3 Ideas to consider when Setting your Destination

A couple weeks ago I talked about doing that “Happy Dance” in order to celebrate the accomplishment of goals that you achieve. It occurred to me once I was done that I hadn’t talked about the other six steps! You can click here to see all 7 steps for Organizing your Digital Life, and as I add more posts that go through the seven Steps I will be adding links to the Original Post.

The first critical step for Organizing your Digital Life is Setting your Destination. Knowing where you want to end up is critical because if you start a project. if you have no clear objective in mind you’ll never know when you get to where you want to be. At this first stage of Organizing your Digital Life if you only have a general idea of where you want to be, then that’s perfectly acceptable, the point is to have an idea of what you want. I have three concepts that you need to consider when Setting your Destination;

1) See The Need – Every time I found a project that I needed to do it was because i saw some sort of need for a change. There was always something, be it a system, or a program that wasn’t working quite right. it’s important for you to be able to see the need for the change in order for it to happen. To be clear, I’m not advocating change for the sake of change, but if there is something that you think needs changing it might be worth it to take a look. I have had many times in my life where I thought change was necessary and I ended up being wrong, but its always worth a look if you think there may be a need.

One of my first projects that I worked on was with a previous employer. Their filing system was so deeply hard copy that I was regularly asked to print off e-mails and put them in the client files. I was in charge of making sure that the filing system that was in place was organized and up to date, and from day one it seemed like a useful step to have our filing system to take it digital.

2) Have a Broad Vision Part of setting your destination is setting as broad a vision as possible. You don’t want to get focused on too many details in this first initial stage, that comes later. Part of the reason that You want to set your vision as broadly as possible is because if you start with a small vision then your project will have no room for expansion. If your vision is inflexible then it won’t be able to withstand even the slightest bit of change.

I’ll be perfectly honest, the first couple of proposals that I made I was flat out told “no”. Partially this was because they didn’t have enough faith in either me or my idea, but I think mostly because I was requesting 4 staff members, which in hindsight was asking too much. The problem was that I was trying to present them with a complete Idea before they were ready for it. My Idea was not flexible enough for change, so it didn’t work.

3) Know where you want to go The last part of setting your destination is knowing where you want to go. if you ware trying to make a change then you have to be able to know what the destination might look like, otherwise you’ll never know when you get there.

It was a few months later when I happened to be in our Regional VP’s office reporting on something else entirely. I was about to walk out of his office when I, completely off the cuff, said; “Have you ever considered moving our files to a digital system?” He shrugged his shoulders and said “Why don’t you take a couple days and show me your idea.”

I have to admit, those were two days where I worked harder that I thought possible. I was able to put together a business case where I demonstrated where we were and where we could be. I explained the efficiency of people being able to open files and folders from their desktops rather than having to go over to the files room and back. I knew that if I could get it just right then I would be able to execute on my project, which I was really starting to get excited about. I was able to convey that the destination that I was setting was an all digital filing system, which I did eventually get approvel to make.

Setting your Destination is SUCH a critical step in Organizing your Digital Life because it sets you up for later success (and Happy Dances{link}). Knowing your ultimate desitination is helpful because when you’re in the middle of your project you’ll find that you need something to keep you going forward. pushing towards the end of your project, having your goal in mind will help you keep motivated, but I’ll talk about more when I get to a post about Digging In. For now, Set your Destination, Figure out where you want to be, and We’ll chat later about Listing your Tasks.

 

What is your destination?

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