Think about every task, project, and goal you’ve ever undertaken. Unless I miss my guess, for each and every one of them you started somewhere and finished somewhere else. In between, you followed a process.
Put simply, a process is just a series of steps you execute with the intention of obtaining a specific result.
Some processes are highly complex and extremely rigid. Others are more flexible, allowing plenty of room for people to assess situations individually and respond however they feel is best.
What I’m focusing on in this advisory, however, is the pure and simple power of having a process to follow. It’s almost always better to have one than not.
Among the advantages of having a process in place are the following:
- Having a process eliminates any need for you to start from scratch and develop a new plan for obtaining the result you want each and every time you face this or a similar situation.
By having a process in place, you have the comfort and security of knowing your first step in responding to a particular situation is always going to be the same. You might have adopted ten processes, each with a different first step. But even so, identifying and applying the most appropriate or relevant process gets you started quickly, without a lot of thought or uncertainty.
- Having a process supports expanded expertise.
Because the process leads you through a series of specific steps many times over, you naturally strengthen the skills and abilities contained in that process. As you become more familiar with the process and what it takes to work through it, you become faster, more adept, and more perceptive about the nuances involved. You also learn to spot potential short-cuts, obstacles, and pitfalls.
- Having a process makes the work more modular, allowing different people to attack the work in different ways, from different angles, automatically yielding more space for creativity.
When you recognize that any task, project, or goal has a starting and ending point, with a process in between, you can divorce the process from the result and learn to utilize any process that suits the situation. This leads to much greater potential for freedom of action, which allows you – and any others who may do the work on your behalf – to look for new, better, or at least more personally satisfying ways to obtain the desired result.
Even better, recognizing the potential for freedom of action opens the door to personal growth.
You – or whoever is doing the work – is free to experiment with different procedures, tools, sequences, and so forth, learning what works and what doesn’t, and thereby emotionally “buying into” the task, project, or goal at hand more deeply. This leads to higher levels of satisfaction and even meaning, levels that would not be accessible if the required work was rigidly locked-in and dictated in detail.
- Having a process gives you criteria for assessing your progress toward the specific outcome you want.
Checking your progress against the process’s established performance criteria takes you out of the fog, helping you recognize even the smallest bit of progress very soon after you make it, and supporting the motivation and the good feelings that always come with progress toward a desirable goal.
These and other advantages of having a process in place – at least for your most common and/or important tasks, projects, and goals – provide strong reasons for you to consciously make an effort to develop processes where they are currently absent in both your work and your life.
Important: If this material resonated with you, please take a moment to forward it to someone you care about who might also benefit. If this material was forwarded to you, please click here for your free subscription and have me send future posts to you directly. In either case, please “stay tuned” to read more great stuff. Thank you in advance for helping fulfill my dream – of making all of us more productive and successful – by spreading this information free, far, and wide!