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Wednesday 22 January 2020

"ABSOLUTE" is the way to LIVE !


Living a complete and satisfying life is everybody's dream but not many of us manage to achieve it. At times, many of us just meander through life and mistake it as "going with the flow", whereas in reality it's a dilly-dally approach that we seem to adopt to suit our convenience. But this convenience in no way an assurance of a comfortable life. A comfortable life is not about living/ operating in our "comfort zone" but about taking risks, trying new things so that we align with the unpredictable nature of the VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) world we live in. One approach to identify what ails us in preventing us from living a good life, is to map our life on a YES-NO continuum and identify where we spend maximum of our life. We may be surprised to note that a big part of our life operates along the continuum but never touches the end points of YES and NO. Living like this may be fine as long as we feel okay being mediocre, confused and stressed in our lives. The cacophony inside our head may never let us realise that decisiveness is the key that open doors of opportunities for us and we need to take action to bring clarity in life.

Believe it or not, taking action to build the much needed clarity in our life, is as simple as deciding what we want and don't want in our life. Here, in this post, I share about a strategy that aids us in this process of bringing clarity in life. This strategy is both effective and very simple to implement. The strategy is "Absolutely YES -NO List" and is based on the context of "YES-NO" continuum mentioned in the previous paragraph. I read about this strategy for the first time, in the book Life Makeovers by Cheryl Richardson, where she mentions about creating an "Absolutely" Yes list. There are quite a few variants of this "Yes-No" list proposed by many other life coaches. I provide here my own variant with an aim to simplify the strategy further.

When we talk about goals and resolutions, we make use of techniques like prioritisation and scheduling to make the process of achievement smoother for us. But any technique is useful only when we have the right list of items identified. This is where the "Absolutely Yes-No List" strategy comes to our aid by suggesting making of two different list of tasks/ things -  1. YES List, jotting down everything that you want for/ in your life, and 2. NO List, jotting down everything you do not want in life. The objective of the list is to come up with 5-7 key items that need to be acted upon immediately, whether to be added in our schedule (YES list) or to be removed from our schedule (NO list). This may sound simple but it involves a series of steps to make the strategy work in our favour. Let's look at the seven steps that will help you achieve your desired goals 
  • Identify Core Values - First and foremost, we need to identify our values/ core values. These can be thought of as guiding principles of our life. Once we have our core values defined/ identified, a framework is established for operating our life. Identifying all the possible operating values that we can think of and then boiling down to top 5-7 would be helpful. Below is the my list of top 5 operating values (the circled ones). I started off by identifying all the possible values i related to and then boiled down to top 5. There are plenty of downloadable list of core values available on the internet and those could be used to do this exercise 

  • List all the daily tasks undertaken - There's always plenty that keeps us busy all through the day. Somewhere, Busyness has overshadowed Business (Related Article : BUSYNESS - The Utopian Paradox) . Listing down everything in front of us brings it all in our line of view. We just need to list down everything that consumes our resources of time, effort, energy, etc. For example, my list of daily tasks include exercising, writing, commuting, reading, family chores, meetings, social media time, etc. ( Related Article : BRAIN DUMP - Declogging a Cluttered Mind )
  • List the resources available - We always operate within some constraints and therefore knowing the resources available to us in terms of time, knowledge, skills, etc. helps. We need to be aware of the effective time that gets available to us to focus on and do what we want to and this may easily be calculated by taking in consideration the commute time, sleep hours, important chores, etc. It may happen that from the 24 hours that gets available to us every day, only 9-10 hours turn out to be the effective available time. So, getting to know how much we can invest helps us to become more judicious about investment of resources at our disposal.  
  • Identify the current Focus Areas of Life - Life is a composite entity and therefore we should  always perceive it so and look at it in terms of multiple areas like Family, Work, Health, Friends, Finance, Personal Growth, etc. But remember that not every area needs the same level of importance all the time. Different periods of time require us to focus on different areas, based on what's creating imbalance in our lives at that point in time. A good way to select the right focus areas is use the WHEEL OF LIFE tool. (Related Article : WHEEL OF LIFE - Creating a Balanced Life)   
  • Establish relevant and appropriate Goals - Once we identify the Focus Areas, we can establish appropriate goals pertinent to that area. This is where we need to refer back to our core operating values to pick up the relevant goals. Few of my own goals are 
    • Get Fitter - Growth
    • Upgrade my Coaching Certification - Vision and Growth
    • Be more disciplined in Blogging - Being the Best
    • Read 100 books this year - Personal Development
    • Write 2 self-help books this year - Vision
    • Establish a Life Coaching Forum/ Helpline - Making a Difference
I have mapped each of my identified goals to my operating core values
  • Create Action Plan for the Goals - Achieving every goals requires a set of actions. In this step, we list down all those steps that we need to execute to move closer to our goals. Related to some of my above mentioned goals, few action steps could be
    • Get Fitter - Run/ Exercise, Eat Healthy
    • Be more disciplined in Blogging - Join Bloggers Community, Create a Blogging Plan, Attach with a Blog Buddy
    • Read 100 Books - Join reading challenge (Goodreads), Join Readers Group, Join Book Club
  • Match Action Plan with the Daily Task List and Resource Availability to arrive at the final Absolutely Yes and Absolutely No List. It should look something like this ( see the image below ) 

