Doing does not always get things done

I recently read a book on productivity by David Allen called, “Ready for Anything” (this is not a paid review!!). This book, in simple terms, has the objective to make a person more productive, however unlike many of these so called ‘productivity’ books it starts from a very different premise. It’s not all about goal focus and stepping stones to success, instead Allen takes the stand that you need to identify that which really stops you being productive, those things that hold you back and why. There is a lot of content to the book which is relevant but too involved to go into now, allow ourselves not to be productive. Or put another way, why do we not allow ourselves to get a result. David Allen puts forward the concept that we allow so many things to block productivity (getting a result) because the conclusion of productivity is we get a ‘result‘ and a result will require an acknowledgment of some sort that the result, a result that could end in either success or possibly failure. Right now you might be saying to yourself, I can’t train for a marathon or I can’t climb Ruapehu because I am just too busy, I have too many ‘other’ things to do. No matter what the ‘product or result’; a marathon, a mountain to climb or any sort of result, as long as we have ‘other’ things to do we have a series of little buffers that stop us even trying. We subconsciously put those buffers into place because in reality we might not be able to run a marathon or we may not be able to climb Ruapehu and as long as we have ‘other’ things in the way that stop us trying we simply can’t fail (because we simply won’t try). In short we fool ourselves that ‘we are gonna do it’ when in fact the reality might be that we can’t do it and that is something we do not want to face.

Now the extension of this is if we don’t clear the decks to train or to make time to do what we need to do to get a result then we will never know if we really can. Even if we try and fail or fall short to put off trying we will never really know. Now that seems clear and simple but the action is a lot our lives with is simply in the way then we should be able to move it to the side to at least attempt to start to train for that marathon or climb that mountain or whatever result you would like to do. I hope this issue of Adventure gives you a taste of the results available to us all we just need to ability to move the clutter to one side and have the courage to face the outcome. Enjoy