Getting Things Done is an excellent method for self management. However, most people argue that its bottom-up approach leaves much to be desired when it comes to top-down aspects of self management, like living according to your purpose, dream, vision, values, principles, et cetera. I don’t fully agree with this assessment of GTD but I’ll leave that for a future blog post or two!
My point is: don’t just rely on one approach to self management. Combine best practices from bottom-up and top-down approaches and adapt them to your personal situation! The bottom-up approach is useful for the operational level of your life, but it’s useless without a sound top-down approach for the strategic level of your life.
One top-down tool that can guide your strategic decisions in life is your personal mission statement. Now, here’s the irony: one part of my work consists of encouraging and aiding businesses in determining their mission statement, but I don’t have a personal mission statement (yet)! Of course I understand how important a (personal) mission statement is, but at the same time I realize how hard it is to come up with one that really resonates with who you are and where you want to be!
So, I’m still working on discovering my life’s purpose, my personal mission statement and the corresponding goals. I guess this is true for a lot of people. For those of you who have already found or determined their personal mission statement, I would like you to share it with us in the comments section for inspiration! As an additional request, please share your favorite articles, books or methods for determining your personal mission statement.
Stephen of Productivity in Context came up with the idea of “collecting” personal mission statements.
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Hi, thanks for participating. I think that this is going to be fun and educational.
I am also in the process of developing my mission statement. I realised I would benefit from having one as I was working through the Goal Setting College tutorial.
So far I have done a brainstorm of thoughts and ideas for different areas of my life e.g. health, career and will use this to help develop my mission statement. I have also identified several posts that appear useful that I intend to read.
My challenge now, is can I develop anything this week to take part in Stephen’s collection.
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Here is a link to my personal mission statement: http://jenuinejen.wordpress.com/2008/01/01/develop-a-personal-mission-statement/. I created my mission statement 10 years ago. While many of my life circumstances have changed, the mission has stayed pretty much the same this whole time. I suppose it could be more eloquent and more beautifully worded but it works for me.
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