Live ABSOLUTELY to Live COMPLETELY !

24 comments:

  1. Such an informative post and I really liked the idea of making absolutely yes and no list. I also believe in making list and prioritizing all important things, will use this idea too, to stay on track . I am sure this simple task will help a lot in increasing productivity.

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    1. Indeed this technique will help a lot in increasing productivity. It's a very simple technique and doesn't require much effort to implement.

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  2. Wow...every time you come up with such interesting ways to make life easier. But I am so bad at lists. Do you actually have lists for everything? :)

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    1. Haha...not for everything. One should go by whatever technique suits the person. For me, it's always a combination of techniques :)

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  3. I love making lists! I feel that’s the only way to stay organized, one needs at least a mental note. I like the way you have systematically shown how we can stay on top of our game with proper list making.

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    1. Thanks for your comments :)
      I think "Making Lists" is the easiest way to start organising ourselves and it can't get any simpler than that !

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  4. This was such an interesting read. I am not sure whether I can personally stick to an absolute yes no list though. Listing does reduces stress a lot. But living life too schematically may take the charm out of this wonderful world. Also Im afraid I might become like Sheldon from Big Bang Theory!

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    1. Haha..don't worry, you won't become like Shelson as long as you have been not like "Young Sheldon" :)
      The ideas of this list or for that matter any productivity tool is to render us stree free approach to work. Try it and i am sure you will feel much relieved !

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  5. Wow...this is an amazing post Narinder. I have a habit of making to do lists but I love the idea of absolute yes and no lists.. I am going to make an absolute no list from now on !

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    1. Great :)
      Incorporating Yes and No in the list making process would only ease out things for us !

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  6. Strongly Agree on “Making Yes/No List”, it is the best way to keep the life and it’s priorities on track, so helpful post for those who are still finding the way to map their operative core values, just like me.Thanks for sharing!

    Archana

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    1. Thanks for your comments. Hope you use the "Yes/ No List" and get more productive in life

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  7. This is truly an amazing post, especially the concept of yes & no list. Let tell you that you always came up with some interesting & informative post which encourage us to be positive in life . I fact, now I am going to make a list for myself too

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    1. Thanks for your kind and encouraging comments :)
      My idea about these posts is to share some real simple tools that could make our complex lives easier to cope with !
      So happy that you found it useful !

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  8. Reading such a post in the start of a career is actually useful.. being a newbie into blogging few tips were so true.. absolute yes and absolute no list is something which has to be followed by anyone and that is tough.. multitasking in the dont do list is quite surprising, as thats the thing which I work with..

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    1. Thanks for your comments and happy to note that you found the post useful :)

      Talking about Multitasking, it's actually a myth because at any point of time we just happen to work on one time only.Research says that the so called "multitasking" is more time consuming because we need to keep shifting our focus from task to task and it takes longer time to restart from where we left.

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  9. Very informative post I must say. The yes and no list will be very helpful I am sure. Making lists always makes life easier and you are more productive. I hope to follow this and become more organised and productive.

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    1. Thanks for your comments and definitely you should give the "Yes-No" list a try and i am sure you won't be disappointed :)

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  10. Narinder, your posts are super informative and they are also very interesting to read! I’m definitely adopting this method in my life too.
    Noor Anand Chawla

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    1. Thanks and much appreciate your positive comments. Happy to note that you plan to adopt the method which definitely will make your life more organised.

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  11. I am working on this right away, really liked the way you have segregated things to do and not to. Making the lists very soon.

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    1. Thanks and you will feel a positive and progressive change happening in your life after starting to use the tool.

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  12. Confining to core values and defining our priorities can make us better for life. 100 books is a new target that will be effective and great post.😊

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    1. Thanks and best wishes to you in case you plan to implement any target, like the 100 books .

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