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How to manage personal development major goals and projects March 28, 2007

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Goal Setting and Realization.
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Dividing goals and projects into manageable components can make even a very ambitious self-improvement program much easier to master

The goal of completing a long-term or large project can often seem overwhelming when first starting work on it. But large projects or goals can be managed effectively if they are broken up into smaller bite-sized chunks. There is a saying that “You can eat an elephant if you do it one bite at a time.” Divide a big project into manageable proportions and it will not seem as daunting. In personal development, a lot of us can have trouble initially by setting up an ambitious plan of personal growth, but then becoming overwhelmed with it.

There are many ways to manage long-term goals and large projects and this short article will discuss one – that of tackling goals and projects by subdividing them. This approach may seem simplistic at first glance or so obvious as to not even warrant discussion, but it is surprising how many of us are intimidated by a large project or goal simply because we only see it as one mammoth whole, rather than as an integration of assembled components.

The “component” approach works with very long term goals and projects as well as short and medium terms ones. Ironically, in many ways, the tighter the deadline, or the shorter the time frame available for completion of the goal (within reason) the easier it is to break up the project or reverse-engineer it into executable goal- or project-time-chunks or task-accomplishment pieces.

There are many examples, but lets take one — specifically, that of a requirement for us to write a research report of 5,000 words on a complex topic with an inflexible deadline of four weeks from now. At first it may seem overwhelming until you effectively analyze the project or report on an individual components or task basis.

The first priority is to determine how many days or portions of days you will be able to devote to getting this project done. Say of the four weeks or 28 days, you effectively only have 15 days, or more probably parts of those 15 days, at your disposal to devote to this project from start to finish. Essentially, this means that you will have two weeks and a day to research and write the report.

Based on your knowledge of how you work most effectively, you’ll need to assess how much time you will need to spend on each of the project’s components. If you are good at writing, you will be able to spread out the time for required for the research, and will be able to leave the writing portion closer to the deadline.

If the reverse is true and you find the research easier, you will need to spread out the time allowed for writing. Either way, the good writer must do an equal amount of research and the good researcher must write an equal amount of words. In other words you allow less elapsed time for what you are good at and more elapsed time for what you have some difficulty with.

Even if the writing comes with ease, it would be difficult to crank out 5,000 words of quality writing, edit it, proofread it, and make final corrections in one day. So you need to determine how many words you want will need to write per day, how many days or hours you will need to edit it, how much time to proofread it, and how much time will be needed to make any required corrections.

Personally, I find that I can write with more facility than I can do research, so I might allow myself four days to write 1250 words each day for the 5,000 total and one day for editing, proofreading and making corrections, plus one day contingency, for things that might go wrong, equaling six days.

For the writing part, I then draw up a rectangle on a piece of paper and divide it into sections, or squares, one square for each word-count component. Then as I accomplish each, I shade in the appropriate square and can visually see my progress. Sometimes, if I need extra self-encouragement, I will make more squares, have a smaller word target in each and thereby can “see” the progress I am making more readily.

The same approach applies to the research, for which I would have nine days. I would allow one day at the beginning to scope out the project with a rough outline, determine how many research sources I would have to access, and then allocate a certain amount of research per day. The sources might be books, websites, blogs, and business colleagues or other experts. Once the number of sources is determined, you then allocate how many sources, or how much research you will need to do each day. In my case there would be eight days for research and one day for reviewing the research and developing a report outline based on it.

Then you can use the same approach of drawing squares on a piece of paper and then marking off or shading in each square as each component of the research is accomplished. The review day for the research notes you have made is very important as this is the day to read and re-read all of the research and to highlight it with a marker or by underlining key sections you may want to incorporate in your report.

At this point, key phrases or keywords will start to emerge through your reading, re-reading and then highlighting the your research notes. In fact, you will get an indication that your research could be nearing completion when you start to feel that your new research material is largely confirming or repeating information that you have already researched.

