Thank God for the Nurture Side.
I was not born a systems thinker.
In fact, I would say my natural strengths are about as far from system thinking as one could be. That being said, I have surrendered.
This isn’t to imply I went quietly or easily. No. I fought it, emboldened by the whole strengths movement. When I was reading Marcus Buckingham’s Go Put Your Strengths to Work, I was thrilled by what I interpreted as an invitation, even a suggestion, to not concern myself with that which I wasn’t gifted. What an elation.
Unfortunately, I found out that until I got clear about creating the infrastructure or systems to run my life, business and personal, there were going to be significant roadblocks thrown in my way. Barriers so big that all my strengths focus couldn’t overcome them.
This is where the surrender comes in.
Life Environmental Design Systems
Mark Joyner, a hugely effective internet marketing guru has an online program called Simple-ology. Within it, he describes Life Systems Environmental Design, A rather simple concept whose adoption can change your life forever. At least it has mine.
The idea was planted in somewhat fertile ground, because I had just finished reading a great book on influence, called coincidentally enough, Influencer. Within it, the authors, headed by Kerry Patterson, outlined a six block approach to influencing behavior developed based on tremendous empirical studies of hugely effective change movements around the world. They had also relied heavily on the work of Albert Bandura, the 80+ year old Stanford professor known as the “Father of Social Learning.”
What I got from Influencer is the recognition that the way we set up our environment, the ease with which we have access to that which we need and the barriers we construct between us and our “derailers” was strategically supported by Joyner’s work.
Create an Environment for Optimal Support
It seems so simple that having to write a section about it seems odd. Except that so few people really do it. I mean really do it. A good metaphor here is a jet fighter cockpit. Everything is in the place for optimal function. There is no time wasted chasing down important instruments.
Tell me about your work cockpit. Is it structured to optimized your performance? Does it ensure all you need is readily available and that the distractions are out of sight? If not, why not? Are you wasting more time chasing down papers and projects than you would invest in creating a winning system? For most, the answer is yes. So why do so many continue to operate sub-optimally? It comes back to our need to think a bit more about what we think about.
Design Based on Context
My process for systematizing my “cockpit” was influenced by David Allen’s book Getting Things Done. I recommend it as a resource for helping think through your Life System Environmental Design.
Allen argues for developing our vision beyond the big picture of our projects and bringing clarity to our “next actions.” By doing so, it enables us to effectively place these “next actions” on lists organized by context, or where we would be when we were actually engaged in the activity.
Rather than everything organized around projects, we are encouraged to organize our actions by whether how we will engage. Will our next action be a phone call, an email, computer work, other office work, work around the home, or errands. By creating systems that support this type of organization, it allows us to rapidly move process that which we have defined so we can address the next issue with a single-minded focus.
Use the Systems You Create
As crazy as this sounds, there are countless perfect cockpits set up that aren’t being used. Why? Creating new habit requires that we are conscious enough to let go of our habitually ways of dealing with work flow to enable the new habit to develop.
Whatever it takes, make this promise to yourself. Grant yourself grace in the process but keep in mind the perfect execution where everything is where you want it when you want it. Progress is the objective with peace of mind and incredible levels of productivity the reward. The return on this investment of effort has the potential to be the highest of anything you have 
undertaken. Give yourself this gift.
Mastering the Process
While our expansive creative intellect is a powerful tool, mastering this process is done more in the fashion of the binary decisions made by a computer. I will lay out the series of questions below:
1. Am I ready to take action on this item in the near future? If yes, move to question 2. If no, progress to 1.a
a. Is this a “yes, but not now?” If yes, place in incubation. If no, proceed to b.
b. Is this resource/support material to be filed? If yes, file. If no, proceed to c.
c. Is this trash? Throw it away.
2. Can this be completed in a single action? If yes continue to 3. If no, go to 2a.
a. Create project file, identify next action, move to 3.
3. Identify the context within which work will occur and file accordingly.
a. Phone list
b. email list
c. Computer list
d. Office work list
e. Home work list
f. Errand list
g. Miscellaneous list
h. Project list
Being systematic about that implementation of our systems can seem so mechanistic. However, while this can originally seem tedious and overly list driven, it will radically enhance your speed of process as well as the spontaneity with which you can engage your life. Yes, I said spontaneity.
Trust me.
I fought this idea as hard as anyone. Surrender and enjoy the peace of mind that comes from having thought through a lot of your future work. This seemingly infantile system eliminates tremendous resistance by enabling momentum to build to levels you ave never experienced before.
Our next session we will discuss Strategic Thinking and it role in your work flow.
If you have been following along with the “Living on Purpose” video series then here is the next video in the series. httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsU6p8WXOkg
By the way, if you are just now joining the Living on Purpose conversation, you can find the earlier posts and vids here.
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