Purpose: it's out there somewhere...

I was recently having a discussion on the Warrior Forum about the difference between the meaning of the word Purpose and Goal.

It got me to thinking about how words can mean such different things to different people, especially when closely examined. To the persons I was having the discussion with, Goal was the over-arching “thing” to which our life strived for and purpose was how to get to that thing.

But that sounds completely backwards to me and to most people I know.  To me, goals are markers or sign-posts that you set on your way to some achievement, but purpose is what gives you the world-view you have and is what is behind the achievements that you choose to go after.  Strange how the concepts can be flipped – but also, I did not hear this person clearly say that whatever your ultimate “thing” is, that is what drives to choose the accomplishments that you want.

At any rate, here is the dictionary definition of Purpose:

–noun

1.	the reason for which something exists or is done, made, used, etc.

2.	an intended or desired result; end; aim; goal.

3.	determination; resoluteness.

4.	the subject in hand; the point at issue.

5.	practical result, effect, or advantage: to act to good purpose.

–verb (used with object)

6.	to set as an aim, intention, or goal for oneself.

7.	to intend; design.

8.	to resolve (to do something): He purposed to change his way of life radically.

We read about how important it is to crystallize our purpose statement so we have a firm grasp on what it is we are living for – to make life affirmations so that we end up knowing that when we get to the top of “ladder of success” we have placed that ladder on the correct wall.

–DTM

How do we deal with the array of tasks, sub-goals, goals, achievements, milestones, accomplishments, short, medium, and long term goals? The list is dizzying! But there is a simple formula when it comes to success:

Success happens because a series of tasks were done in some particular order, with and eye toward a particular final state.

That seems fairly straightforward, but the fact is in practice it can be an enormous burden, and can seem like an insurmountable undertaking. Why does such a simple concept become such a pile of spaghetti complexity in real life? Well there are three answers to this question:

• Lack of prioritization
• Lack of proper task breakdown
• Lack of proper ordering

Lack of prioritization: Most of us, if we are the few percent who actually create a “to-do” list, just write down our tasks randomly as they occur to us. “At least we got them down on paper!” we figure. Well, that is a great step forward from just “keeping them in our heads”, but the problem is we usually tackle the first in the list, or the easiest one, (or the ones we like) not giving much thought to any type of prioritization of these tasks.

That is a real problem. There are some specific questions we need to ask ourselves about every task we have on our list:

1. How important is it with regard to our ultimate life goals?
2. How important is it with regard to our short term and medium term goals?
3. How important is it with regard to what I want to accomplish today?
4. Is it important enough to even do at all?

When we don’t analyze our tasks like this we usually end up doing many tasks that are unimportant, and end up with tasks that we never got to – but that were really more important than the ones we did.

We end up feeling like we worked very hard, but did not get much accomplished. This frustrates us, and can eventually make us give up all too easily on our ultimate desires. The problem is, we know at some deep level we were going around in circles and did not progress very far for all of the effort we put out.

Lack of proper task breakdown: Another problematic area is not breaking our tasks down enough, or breaking them down too fine. Tasks should be units of work that we can accomplish in a day or less, but they should not be so small that they are really just bits of a single piece of work. An example would be the construction of a house. Building the entire house is not a task; it cannot be performed in a single day. Putting on the roof over the garage might be a single, day-long task. On the other hand, nailing down a single shingle would not be a task.

So the proper idea of a task is “something I can start doing now, and get done by at least days end.”

Lack of proper ordering: Sometimes tasks cannot be done effectively until some other task is done first. This is proper ordering. The problem is as humans we tend to like certain tasks and not like others so much. Sometimes the tasks we do not like are the ones that really need to be done before the tasks we like can be started. A proper perspective about the ordering of our tasks is needed here.

In addition to this, there are some tasks that need to be repeated at some rate. Exercise is an excellent example of a daily task that needs repeating and needs slow but constant change with regard to increasing weights, or increasing the repetitions of various workouts. Our task completion is much more effective when we know this specifically.

So it becomes clear as we think about tasks that there are more effective ways to deal with them before we actually start doing them. Ordering our tasks by priority, breaking up those that are too large, combining those that are too small, or simply dumping those that are not helping us makes our list of things “to-do” the most effective it can towards moving us quickly to our goal.

Don’t miss the next article where I will discuss how tasks are the children of goals, and what the significance of goals and milestones are.

- David T. McKee

P.S. So what is an important task you can do right now to jump start your business? Start by ordering a Huge box of E-Business books, Achievement and Success books, Copywriting and Pyschological Tactics to rocket your business to Success! Spend a mere $7.00 to get the Marketing Magic Collection 1with over 250 ebooks, reports, articles, by some of the most famous Joe Vitale, Michel Fortin, Gary Halbert, and so many more!  Get it here!

Note: This is copy-righted content, Copyright  2008, David T. McKee

We all have many things to do each day – pick up the kids from school, go get the groceries, mow the lawn.  And in our business life as  well as our goal plan, we also have many tasks.

The problem is, we usually do not prioritize these tasks.  Most of us have a vague notion of what our priorities are – what is important… but usually what drives us is something else: urgency.

Now urgency is not a bad thing, in fact is is quite useful, but when it is sitting in the seat of importance, it will screw up your life.  Most of us live this way though, we do what is most urgent on our list regardless of how important it is.

And that is a major reason we seem so hopelessly behind in our efforts to achieve ultimate success, and grasp our dreams.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower used a particular methodology to solve this problem for himself.  He was the 1st Supreme Allied Commander Europe during WWII, was the 1st Military Governor of the American Occupation Zone in Germany, and the 34th President of the United States. He accomplished many great things in his life.  His special method for achieving success has since been nicknamed “The Eisenhower Matrix“.

The Eisenhower matrix is fairly easy to understand: Take your list of things you need to do, and put them on a 2 by 2 grid labeled “Urgency” vs “Importance”.  An example is shown below:

Importance of an item increases from left to right, and urgency increases from bottom to top.

Basically you must make subjective decisions on where your daily tasks fall within this matrix, but it forces you to think about your tasks and make important decisions about if you should even be doing some of them. If something is neither important or urgent, dump it. If it is both important and urgent, do it first. If it is important, but not urgent, do that later, after your important and urgent things are complete. Finally, if something is urgent, but not so important to you, you may either want to dump it, or at most, delegate it to someone else if possible.

You could eliminate many of your unimportant tasks and free up you most valuable asset, time. Doing this allowed President Eisenhower to accomplish so much in his life, and can do the same for you.

The Impact Effort Matrix…

There is a variation on the Eisenhower matrix called the “Impact/Effort” matrix.  What the Impact Effort matrix attempts so do is allow you to discover the tasks that will give the greatest impact for the least effort.  The best possible world is to use both matrices when evaluating your task list.  Then you would want to do your most important, most urgent, least effort tasks first.

Prioritization of tasks is one of your most powerful tools for leveraging your time.

David T. McKee

P.S. Achieve-Master the software contains both priority matrices in the prioritization tab, sign up to be an Achieve-Master beta tester!

P.P.S. Are you trying to start an online or home based business? Are you afraid of the current economic madness? Then spend a mere $7.00 to get the Marketing Magic Collection 1 with over 250 ebooks, reports, articles, by some of the most famous Joe Vitale, Michel Fortin, Gary Halbert, and so many more!  Get it here!

Note: This is copy-righted content, Copyright  2008, David T. McKee