Today, I read Chapter 4 of 48 Days… which started off talking about goals and actions. If there are two things I can handle, David Allen made sure they were goals and actions.
Dan Miller outlines a 5-step decision-making process:
- State the Problem: Easy. My career and my calling don’t match. I don’t work in what I’m passionate about (music).
- Get the advice and opinions of others. I’ve been working on gathering information from resources on the songwriting and publishing businesses and talking to friends, colleagues and other musically inclined folks.
- List the alternatives. I kinda did that here. I know there are still more alternatives. I found out about Pump Audio yesterday. They provide bumper and background music for television programmers and advertisers. The catch is that they draw upon independent artists and have a revolutionary system for their clients to find the music they’re looking for. I think with enough practice, this could be a viable mechanism for success – I just need practice.
- Choose the best alternative. Here’s where I’m struggling now. I have a regular full-time job, a half-time youth ministry position, a new family and I’m trying to launch as many of these passion-based ideas as possible to gain a foothold somewhere. I think to just survive I’ll need to spread out my proverbial eggs. I just need some focused direction here.
- Act. The pudding’s in the details, isn’t it? If this were easy, everyone would be doing it. It’s not though. The counter-intuition really kicks in here and says “don’t jump” – but I have to.
An important detail of this process is that it should take a maximum of two weeks. While reviewing some old scribblings in my Moleskine today, I saw that I first mentioned this whole “I need to be doing my passion” rant on March 23rd. That’s more than seven months. Seven months is more than two weeks. C’mon Bryan.
Dan mentions having a goal, natch. Luckily, David Allen got to me first, so I’ve probably got a few gimme days here. His criteria for vocational goals are much like the Fred Gratzon passion intersections I mentioned previously. I know what these are, and I also have specific goals for my family, my income and my health that are in my “Someday/Maybe” (I really like to make more of a commitment than ‘maybe’).
I’m still really enjoying (and I predict benefiting) from reading this book. I did do a quick countdown today and the 48th day is December 9th. I’m hoping to be working hard on my new vocation by then, and I’d like to see lots of you local readers at a show in January.