Get Real: Start from Where You Really Are

My productivity friend,

The Delusion of Starting with Goals

There’s a prevailing notion that we should kickstart our productivity by starting with ambitious goals. We’re told to make them SMART — Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. The idea is to define a destination and then chart a course backward to where we are now.

But let’s try a thought experiment. Imagine you’re traveling to Walt Disney World. You pop open Google Maps and find your destination near Orlando, Florida. Awesome! Now, you ask for directions.

What’s the first information Google Maps requests? “Choose your starting point.” Well, obviously, right? Getting directions without a starting point is like dividing by zero. It’s impossible. It’s undefined.

And that’s the problem when you start with goals. Without a defined starting point, goals are assumptions at best, wishes at worst. They’re Magic Kingdoms in the sky with no available beanstalks in the vicinity.

This start-with-goals delusion is one of the biggest reasons you get frustrated with your lack of productivity. You’re told that if your goal is clear and your “why” is irresistible, you’ll just know what to do. So when you don’t, you feel like a failure.

You’re not a failure. You’re dividing by zero.

When I was a kid, I walked up to a map in a shopping mall that had a little red dot labeled “You are here.” I turned to my mom and demanded, “How do they know where I am?” Mom laughed and laughed, and eventually it dawned on me that they knew if I was reading that map, then I must be in the same location as the map itself.

Finding “where you are” is equally easy for Google Maps when it prepares your directions to central Florida. Even if you don’t know where you are, your devices do. Click “Current location” and it’s “next stop, Epcot.”

But determining where you are in life and work isn’t automatic. There’s no “Current location” button that reveals your relative proximity to the goals you’ve dreamed up.

So what are we to do? “Get real.”

The Startling Power of Reality

The question “Where am I?” in a productivity context is functionally equivalent to “What is the reality of my current circumstances?” Circumstances include the apps you’re using for notes, tasks, planning, etc. Your circumstances also include your skills using those apps, as well as your overall skill with productivity methods. To “get real” is to know, objectively, whether your apps are covering what you need and whether you’re using them effectively.

The power of reality clicked for me a couple of years back when I read Loving What Is by Byron Katie. It is decidedly not a book about productivity, but it drove home an important point: To the extent that your perception diverges from reality, you will suffer.

This is why goals are so often more frustrating than fruitful: They diverge from the reality of your current action. In fairness, that’s what “SMART” goals are designed to address — they aim to make your goals more realistic.

But just as “simple” is a virtue but “simplistic” spells trouble, “real” is authentic and “realistic” is a guess disguised as a projection. Don’t start with what’s realistic. Start with what’s real. Start with a Productivity Snapshot.

The Film Don’t Lie: Your Productivity Snapshot

A Productivity Snapshot is your location at a point in time. Just like the pictures we take with our phones are geotagged, our Productivity Snapshots highlight “where we are now.”

What are the apps you use now?

What’s your notetaking app? Your task app — including recurring tasks? Your project manager? What do you use for email? As a calendar? To get appointments from email onto your calendar?

In last week’s Action-Powered Newsletter, I discussed the minimum requirements for an effective productivity toolkit. That’s a complementary concept, and it would be our next step: to what extent do the apps you use cover your requirements? But for this first step, the snapshot, we’re not making a judgment or comparison. We’re looking the objective reality of the apps you use.

How effective are your skills using your apps?

Rate yourself. Do you know how your apps work? Do you get the most out of them? Are you effective at preparing daily agendas? Do you prepare them at all? Do you use recurring tasks so you don’t need to recapture the same work? Do you use templates to store pre-done work? Do you know how to automate certain sequences of actions on your computer?

Don’t take the ratings personally or rig them in your favor. Occasionally, I’m tempted not to record, say, a piece of cake with my calorie total for the day. After all, if I don’t disclose that cake to my app, I never actually ate it, right? Wrong, obviously. I’m only lying to myself and I’m also the only one hurt by that lie. Find the reality, not the “should’ves” or “ought tos.”

Shape Your Reality

When I suggest that fighting reality is a frustrating waste of time, do I mean that there’s no way to make the future what you want it to be?

No! Just because goals are mostly useless doesn’t mean that the future is a crap shoot. Certainly you can’t entirely control the future, but once you know where you are now, you can stop fighting reality and start shaping it.

For one, once you know your apps and your skills, you can fill in gaps in your toolkit. You can improve your proficiency with certain apps. You can add or remove other apps from the toolkit. You can develop skills to prepare better agendas or construct more valuable templates. There’s approximately one bajillion times more value in having the right tools and skills than there is in setting the “right goals.”

But even more important, knowing where you are now means you can recognize the roles you play. Roles are the identities you embody in your life and work. When you first discover them, they are defined by action you have taken — “you are what you repeatedly do.” Once you understand how roles work, you can flip them around and ask “what actions would fulfill this role I want to embody more effectively?”

Aligning action with existing and aspirational roles is riding the wave of reality. Instead of setting distant goals divorced from where you are now, you can “think little.” What are the little actions — the small steps from here and now — that fulfill the reality of those roles? Little actions compound into big effects. Little solutions compound to solve big problems.

By focusing on what’s real, you can identify the small, tangible actions that make a difference in your daily life. You can solve little problems, tweak routines, make incremental improvements. Little wins create momentum. They free up bandwidth. They give you the mental and emotional space to spend more energy thinking bigger, so you can define and refine the roles that make your life fulfilling.

What Action Will You Take?

I could talk about roles much more deeply (and I do in The Rhythms of Productivity!), but the point of this article is putting you in touch with your productivity reality.

Complete a Productivity Snapshot. You can use the questions about apps and skills in the Productivity Snapshot section above.

I’d also be delighted if you try out an online Productivity Snapshot I’m prototyping for my website. It allows you to select apps, rate your skills with them, and rate some overall productivity skills. Then it sends that to an AI Assistant with access to The Rhythms of Productivity that will assess your toolkit and provide feedback.

I’m still tweaking the assistant, and I do still consider it a prototype, but it can help you frame your own understanding of your current productivity reality.

And once you know where you are now, your world will open up!

I hope your weekend is fulfilling and productive!
R.J.

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