Follow the process
Fourth: Check for Landmines.
Determine if any of the six outcomes from the Second or Third steps are “off limits“. There are some changes that demand personal sacrifice or devotion of such magnitude that any honest appraisal can return no result besides “landmine”. Mark them off before you move forward. There’s no reason to walk down a path in delusional optimism.
For Instance: It is tricky when these obstacles are only a step of one of the projects necessary to achieve the outcome. Driving from New York to sell a car in Los Angeles; it doesn’t matter if your car blows up in Chicago or Santa Fe – you may as well have not wasted time on the trip if you’re not going to make it there in one piece. If you uncover any landmines, mark the end result off the list.
Fifth: Rank what remains by priority.
Prioritize the remaining objectives from steps two and three. Prioritization is a habit that is truly life altering, and is universally applicable well beyond the sales and marketing realm. We each have 168 hours a week. 56 are taken with sleeping 8 hours per night and 50 (on average) is taken up with working, breaks and transportation to and from employment. This allows 62 hours a week for anything else.
For Instance: Even though this outcome design process is business oriented, use this step (this tool) to create the space for: 1 hour per day to learn a new hobby, 6 hours per week of uninterrupted family time, 3 hours per weeknight to mentally shut off (veg-out), 2 hours per day playing with your children, and these parameters will give you a complete 20 hour per week part time job to work on nothing but this new outcome. That totals 1,040 hours or 26 complete work weeks per year. That’s 6 months of extra time every year. Redeem the time. If the intentionality required for the above time designations nestles more into your “landmine” category, simply steal one hour before everyone else wakes up or after your family goes to bed. Make what is currently not within your reach… a little more accessible. Prioritize.
Sixth: Combine multiple end results or other actions to maximize efforts.
During this step, it’s common to combine two or more objectives in synopsizing a central end result. Many times the real objective you want to experience doesn’t show it’s head until you are well into the selection process. The master end result is often an amalgamation of a few outcomes from the initial lists. Also, there are often seemingly disconnected daily actions that carry an unconscious foundation of purpose. When these daily activities are connected with intent – the results appear spontaneous but powerful. It takes less time to learn a new habit when the steps involved are actions you are already doing. See if one or more current activities you do can be used to accomplish the objectives you pursue.