10 steps to a meaningful and productive life according to the Agile Result system

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

A flexible and thoughtful approach to personal effectiveness that list lovers will especially appreciate.

The English phrase Agile Result can be translated as "flexible result" or "flexible performance". The personal effectiveness system with this name was invented by The 12 Practices of Agile Results / Start It Up by JD Meier, Microsoft manager, blogger and author of books.

According to him, Agile Result helps to be open to change, improve, realize one's potential and achieve goals. The core of the system is made up of several techniques and principles that you need to gradually introduce into your life and constantly practice.

1. The rule of three

This is the core practice on which the entire Agile Result system is built. The rule of three helps to determine the most important, weed out all unnecessary and secondary, wisely invest your time and easily track the results.

The essence is simple:

• Define three main tasks or goals - for the day, week, month, year.
• Write them down in your diary and keep them in mind as guidelines.
• To devote time first of all to these matters, and only then to everything else.

Meyer advises applying the rule of three in all areas of life. Going to study for programming courses? Identify three goals that you want to achieve as a result of the training, or three skills that you need to develop. Going to workout? Make a list of at least three exercises that you plan to do. Have you read a good book? List three key ideas.

2. Setting up for the week and Friday reflection

On Monday, the author of Agile Result suggests setting three main goals to achieve by Friday night. And in general, think about how you would like to spend the coming week, what to do, what to focus on.

And on Friday night, you should look back and honestly note what worked and what didn't. The rule of three can be applied in this case as well: mark three cases that you did well, and three that are still worth working on.

A similar approach can be applied to any time frame: day, month, year, five-year plan, and so on.

3. Control over different areas of life

Meyer emphasizes that it is important to strive to ensure that no area important to you "sags", and evenly invest time and effort in each of them. He recommends making a list of the main areas of life: work and professional development, family, home, self-care, hobbies and creativity, communication with friends and family, and so on.

Then, in each category, you should list the tasks you need to tackle. Meyer calls them hot spots - hot zones.

After that, it remains to regularly look into these lists and check if you have missed something important, "extinguish" hotspots and note the progress on each item.

4. Timeboxing

This technique helps you get things done faster, fight procrastination, and keep track of where time is going. Here's how to master it.

• Divide the working day into equal time intervals. For example, 30, 45, or 60 minutes each, depending on how long you can focus on the task and work effectively without stopping.
• Take time out for breaks. Each time block should have 5 to 15 minutes of rest. Leave a few breaks of 20-60 minutes between blocks - for lunch, a walk, relaxation and possible force majeure.
• Make a list of tasks for the day. Count how many time blocks it will take to complete each of them.
• Turn on the timer. Try to meet the time that you have determined for yourself.
• Reduce the length of time blocks. If you see that you can do it faster, shorten the sections, for example, to 20-25 minutes.

5. Strong week

All things are conditionally divided into unpleasant ones, which upset and take away strength, and pleasant ones, which inspire, help to feel better and give energy for new achievements. JD Meier calls them weak and strong, respectively. And he calls for no more than 20% of weak cases in your diary, and no less than 80% of strong ones.

It is also best to do unpleasant tasks early in the day or week. This way you will get rid of the most difficult and you can calmly do everything else. The same technique in classic time management is called "eat the frog".

6. Prioritization

Prioritization is necessary in order to thin out the diary and find in it such tasks that are not worth attention - temporarily or in general. This can be done in three steps:

• View to-do lists with daily, weekly and monthly tasks or hotspots in different areas of life.
• Divide all tasks into three categories: Must, Should, and Could.
• Decide what to do with each task, depending on its status: do it right now, schedule it for a specific day, postpone it indefinitely, delegate it or delete it from the list.

Most likely, thanks to this technique, the to-do list will "lose weight" at least a little and it will have more meaning and specificity.

7.330-day sprint

Meyer recommends devoting every month to a particular habit, skill, or an entire area of life, giving these things as much time as possible and making them a priority. In essence, it resembles a kind of personal marathon, although the author calls this practice a 30-day sprint (30 Day Sprints) or a monthly development sprint (Monthly Improvement Sprints).

In any case, thanks to this method, it will be possible to pump some skills, learn new things, and become more organized. You can arrange a sprint as follows.

• At the beginning of the month, choose what you want to do. For example, start training, freshen up the interior in the house, raise the level of knowledge of a foreign language, strengthen relationships with a spouse or children, tidy up family photo archives, collect information on how to make and promote your website, and so on. It must be something important to you or just enjoyable.
• Make sure that in a month you will be able to achieve at least small results. It is quite possible to learn to better understand English films and TV shows during this period, but opening your own business, writing a book or a dissertation, or completely renovating a house is not quite. You run the risk of not coping with the task and ruining your mood. Therefore, it is better to split a sprint dedicated to a large-scale project into parts.
• Give a little time each day to the task you have chosen. Even if it will be only 10 minutes, the main thing is consistency.
• Summarize at the end of the month. Evaluate the result you have arrived at and think about what else needs to be improved. And then pick a new topic for the next sprint.

8. Step by step instructions

It is better to start implementing interesting ideas and desires as quickly as possible, without putting it on the back burner. To do this, Meyer suggests creating scenarios - step-by-step instructions that will make the task clearer and push you to the first steps.

For example, you want to create a personal website dedicated to you as a specialist and the services you provide. If you write down “make a website” in your diary, chances are good that you won't be doing it for several months. The task looks big and difficult, it is not clear what to do and from which side to approach.

But you can, for example, split the task into components:

• Collect information about different platforms and website builders.
• Search for suitable examples of landing pages.
• Determine what is needed for the site - text, photos, illustrations.
• Find, if necessary, specialists who will help - a photographer to conduct a photo session, a copywriter to write a text.
• Draw up an approximate landing page structure, and so on.

Such small tasks are much easier to approach. You can at least roughly estimate how long each of them will take and include them in your schedule.

This is the principle it is worth doing with any projects.

9. Collections

Not all ideas, thoughts and plans can be immediately turned into scripts to start acting. But this does not mean that they should not be tracked and recorded. Create lists for these things. They will help you find inspiration, reflect on your actions, and not lose sight of something worthwhile.

These can be very different lists:

• books, movies, TV shows and podcasts that you want to read, watch and listen to;
• inspirational quotes;
• ideas for projects;
• useful sites and services;
• experts and specialists who can be contacted on a particular occasion;
• interesting thoughts and so on.

10. Development mindset

Describing the principles of his Agile Result system, Meyer cites the opinion of the professor of psychology Carol Dweck. She considers C. Dweck. What having a “Growth Mindset” actually means / Harvard Business Review that our attitudes can be roughly divided into two types: immutability (fixed mindset) and growth (growth mindset).

People with a fixed mindset believe in fate and believe that success is determined by factors that do not depend on them: genetics, IQ level, parental income, and so on. Those with a growth mindset hold the opposite opinion: they themselves determine how they will live and understand that it is possible to change, if not everything, then a lot.

Dweck concluded that people with the second type of thinking achieve better results and in general get more pleasure out of life. Therefore, you need to try to form a growth mentality in yourself.

Remember that you yourself are responsible for your life, you make your own decisions, and you can easily compensate for what you may have received less: take up education, improve the necessary skills and abilities, work on your appearance, develop charisma and sociability, become more organized.

Try to develop and get better every day. Such an approach will definitely make life more interesting, meaningful and - possibly - even more successful.