Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity pdfdrive com

Empowerment
Perhaps the greatest benefit of adopting the next-action approach is that it
dramatically increases your ability to make things happen, with a concomitant
rise in your self-esteem and constructive outlook.
Productivity will improve only when individuals increase their
operational responsiveness. And in knowledge work, that means
clarifying actions on the front end instead of the back.
People are constantly doing things, but usually only when they have to, under
fire from themselves or others. They get no sense of winning, or of being in
control, or of cooperating among themselves and with their world. People are
starving for those experiences.
The daily behaviors that define the things that are incomplete and the moves
that are needed to complete them must change. Getting things going of your own
accord, before you’re forced to by external pressure and internal stress, builds a
firm foundation of self-worth that will spread into every aspect of your life. You
are the captain of your own ship; the more you act from that perspective, the
better things will go for you.
Asking “What’s the next action?” undermines the victim mentality. It
presupposes that there is a possibility of change, and that there is something you
can do to make it happen. That is the assumed affirmation in the behavior. And
these kinds of “assumed affirmations” often work more fundamentally to build a
positive self-image than can repeating “I am a powerful, effective person,
making things happen in my life!” a thousand times.
Is there too much complaining in your culture? The next time someone moans
about something, try asking, “So what’s the next action?” People will complain
only about something that they assume could be better than it currently is. The
action question forces the issue. If it can be changed, there’s some action that
will change it. If it can’t, it must be considered part of the landscape to be
incorporated in strategy and tactics. Complaining is a sign that someone isn’t
willing to risk moving on a changeable situation, or won’t consider the
immutable circumstance in his or her plans. This is a temporary and hollow form
of self-validation.

---

People are always blaming their circumstances
for what they are. I don’t believe in
circumstances. The people who get on in this
world are the people who get up and look for
the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t
find them, make them.
—George Bernard Shaw
Although my colleagues and I rarely promote our work in this way, I notice
people really empowering themselves every day as we coach them in applying
the next-action technique. The light in their eyes and the lightness in their step
increase, and a positive spark shows up in their thinking and demeanor. We are
all already powerful, but deciding on and effectively managing the physical
actions required to move things forward seems to exercise that power in ways
that call forward the more positive aspects of our nature.
When you start to make things happen, you really begin to believe that you
can make things happen. And 
that
makes things happen.

---