Success Tools - Simple*Ology

Zen Habits has a review of Mark Joyner’s Simpleology: The Simple Science of Getting What You Want , a life/goals management system which seems to have a number of interesting techniques. I was particularly impressed with this comment:

The system first asks you to define your Ultimate Life, then asks you to choose
one Long-term Target (6-12 months away), one Medium-term Target (1-6 months
away) and one Short-term Target (2 days to 1 week away). Only one of each,
because if you choose more, you cannot maintain sufficient focus and energy to
get to your target.

This tightly-focused approach is refreshing in the light of how many goals we can generate for ourselves. I remember times when I put my goals on a series of spreadsheets. I found myself overwhelmed and depressed. Currently, I do a lot of GTD techniques, but I have found that I get more done, with less “overwhelm”, if I limit the actual items on my planner to a few, carefully-chosen tasks from my much larger GTD "next-action" list. If I run out of “actions” before I run out of “day”, I can always go back for more.

I look forward to reading Joyner’s book. It seems to have a great grasp of reality.

Techtags: SimpleOlogy Mark Joyner GTD Goals