What are the prerequisites of any action?

Every action can be done well or it can be done poorly. An action can hit the mark or be wasted in terms of effort and time spent on it.

What are the universal prerequisites that will take your action to the level of excellence and give it a masterpiece touch?

Let me list, for you, the prerequisites for you here:

Please refer to the picture while reading the list below.

• Your desire to contribute through the action must be very high. This one factor is the missing link between you and excellence. Check your desire to contribute and consciously raise it.
• Your commitmentt to the action must be high; If you are highly committed to the action, you will leave a stamp of excellence. Check your level of commitment for the task.
• You need to set the goal/objective of the action. It is very common for people to start an action without thinking through what they want to accomplish through it. Check whether you have set a goal for the action. This is also the time to set a deadline.
• Include others in the action; especially if team work is required for carrying out the action. Even if it is only you who have to carry out the action, it is a good ideas to discuss the action with others. They may give you a different perspective. Ask your self who you can contact for this action.
• Generate ideas of how you will carry out the action. The more you generate, the richer the choice you have. You can choose the best alternative. In this stage it is a good idea to involve others. They may give you priceless ideas or their ideas may lead you to a totally new idea. Check whether you have generated sufficient ideas before you have decided what to do.
• Action it out without any delay. If there are several, sequential actions then list them out and do them one by one. Delegate the actions and monitor your other team members for completion.
• Once the action is complete, learn from it; This is especially true for recurring actions.

Use this list and you will be amazed at the results you get in life!

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Do you use locks effectively to reach your goals?

In this world of extreme distraction, we need to learn to use locks. If we do not learn to use locks effectively, we can end up in an imbalanced and unfulfilled life.

Look at the picture and you will see the series of locks you need to use to accelerate the achievement of your goals.

Let me describe them here:

• Contextual lock-This is the first lock you need to engage-example: You are in the office and you lock yourself in the professional context; Which means that your actions are all related to your professional and company related matters. At home you engage the family lock and do not continue to pursue actions on the professional front, unless it is an emergency.


• People lock-Once you have locked the context, then you need to engage the people lock. The actions you are going to pursue, are they for self or some specific individual in your organization, assuming your context is professional at that moment.


• Contribution lock-Once you have engaged the people lock, then you need to ask yourself how you can contribute to this person and establish an area for contribution-example your boss has asked you to develop a business plan for a new business venture.


• Goal Lock-Once you have engaged the contribution lock, then you need to determine which goal you will pursue in the locked context, person and contribution area. Identify a goal and engage a further goal lock with an established period of time you will pursue this goal-15 minutes 0r 1 hour or half a day.


• Action lock-You develop an action plan based on the locks you have engaged so far and finally engage an action lock, which means that for the next period of established time, say one hour, you will pursue this action and nothing else.


• Unlock-Once you have finished the action and the time period is over then you will unlock and pursue either another action or decide to continue the action you are doing by re-engaging the locks.

There is a power in this cycle! It is one of the best antidote to distraction and multitasking which will get you nowhere.. It also helps you to achieve a balanced success in all areas of your life

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15 things to do so that you do not have to hear ideas, you could have thought about yourself, from others.

Hearing ideas from others is a valuable exercise. We need to be open to others ideas so that we can examine our own and discard them if we encounter a superior idea. However, many a times, we hear ideas from others, we could have easily come up with ourselves.

Have you ever come out of a meeting thinking how you wish you had thought of that idea yourself?

Here are the fifteen things you need to do to avoid such a situation:

1. Define the problem or issue completely so that you home in on ideas that are rich and relevant to it
2. Arrive at the definition only after arriving at at least 5 alternative definitions of the problem or issue
3. Apply the Pareto principle-what are the 20% of the elements of the issue or problem if I tackle, will give me 80% of the results or impact?
4. Depending on the complexity of the problem or issue, set aside 3 to 5 sessions of creative thinking.
5. Use an expensive pen and a note book to capture your priceless ideas; Nothing motivates like luxury!
6. Generate as many ideas as possible
7. Look at the issue from different angles
8. Plan your sessions sufficiently advance so that you can sleep over after each of the sessions
9. Read the ideas you have written just before falling asleep
10. Capture ideas, if any, in the morning
11. Repeat steps 5 to 10 for every planned session
12. Consolidate the ideas and review
13. Choose the best of the ideas and form an ideas list
14. Start applying these ideas to the issue or problem
15. You are now ready to listen to the ideas of others with an open mind

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