From The Author > Books
Simplify Your Life
The book created by Fergus O'Connell tells us about how to manage our works. The best part of this book is that we actually can manage our projects simply. We tends to think something far beyond our reach and that makes the projects seems to be difficult.Chapter one of this book tells us that many things are simple as a matter of fact. How to make it simple? By breakdowning it into smaller parts. We can do the smaller parts one by one, and that makes the project be more simpler. But, there are some bad attitude that we must not do
- Indisciplinary.
- Fail to keep our promises.
- Done our job in longer time than it should be.
The second part about this book tells us to know what we are doing. Most of us will react, "What the heck! Off course I know what am I doing!". But, lets think again. Do us really know about what we are doing? This includes how, when, where, why, what we are doing.
It's impossible for us to really know what we are doing without spending our time to think it and plan it. In example, if we want to go to Hongkong using an airplane, take our children to Disneyland and going to romantic dinner with our wife, and we say that we want to do it in one day, it's just impossible. Let's detail it.
Let's say we go to Hongkong on 8.00 AM and arrive at 12.00 AM. Then, we check in to hotel and go to Disneyland. We arrive at 14.00 PM. Because it's very amusing, we end this at 8.00 PM and go to hotel to take shower. Off course we must take our children to sleep. Let's say that we can go for dinner at 11.00 PM. We must search a restaurant that open at this hour. Off course there is a restaurant that open until midnight. But, maybe we will go around the city and it takes 2 hour. That's 1.00 AM.
That's an example and it may have a flaw. But, all I want to say is that if we want to do something, make sure that we know what will do in the future. That's what planning for. Imagine what will happen and order it in a "logically" manner.
If we do this, we only do the first step of a project. In the following post we will discuss the rest of what we must do to simplify our life.
There is always a series of events. When we decide to do something, there will be consequences happened. If we acknowledge this, we will be more careful with anything will be done by us. Every decision will lead to a certain condition. If we can foretell it, we can know the consequences. If it bad, we can look for another options.This is a part of decision making and also part of a planning before we decide to do it. A decision to do ”A” will lead to “B” condition. Our reaction to “B” condition will lead to “C” condition, and so on. We must prepare this step carefully, since we cannot re-do this. If something happen, what we can do is to fix it. And there will always be better to ward off the bad conditions than fix it.If we can do this, definitely we can simplify our life, since we don’t need to fix something happen. The best plan will yield best result. If we don’t want to be disturbed with fixing some condition (it shouldn’t happen, right?) we must map this series of events (and don’t make it “Series of Unfortunate Events”).Our resource can be allocated to something more appropriate than to fix a bad condition. If we can apply this to our life, we can have a better life.
Just do it. Do your job. Do it exactly as what you've planned. Everything we've planned will be matter when we do it. In another word, "Execute it!". Maybe when you read this, you may laugh and say "I knew it!". This is either simple and important thing to do. Any plan will fail if we don't do it.
In POASE (Planning-Organizing-Analyzing-Evaluating), do our job is at the middle of POASE cycle. At this phase, we will be at the top of POASE cycle, what we've planned will be done in this phase, and we must evaluate what happen in this step. An analitycal skill also needed, because maybe there's something unpredictable happen. We must take the act quickly but also wisely, so that we can overcome this problem quickly and also not mess it.
What is the relation between this and simplify our life? This phase tells us to organize our life, and do it like what we've planned, so that we can have our life and work handled well. We can use tools like GANTT Chart to organize our projects, also Time Table to organize our life, so that we don't have wasted time. People tends to ask for more time in their life, they say, "If I have 36 hours in a day" or "If I have 8 days in a week", but the problem is not the lack of time, but the incapability to manage our time. Be serious to manage our life and priorities and we will have a quality life.
Anything can be said as 'Yes' or 'No'. I mean, anything can happen. It will be difficult to decide if the plan has succeded. So, how can we decide that our plan is succeeded or failed? Firstly, make some key indicator. The indicator must be something real and can be evaluated like cost, revenue, profit, time cost, etc.
If needed, we can break the project into smaller parts. A Gantt Chart is a good idea to implement this. With this, we can evaluate the job easier. Why an evaluation job become something important? Because an evaluation job related with our plan. We must know, whether the certain or current condition can be told as 'finish line'.
The evaluation process will take a role as a key to success if we do it dilligently. If we can do this, we can diagnose what is the problem, whether we has take the wrong way, and can take the correction steps earlier, before it become too late.