sure that you have a good head start from the beginning and also helps increase your certainty of achieving your outcome.

The people you should avoid getting advice from include:

1. People who don’t look like they apply what they teach ( Eg. a slouchy tired looking person who gives you advice to strengthen your posture and increase your energy)
2. People who cannot answer your specific questions as to why you must do something
3. People who cannot prescribe simple actions that you can follow initially (this is a sign that they themselves have no beginner experience or have no real desire to help you properly)

Every success is marred with a succession of failures, so don’t feel frustrated when they happen. Just make sure that when they do, your goals are small enough that you can see the results in a small time frame and make changes accordingly and also that you get really good advice from the beginning so you can be certain you are moving in the correct direction.

There are many reasons why we often fail to take action, but I’m going to break them down into a few posts just to make it an easier read.

The first reason why we fail to take action and follow through is because:

REASON 1: We don’t set ourselves up to win

I’ll explain this with a personal example. I remember everytime I wanted to start training I would always plan a very specific regiment. Do so and so exercise and so and so time, eat this, don’t eat that and I’d try to take into account all the possible variables in order to achieve my desired outcome, which was to be strong and fit obviously.

Anyway, I’d start doing it and before you know it, the unavoidable interferences begin to appear. I don’t manage to do an exercise at a certain time, or I miss out on a meal because i had to go out, my muscle is more sore than I anticipated or I strained something.

So as this things begin to pile on, I start thinking to myself, “DAMMIT! My whole regiment is screwed up!”, and I begin to get stressed out and convince myself that the only way to attain my goal is to live in total isolation where I can control every single variable towards achieving my goal.

Unfortunately, living in the real world, where uncertainty abounds, this is an unattainable ideal.

To get to the point, people (including me) sometimes feel that in order to achieve a particular goal they have to follow one very specific fixed route and if they steer of course at anytime, they will fail. People see the road to action as high wire act whereby if they aren’t completely in control they will fall.

The truth is, there are many ways to achieve a goal, and as long as we know what are goal is, we definitely will be able to find multiple ways to achieving their goal. This brings me to the second and third reason why we fail to take action and follow through.

REASON 2: We do not properly define our goals and desired outcomes

REASON 3: We make every action step to difficult or immeasurable

Here is an example of my old goals and actions:

Goal: To be strong and have stamina

Action steps:

• Stretch everyday
• 20 minutes of ginga
• 3 core exercises and ball routines
• 3 x 1 minute handstands
• functional kicking in all directions
• Take protein immediately after
• Perform back to back non-stop for 1- 1.5 hours everyday

I managed to keep that routine for about 2 weeks, then it just got too painful and I wasn’t seeing any results.

Conclusion and Lessons learned

1. If you don’t know where you want to end up, it’s difficult to decide on a path.
2. Even if you know where you want to end up but make each step ultra difficult, there is no way you are going to do it consistently over time.

-continues on [Part 2] 5 Steps to taking effective action

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!