Changing Things

As Steve Jobs says in the brief interview in the video linked below, we all have the ability to influence our world, to make things happen, or to make them happen better, or maybe faster.

Some people think that important changes are only within the reach of other people with a lot of power or superior intelligence. This simply isn’t true. Even if your circle of influence isn’t very large, there are things that your actions can have a strong impact on. And the people affected by those things have, in turn, other more or less large circles of influence where what you have started can be expanded.

To change things you just need to focus your efforts effectively on what you want to achieve, be persistent and stay motivated.

At times like these, when a very difficult economic situation is hitting a good number of countries, companies and individuals, we must question and rethink almost everything we have been taught. In fact, the more difficult a situation is, the more we can do to change and improve it. It’s at the most difficult times that we have the greatest opportunity to dig deep within ourselves, evaluate what we’re doing and decide what it is we can really contribute. Or we can continue to spend our energies complaining about the politician of the day, the banks, the big companies or how unfair life is in general.

Do you want to change things? To get started, you just need to be clear about two things:

1. Know what your goal is: What do you want to achieve? Why? If you don’t know why you are doing what you are doing, your actions will lack meaning, clarity and direction.
2. Determine what is the next move you need to make to get closer to your goal. And focus on it.

If you use a personal management system like Getting Things Done (GTD), creating a new goal, shaping it and consolidating it naturally in your life, blending it with the rest of your personal and professional projects, is something really simple.

Create a new project in your system that brings you closer to the final result you want to achieve, and add to that project a first action to perform. You have already started!

Then don’t lose sight of it, review it every week and add new actions as you complete the previous ones. This is how you change things, step by step. You just need a good personal Organization system and some discipline.