Then using both your knowledge of what the report requires, or is supposed to cover, and your key phrases or keywords, you can now write an outline in brief points, breaking the report down into topical sections. Once your outline is complete I usually find it helpful to then go through all of the highlighted sections of my research notes and write the applicable topic section or keyword or phrase beside the highlighted section. When you come to writing you can then aggregate the topic notes together as you move through writing the report section by section.

One of the hardest parts of writing, for most of us, is the beginning, or the lead sentence or paragraph. Instead of forming drops of blood on your forehead agonizing over this, you might want to try starting with the first section instead. By now you have a general sense of the thematic direction of the report, so what you write will most likely be on target. Then, when you have completed all the sections, the lead sentence will be more obvious —  essentially it should state the main theme of the report. Writing a conclusion can be difficult as well because you don’t want it to be simply a synopsis of everything before it. In conclusions, it is often helpful to state a forward trend that the content of the report is leaning towards.

In the case of this article for example, (if I have done a reasonably good job of providing some helpful hints) the conclusion might be that after reading it, you should have a better grasp of how to research, organize and write a report.

The one-bite-at-a-time or component approach I have outlined here can also be applied to other long terms goals and projects as well, including lifetime goals. For longer term goals there are some variables however, which will be the subject of future articles.

The Law of Attraction, intention, manifestation, and their role in personal development January 10, 2007

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Law of Attraction.
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The Law of Attraction, plus the intention and manifestation process, can be an important component in achieving the goals we set in our personal development program.

 “Seek and ye shall find”

“Ask and the door will be opened.”

The words above are just two of the many positive quotations you will encounter in writings explaining the concept of using the intentions and manifesting process in order to create a new reality for ourselves. The concept of synchronicity enters when what we desire to have happen as stated through our intentions to the universe begin to gradually appear in our lives. Synchronicity is sometimes described as simply a word for coincidences, with an emphasis on the coincidences being favorable to our well-being, or to the outcomes we are wanting to manifest through the intention process.

The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung wrote extensively on the concept of synchronicity. One, albeit perhaps over-simplified way of looking at his definition of synchronicity, is that coincidences are not simply random, but somehow meaningfully connected to specific circumstances, particularly personal circumstances. In what we might call “new age” writing on personal development, some writers present the concept of synchronicity as manifestation events that we may or may not recognize, resulting from our intention process, depending on our experience and receptivity.

My personal view is that the events or circumstances embodied in synchronicities appearing to me are opportunities that are either direct manifestations of my intentions or they are clues relating to the directions I have been wanting to head towards through my intentions.

I have been a “student” of personal development for most of my adult life, not in terms of formal education, but rather in being attracted to personal development literature and methods as a means of improving either my life situation or myself. This interest probably began through the influence of my mother who regularly read books on positive thinking, on the power of belief and various philosophies and theories related to the improvement of human behavior. These books were always in our home.

One of the main tenets of intention and manifestation is that we should not expect overnight transformation into the world we desire when we have just started the process. I believe we can create our own future through powerful intentions but our “new” future will not dramatically appear within a few days of starting the process. In fact, some experts say that we will probably not even recognize the initial manifestations unless we are very alert for their appearance.

For example, at one point in my life I entered a “realization state” that my financial situation was not good. Up until that point I had an unbridled emotional optimism that “everything would be fine” as I moved forward trying various new projects to make money. But one day I suddenly realized that I had burned through most of my savings, that I was in debt and that I had no real guarantee of an adequate income being forthcoming for the future. Panic and anxiety were the first reactions, but I gradually calmed down with the aid of a number of personal development tools and resources, which I hope to discuss in a future article.

What I want to talk about now is how I began to use the intention and manifestation process, particularly in the area of improving my financial situation. Overall, I had a number of areas in my life that I wanted to improve, so I wrote down about eight major intentions. I keyboarded them into my PC, printed them and then tried to read them every day, often modifying or making them more clear as I did so. The other thing I did was to include in the intention statement the recognition, or belief on my part that, the situation I was concerned with was, in fact, improvable.

