I've found that having a clear picture of my overall goals and objectives, makes it easier to make decisions about items in my inbox. It makes it easy to answer the question of "is this really something I should act on". Unclarity of goals, makes my lists of things I believe I have to do in this world long, unfocused and hard to navigate. But even though I experience real value from having the clarity of mind a concrete set of goals gives, I've found it really hard at times to formulate them for my self. Leading of course to a total breakdown in any productivity system I've been using at any time.
And voila, I have a nice overview of clearly stated goals that meets any concerns I have, that I can re-visit for clarity and focus and measure progress against in the future.
A solution came to me in a book called "Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions" by Hammond, Keeney and Raiffa. A part of their (somewhat elaborate) decision procedure for making a choice, also provides a very good crutch in order to get the clarity of mind I need in order to form a bunch of good objectives for my self.
The process is very simple. Bring out a sheet of paper (I use a two-page spread in my journal) and write down what area, project or problem you'd like to get a clarity of mind around as a headline - be it a high-level thing such as "career" or a lower level item such as "the car." Then list all concerns you have with respect to this area. For this phase, I like to use a timer. I set it to four minutes, and pour everything that enters my mind until the timer tells me times up. That usually fill 70% of an A5 page (which is the size of my journal) and leaves a little bit of room should I think of anything else during the rest of the process.
Next I transform all those concerns to objectives - which I write down on the right-side spread in my journal. The transformation goes from "concern" - say "clunky sound from rear when left turns" - to a positive objective such as "Decide whether I'm going to keep fixing the old car, or buy a new one." I try not to fuzz to much about it, but I regularly try to stop and think a little bit bigger than my first inclination (which would be to take the car to the repair-shop.)
The final step then, is to separate the means from the ends - some of the objectives tends to be a way to accomplish other objectives. I then turn the page in my journal, and give the page an informative heading such as "What I want from my Car". From the previous page, I pick the most important objective that is an end in itself, and write it down. Then I take any objectives that support that objective as a means, and write those down as well as sub-points for the main objective. Then I take the next 'ends' objective from the previous page, and so on until all objectives from the previous page have been transferred to my overview.
And voila, I have a nice overview of clearly stated goals that meets any concerns I have, that I can re-visit for clarity and focus and measure progress against in the future.
