Books mashup

The basic idea is to back off from the leap into space, creative explosion or dramatic change of life that you might think you need and start taking small steps - extremely small steps - toward your goal. You can judge if the step i actually small enough when you find yourself thinking, "Sure! I can do that!"

Robert looks at this powerful but simple approach from many perspectives - a good example of multidimensionalizing. And he notes that you can achieve the results you desire faster than you would think by learning how to take one small step after another. Lots of stories of successes using this approach are threaded throughout the book, easily illustrating the principles in action.

I found myself excited about using this in my life. And this blog is one result! I took a small step of trying out the free blog on Godaddy.com and I'm writing just one entry about something interesting in my life today. Hmmm. Seems to be working!

I also found myself thinking about how well this works when combined with Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen. David also focuses on taking the next step in your project. But he brings a different perspective to the situation.

David offers solid, practical methods for moving yourself from being lost in a sea of unfinished projects to having a workable process for dealing with anything. Key to this is developing the ability to figure out what the next step actually is.

That might seem simple but it turns out that you must first realistically assess where you are right now! Now that's more self-honesty than most us can muster. We just don't want to look at where we are when we're struggling with something we want to change in our lives. So we pretend we're further along the path that we are and try to figure out a next step based on self-delusion. No wonder it doesn't work!

Combining the two books and their processes seems like a natural way to start moving forward from your current situation to whatever you want to create in your life. Reading either one would be a great next step!