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

The Power of Natural Planning
The value of all this natural project planning is that it provides an integrated,
flexible, aligned way to think through any situation.
An idealist believes that the short run doesn’t
count. A cynic believes the long run doesn’t
matter. A realist believes that what is done or
left undone in the short run determines the long
run.
—Sidney J. Harris
Being comfortable with challenging the purpose of anything you may be
doing is healthy and mature. Being able to “make up” visions and images of
success, before the methods are clear, is a phenomenal trait to strengthen. Being
willing to have ideas, good or bad, and to express and capture all of them
without judgments is critical for fully accessing creative intelligence. Honing
multiple ideas and types of information into components, sequences, and
priorities aimed toward a specific outcome is a necessary mental discipline. And
deciding on and taking real next actions—actually moving on something in the
physical world—are the essence of productivity.
Being able to bring all these ingredients together, with appropriate timing and
balance, is perhaps the major component of professional competence for this
new millennium. But it’s not yet the norm in professional behavior; far from it.
It’s still a daunting task to apply this awareness to all the aspects of personal and
professional life. But even when only portions of the model are inserted,
tremendous benefit ensues.
The feedback I have gotten over the years in my consulting, teaching, and
coaching with this model has continued to validate that even the slightest
increase in the use of natural planning can bring significant improvement. To see
brainstorming about almost every aspect of their lives becoming a standard tool
for many people is terrific. To hear from executives who have used the model as
a way to frame key meetings and discussions, and have gotten great value from

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doing that, is gratifying. It all just affirms that the way our minds naturally work
is the way that we should focus to make anything happen in the physical world.
The model is simply the basic principle of determining outcomes and actions
for everything we consider to be our work. When those two key focus points
become the norm in our day-to-day lives, the baseline for productivity moves to
another level. The addition of brainstorming—the most creative means of
expressing and capturing ideas, perspectives, and details about projects—makes
for an elegant set of behaviors for staying relaxed and getting things done.

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