Theory of Constraints Handbook - James Cox Iii [729]
Our Epilogue on Sheila
Sheila certainly exceeded her personal goal of making the Olympic Swim Team as an alternate. She credits the use of the TP for her success.7 We recognize that the Thinking Processes are quite useful for helping one attain or exceed one’s life goals. Since Sheila’s experience, we have seen numerous students use the Thinking Processes to improve their grades, get that special job, lose a significant amount of weight, get in great physical shape, and so on. It is not uncommon to see them go beyond what they were originally striving for.
FIGURE 38-14 Input-output Map of part of Sheila’s implementation plan.
Summary
Achieving one’s life goals is generally only a dream for most people. Without having goals, strategies, supporting objectives, actions, and a measurement system indicating your progress toward your objectives and goals, it is virtually impossible to achieve them. Developing a detailed life plan in your life facets is extremely time consuming but quite rewarding. However, obstacles block the achievement of your goals. Conflict is a major obstacle draining the motivation, concentration, and energy, and thus increasing the time and effort required to complete even the simplest tasks. A conflict in one facet of your life reduces the ability to focus on the task. Identifying and resolving these conflicts with a win-win solution is the key to gaining and maintaining the motivation, concentration, effort, and energy, and thus reducing the time required for the tasks at hand. Many of these conflicts, particularly with family members and associates at work, are actually chronic conflicts periodically surfacing repeatedly in different situations. You must recognize these situations as emanating from the chronic conflict and devise win-win solutions to these specific dilemmas. Once this approach (construct the EC, provide your assumptions, and best guess at the other side’s assumptions) is taken, better short- and long-term solutions are surfaced. This will certainly make your life more pleasant.
Both the classic student and the classic burnout ECs and their assumptions should be studied carefully. Do you exist in one of these ECs? Does a child (or children) exist in the college dilemma? There are simple and effective solutions to both dilemmas but they have to be constructed and understood by the person with the problem. For example, many students have decided to identify the facets of their life (school, work, personal, family, friends, etc.) and the dimensions in each facet (personal might be divided into physical, spiritual, and mental, for example). They then identify the necessary conditions, goals, supporting objectives, and measures in each dimension. Once identified, they then determine the actions to be completed each day to help them accomplish their supporting objectives. Some turn their day upside down (because of the interruptions in their normal day): they wake up at 4 or 5 AM and study until classes start, they attend classes, they socialize with friends in activities such as exercising, and they go to bed around 8 or 9 PM. They set up a reward system for a productive week by partying on the weekend, visiting family and friends, etc. They try to focus on one task at a time and complete that one as much as possible before moving to the next task. The same routine applies to business professionals—many get to the office early so that they have quiet time to work before the chaos begins. In this manner, they complete 1 hour of focused work, which may have taken 4 hours of normal office time.
Many devices have been suggested to increase your productivity; the best one we have seen is the daily “to-do” list of the top 10 items to be completed. The buffered “to-do