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Life Management System (LMS) | a conscious navigation system | from yesterdays to tomorrows

This page has not been updated in years.
If you can find something useful — great

This page is prototype "erector set" for CREATING a Life Management System in a world relentlessly moving toward unimagined futures. You explore, pick the elements that fit your values and convert them into a testable operational system. To test your system you gather some major news stories dealing with our changing world and use them to test the effectiveness of your system.

This page introduces the mechanism for getting to/from a strategic interest profile and strategic work plan TO daily action. This page is a life management system brainscape ^©. The approach here is the same as on the other major site pages. Explore the material, create an interest profile, create a work plan, and go to work. You'll never be bored again.

Having a foundation for future directed decisions is essential.

Related: mental patterns, life lines, a knowledge system view, thinking resources, about change, conceptual resources, life design, and action plans

Time as a social and personal resource

… Effective executives know that time is THE limiting factor.

The output limits of any process are set by the scarcest resource.

In the process we call “accomplishment,” this is time.

Time is also a unique resource.

Of the other major resources, money is actually quite plentiful.

We long ago should have learned that it is the demand for capital, rather than the supply thereof, which sets the limit to economic growth and activity.

People—the third limiting resource—one can hire, though one can rarely hire enough good people.

But one cannot rent, hire, buy, or otherwise obtain more time.

The supply of time is totally inelastic.

No matter how high the demand, the supply will not go up.

There is no price for it and no marginal utility curve for it.

Moreover, time is totally perishable and cannot be stored.

Yesterday's time is gone forever and will never come back.

Time is, therefore, always in exceedingly short supply.

Time is totally irreplaceable.

Within limits we can substitute one resource for another, copper for aluminum, for instance.

We can substitute capital for human labor.

We can use more knowledge or more brawn.

But there is no substitute for time.

Everything requires time.

It is the one truly universal condition.

All work takes place in time and uses up time.

Yet most people take for granted this unique, irreplaceable, and necessary resource.

Nothing else, perhaps, distinguishes effective executives as much as their tender loving care of time.

— The Effective Executive preface by Peter Drucker

Before proceeding further, please review the previous Effective Executive link

“Concentration — that is, the courage to impose on time and events his own decision as to what really matters and comes first — is the executive’s only hope of becoming the master of time and events instead of their whipping boy” — The Effective Executive contents

“Follow effective action with quiet reflection.

From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.” — Peter Drucker

These ideas about WHAT we spend our time doing have major strategic implications for individuals, organizations, and society.

Organization efforts: problems or opportunities

Making the future

One of Drucker's favorite sayings: Focus, Focus, Focus. (See How Drucker taught me to focus by Shao Ming Lo)

Different thoughts for different times

According to Peter Drucker, "Leaders in every single institution and in every single sector … have two responsibilities.

They are responsible and accoamuntable for the performance of their institutions, and that requires them and their institutions to be concentrated, focused, limited.

They are responsible also, however, for the community as a whole."

See Early Career Work, The Daily Drucker and Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker's Wisdom Can Inspire Your Life by Bruce Rosenstein

Career and Life Guidance from Peter Drucker
is attention-directing work

Conceptual resource digestion process, concepts to daily action and calendarization

Topics:

Life management system creates and implements life designs
Life management system overview diagram
Strategic work plans and the master action list
Master action list content thoughts
Master action list screen shot
Daily work plan
Been doing
Note pad (life area details)
Supplemental work plans
Synthesis view (This is my life?)
Model week
Model year (This is my life?)
Multi-year radar
Life area thinking
Information acquisition

LMS creates and implements life designs:

7/5/2011 The remainder of this page has not been updated since Mac OS 9 was around. When I get time I'm going to begin updating. This update includes integrating the site material that has been added in recent years. In the meantime you can travel the brainroad on this page to start designing your system for escaping the prison of yesterdayS and getting to your tomorrowS.

LMS overview: (screen shots begin further down the page)

Strategic work plans make their way into the master action list (box 1 above)

Master action list drives what we do. We need a reminder to work with this every day and every week (PDA) otherwise we drift.

The following image presents some content suggestions.

MAL Content. Larger image or Text version.

Master action list design help

David Allen's Getting Things Done (summary and flow chart) could be integrated as a sub-system. In contrast I'm focusing on GETTING CORE CHALLENGES DONE (time-life navigation). Developing a work approach that is adequate to the challenges ahead.