I also began to write out by hand manifestation scenarios, mainly concerning my financial circumstances and the intentions I was “sending out” to improve those circumstances. To repeat, I did not input the manifestations on a computer, I wrote them out using pen and paper. I planned to read the intentions daily and write out the manifestations daily. And I concentrated mostly on my financial intentions. The manifestations I wrote were essentially positive statements written in such a way that I was stating them as if I was already in an improved financial situation. I did not invent this process; I did it based on the advice of a successful role model. This aspect could be the topic of a number of articles, so I will fast forward.

First off, I should caution that I discovered that the intention and manifestation process is something you have to be diligent with. As I moved from virtual panic into a more optimistic phase, I would sometimes forget to state my intentions and forget to write out my manifestations, or I simply didn’t take the time, when I was tired or busy, or perhaps just too lazy. Then the anxiety state would return and I would reactivate the intention and manifestation process. I soon realized however, that consistency is important and that I would have to keep “working” the process on a daily basis. It is not necessarily easy to do that when you are tired or swamped, but I think you have to.

Eventually I began to see some results, or small manifestations, or synchronicities in the financial area. At first I was not alert to them and even resisted some of them. It was not until later that I recognized they were in fact synchronous manifestations of my intentions. I am an independent writer, editor, and communications consultant — in other words, I work at home, for myself. So some of the manifestations occurred in that area. I knew the “why” of the need to improve my financial situation, but not the “how”. Here are some of the occurrences that I fortunately eventually recognized as being manifestations or synchronicities related to my financial intention efforts and hopefully also an introduction to the “how” of improving things.

(a)    I got a call from a colleague who had moved to Europe and that I had lost touch with. The call concerned whether I would be interested in writing a major article for a prestigious magazine

(b)   A small investment I had made in the stock market began to come alive and went up in value 25%

(c)    I was contacted by an editor I had not worked with for some time who wanted me to write for his publication and gave me four article assignments to start with

(d)   A couple of payment checks I was not expecting until a later date turned up in my mailbox just before Christmas

In addition there were other synchronicities or mini-manifestations, not directly related to financial improvement. I was discouraged about a small website I was building and was about to cancel it, but began to get some ideas, or at least an attitude, as to how to turn it around and a recognition that I needed to look for ways to rekindle my interest in it. I am a strong believer in the concept that if you are not doing what you like to do, it is a real chore, and is unlikely to result in your best work.

Another example: I had a particular book by Eric Hoffer called Working and Thinking on the Waterfront that I thought I had lost, and had been looking for it for years in used bookstores. Then one day my wife asked me if I could find a cookbook in the basement and while rummaging through a bunch of old books I found what she was looking for, and also my long-lost book. I needed the book at that time in particular for an article I wanted to write.

A further example. For along time, I had been trying to figure out my “life purpose” and I found three methods for doing so in the space of a couple of weeks — two methods were explained on self-improvement blogs and one was in a book on the topic of abundance, a book which I had never been able to understand, until I began to really study the concept of intention, manifestation, scarcity and abundance with some earnestness. There in the first few pages of the book was a method for determining a person’s life purpose that was very straightforward. I worked out my purpose I’m still working on refining it.

So essentially, while these were not earth-stopping events, they were indications to me that the intention and manifestation process was working for me and also a warning that I shouldn’t slack off or the process would lose its power. There were probably synchronicities or mini-manifestations embodying opportunities in various forms that I did not recognize, because while familiar with the principles of the process for some time, I had not earnestly tried to apply it to solve particular problems. My journey in personal development tended to be what I considered more on the practical side and I regarded some techniques as being somewhat “theoretical.” I had not dismissed them, but I had not taken the time to seriously apply them to my life.

There is much more to write about on intention, manifestation and synchronicity, but for now, I will close with a quotation from The Practical Dreamer’s Handbook, written by Paul and Sarah Edwards: “You can’t manifest a new future if you’re hooked on the past. Are their any attachments or unfinished business from the past that are keeping you from moving on?”