The Natural Planning Model

Recognizing my ongoing struggles with my infamous to-do list, I decided to seek professional help. I came across a book recently, entitled "Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity" and I immediately thought, "That's for me!" I've had the book for a few months, and here and there as time has allowed I have been absorbing the tips and advice from "personal productivity guru" David Allen.

One of the projects I have had on my list that I haven't seemed to make significant progress on is cleaning up and organizing my home office. This room, out of all the rooms in my house, is a vital part of my core, my identity, the yardstick by which I frequently measure my self-worth. Yes, that puts a lot of pressure on such a small amount of square footage. But as is my nature, because I am constantly juggling multiple projects - both work-related and personal - my home office has invariably become my primary command center. And over time, as it has become more cluttered and out of control, I notice my stress levels and feelings of being "emotionally overwhelmed" have correspondingly risen. So now, I've decided to draw that proverbial line in the sand. Time to take back control of my office and my life.

Back to Mr. Allen. Chapter 3 is all about "getting creative projects underway" using the five phases of project planning. Don't get thrown off by the use of the descriptor "creative" - the phases can be used for all kinds of things on the to-do list. What's important is to understand the concepts, and then that understanding can be applied to a variety of different circumstances. One of the first methods Mr. Allen talks about in this chapter is the Natural Planning model. He uses the example of planning a dinner date - though most of us do this unconsciously and without thinking, we go through distinct steps to arrive at the end of that process. The result is: spending a nice evening having dinner with friends. But Mr. Allen breaks down each step of how we get from "I have an idea!" to the fulfillment of that idea. As an exercise, I used the Natural Planning model late last evening to approach trying to tackle my home office organization:

Step 1: What is your purpose?

My purpose is "to clean up my work space and have all of my work materials in specific locations in order to function effectively and productively with my sanity intact."

What I have learned about defining one's goals is, the more specific you can describe it, the easier it is to actually achieve success in accomplishing it. So, make a note of this.

Step 2: What does a "successful outcome" look like?

Again, this refers to my note in step 1. So, in imagining how I would like things to be where my home office is concerned, here are some of the requirements that have been bouncing around in my head:

• No papers on the floor
• Every new incoming piece of paper has a location where I can easily file or store it, thus easily locating and retrieving it when necessary
• Nothing piled up on my desk
• Dust-free
• I would feel a great deal LESS stressed out

Mr. Allen refers to this as "outcome visioning." You are defining the what - how the physical world should look, sounds and feels to you in a way that best fulfills your purpose.

Step 3: Brainstorming action steps...

In the Natural Planning model, once you have defined the what, your brain should automatically begin the brainstorming process. Mr. Allen describes this as your brain trying to resolve the gap between what you want (i.e. I WANT to have a clean, organized office) and the current reality (i.e. I currently have a cluttered, disorganized office).

Step 4: Organizing

Again, once your mind has created the list of to-do's, you will automatically start to organize them. In my case, I need to sort out all the papers on my floor before I can determine if a) a file exists for the information or b) I need to create a new file in my drawer. I need to pick the papers up off of the floor before I can actually dust and vacuum. And so forth and so on.

Step 5: What is the next action?

This is where I usually fall off the wagon... because what I've been doing is thinking about all of the steps involved in getting my home office to the desired state ("clean and organized") rather than just the single NEXT step in that project, I become paralyzed and my purpose never gets accomplished. So in doing this little exercise I now have a list of activities in the proper sequence, written down on paper so I don't have to worry I will forget anything, and a place to track my completion of each activity (I just need to line them out as I do them).

My next action? "Make piles of the stuff on the floor, sorting into the following categories: stuff to keep, stuff to do, stuff to shred/trash." I can certainly make piles - making piles is easy. That's what I've been doing all this time which has caused my current situation. I'm just going to tweak that one step a little bit, and that's going to put me on the path to accomplishing my objective... a clean and organized home office.

I can tell it's already working... I feel a great deal LESS stressed. I can't wait to see how I'm going to feel when I can cross this one off the to-do list for good.