Irresponsibility can be an addiction as strong as drugs or alcohol, Irresponsible Anonymous is a 12 step program to kick the habit of breaking promises, this is step six, it’s about figuring the final destination of your day to day work.

On the second post in this program, I stated that it’s not important to know where your life is headed if everything is out of control, this is a corollary of a point David Allen makes in his presentations about GTD (Getting Things Done).

David Allen speaks about the duality of Control vs. Perspective: Too much vision with no control turn you into the mad hatter, changing seats around the table with brilliant arguments but no consistency. Control without perspective makes you a micro-manager: Archiving system with alphanumeric code and FIFO inventory control… for the coffee napkins; the idea is to find equilibrium between both things.

In my experience it was more effective to take control and then find some perspective. Many executives go on these retreats to find their life mission statements, isolating themselves from all detractors to finding true purpose in life. The problem I’ve found with that (and trust me, I’ve tried it), is that when you come back home all those things you ran away from are waiting for you, without some control it’s just a matter of time until you lose your way again.

Once under control, with an appropriate inventory of commitments, a team to support us and the structure to work effectively, it’s time to see where this boat is headed.

This exercise is, without a doubt, the easiest one to do, and the most revealing.

You just need to make a page for your projects (this is also from GTD), the method is simple. Read the commitments you have and ask the following question: what is my final purpose with this? Then write this down.

In the SCRUM project management methodology, a term called “the definition of done” is used, this is what you will be writing down on your new list, something that lets you know when all the work is complete and you can cross it off from with satisfaction.

For example, if I have the task: “Call Lisa to give me the sales forecast for 2010”, I can figure out that my definition of done is: “Successfully obtained the 2011 marketing budget”.

The average person, in any given moment, has between 40 and 60 projects, which are correlated to about 4 or 7 different areas of life.

We are not yet building a mission statement; the idea is to get achieve perspective by small installments, elevating our point of view like a balloon, at a slow but steady pace. It’s important to do this exercise, because you can use your projects to better visualize results.

Why is visualization important?

Because our brain is designed to find solutions: If we see a river and want to cross it, we immediately think of bridges or rafts. The idea is to give the mind a clear image of what it is we want to achieve, by giving our unconscious a final destination it will naturally step in to find the intermediate steps.

It’s easy to implement, so don’t lose the opportunity. The 11^th step of the system depends on this, and I promise you will be surprised with the enormous potential of this list.

How are you doing on the 12 steps? I would love to receive some feedback on the comments section or on my twitter (@alexmrv).

Photo by Carlos Lorenzo