Things I’m Avoiding Doing Challenge Day One – The Three Keys to Getting Stuff Done

In over thirty years of coaching people, I’ve come to see that there are two primary approaches people take to getting things done in life. The first is “Fixed Means, variable outcome”, which I tend to illustrate like this:

In this approach, there is a right and/or best way to do something, and you accept that when you do things the right/best way, it will work great for some people but not so well for others and it will work great in some situations but not so much in others.

The other approach is “Fixed outcome, variable means”, which I tend to illustrate like this:

In this approach, we abandon the search for the right or even best way and simply play around with it until something works.

Here’s the first key:

Just because something works doesn’t make it the right or even best way to do it – it just means it worked to generate the desired outcome this time around.

Here’s the second key:

When it comes to getting stuff done – particularly the stuff we’ve been avoiding doing – the search for the “right way” or “best way” is one of the best ways to avoid doing it!

So as you go through this 30 day challenge, I encourage you to experiment with a “Fixed outcome, variable means” approach. The fixed outcome is whatever you’ve been putting off that you want to get done; the variable means will be whatever comes up or comes to mind to do.

Here’s the final key, and the closest thing to a prescription you’ll find in all 30 days of the challenge:

When something works, feel free to do more of it; when it doesn’t, feel free to do something else instead.