What needs doing?

The image to the right is a screen shot of my master action list MAL in the weekly planning view. Larger view. The four panes (starting in the upper left hand corner and moving clockwise) are a single day's to dos for a selected date; the outline view of all items in the MAL; a calendar view that can be configured by weeks or months; and then appointments for the same selected date.

The daily work plan (box 2 above) is a separate document that is prepared by deleting the entries from the previous day and importing the items with today's date from the master action list. It can be viewed as shown or just as a list. As we move through a day we need a thinking loop (mouse thinking) scanning for things to do (how, in what role or capacity) and not do (consequences). Related: Six action shoes; Six thinking hats; Teach Your Child How To Think; Effective Decisions; Balancing the short and long range; David Allen's Workflow diagram.
A larger view

Been doing (box 3 above)

This document can be created in Microsoft Word or Excel. Mine is done in the same application as my master action list (MAL). It is simply an eight column table with a cell for each day of the week plus one column that summarizes any huge events of the week. I have a PDA reminder to update it several times a day. The entries for each day record life enhancing or desirable actions plus any major negatives. This is the feed back LMS

Note pad (box 4 above). This is a place to keep details that may find their way to supporting tools or thinking canvases. The document is structured using the same categories as the MAL

Project or supplemental documents.Rather than cluttering the master action list with the details of a lengthy or major project, it might be better to set up a separate project or life area document. The master action list then contains only an entry referring to project as a time block: "Project X work" or "Long-term fun planning."

Life design element blueprint. Larger view. Draft synthesis of the following views: model week, year, multi-year.

Model week. This is a design view. It serves a similar function to a blueprint—redraw until you're satisfied. My example was created in MS Word. The view draws on desired recurring routine actions and appointments in your master action list.

Larger view

Model annual. Same function as model week. The view draws on desired recurring periodic actions and appointments in your master action list. Mentally connect to life area thinking and information acquisition in MAL content. Larger view.

Multi-year radar. Same function as model week and year, but looks further down the road. It is feed by and feeds the master action list. Mentally connect to life area thinking and information acquisition in MAL content. Larger view.

Life area thinking. Within each life area we need to decide what we are going to be and do. See MAL content. Larger view (may be added later).

Thinking help from Edward de Bono: Thinking broad and thinking detailed and Teach Yourself to Think (pdf for adjacent illustration).

We need thinking canvases in the areas of major consequence. See career work map as an example.

Life area effort and result choices: maximize, optimize, minimize, or ignore.

List of life areas may be added later.

Information acquisition in a life area. Tree chart view. It would probably be helpful to have your computer hard drive and Internet browser favorites folders organized in the same folder structure as the categories in your master action list. This gives you some feedback on the information at your disposal.

The foregoing needs to be on the right foundation

Amazon link: Goals!: How to Get Everything You Want -- Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible

goals

Amazon link: Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time

eat that fron

Amazon link: Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

Getting things done

TLN link: Getting Things Done

Early Career Work is the most valuable launching pad

TLN Keywords: tlnkwlifemanagementsystem; tlnkwlifenavigation; tlnkwlifenavigationsystem

“The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic”. — Peter Drucker

The shift from manual workers who do as they are being told — either by the task or by the boss — to knowledge workers who have to manage themselves ↓ profoundly challenges social structure …

“Managing Oneself is a REVOLUTION in human affairs.” … “It also requires an almost 180-degree change in the knowledge workers’ thoughts and actions from what most of us—even of the younger generation—still take for granted as the way to think and the way to act.” …

… “Managing Oneself is based on the very opposite realities: Workers are likely to outlive organizations (and therefore, employers can’t be depended on for designing your life), and the knowledge worker has mobility.” ← in a context

These pages are attention directing tools for navigating a world moving toward unimagined futures.

It’s up to you to figure out what to harvest and calendarize
— working something out in time (1915, 1940, 1970 … 2040 … the outer limit of your concern) — nobody is going to do it for you.

It may be a step forward to actively reject something (rather than just passively ignoring) and then figure out a coping plan for what you’ve rejected.

Your future is between your ears and our future is between our collective ears — it can’t be otherwise. A site exploration starting point

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What needs doing?

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