FEED FORWARD

Next Action, by Gary Mintchell

“There are only two problems in life,” says productivity guru David Allen, in a white paper titled “Make It Up and Make It Happen” (found at www.davidco.com). So, what are the two problems?

“Problem #1: You know what you want, and you don’t know how to get it. Problem #2: You don’t know what you want. Anything you can define as a problem can be reduced to one or both of those statements,” according to Allen.

The good thing about Allen is he doesn’t just leave you with the problems. He offers the solutions - two solutions for two problems. “You need to make it up, and make it happen.” Stated another way, you must decide and clarify what outcome you’re after. Then, you must determine how you get from here to there.

Mark Twain said, “The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small, manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.” Allen implements this idea with the idea of “next action.” As he relates in his seminal book, “Getting Things Done,” a friend was coaching an executive who was hopelessly mired in a large stack of papers. He made the executive go through the stack one paper at a time and decide for each what the next action was that must be taken. He discovered that this led to a huge productivity advance. Allen concluded, “I noticed an extraordinary shift in energy and productivity whenever individuals and groups installed ‘What’s the next action?’ as a fundamental and consistently asked question.” Read more

» Pinto’s Prose: Global Competitiveness Generates New Directions, by Jim Pinto
As I write my New Year’s column, I’m in “booming Bangalore,” India’s software capital. This is a city of some 6.5 million people, which makes it India’s third-most populous city and fifth-largest metropolitan area.

New technologies and tools abound. On a numerical basis, India is the largest growth market for cell phones, with 160 million already in use and about 6 million being added every month. Market penetration is still low (less than 20 percent), but projections are for more than 500 million subscribers by the end of 2010. I got my own local cell number, to connect with anywhere in the country, for about 2 cents a minute, with incoming calls free. No one uses voice mail; you quickly get used to text-messaging as an effective alternative. But you also must get used to deleting lots of text advertising.

Broadband Internet is everywhere, and I connected quickly and easily with my wireless laptop. There are always some glitches, which take getting used to; but one quickly becomes tolerant of the interruptions. Internet cafes abound, with prices that are ridiculously low translated to dollars... Read more

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