Below is a lesson from Forbes on how being outcome oriented can help drive greater productivity, as well as our key learning.

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STOP THINKING IN TASKS AND TO-DOS. START THINKING IN OUTCOMES

by Marcela Sapone

We all toil under a tyranny of to-dos. Life can feel like an endless succession of tedious tasks we struggle to complete, and we may cross everything off our to-do lists, but it can still feel like we aren’t achieving what we really want. It’s why we click on every productivity hack that pops up in our feed while half-read self-help books pile up on our nightstands.

I run a company dedicated to helping people get their tasks and to-dos done. If there’s one piece of advice I’ve learned that can make all the difference in how we approach work and productivity, it’s this: Stop thinking in terms of tasks and to-dos you need to complete — instead, think of the outcomes you want to achieve.

Continue reading here.

Key Learnings:

• Tasks and to-dos may be the building blocks of work and productivity, but an outcome is more than a blueprint — it’s the most nutrient-rich version of a goal.
• An outcome is a goal that tells a story — to ourselves and others — about where we want to arrive.
• An outcome builds on the proven power of visualization by encouraging us to envision an end state we can not only see but feel viscerally.
• Ticking off tasks on our to-do lists might make us feel productive. But to truly be productive, we must clearly visualize the outcomes we want and design everything we do around getting them.
• That’s not to say you should trash your to-do list. To-do lists are a time-honored tool for getting things done. 
• A 2017 LinkedIn Survey found that 63% of professionals kept daily to-do lists — but only 11% actually accomplished everything on the list.
• The problem isn’t that we write lists of the things we want to get done. It’s that we write down the to-dos we want to complete when we should be writing down the outcomes we want to achieve.
• What happens when we lose sight of the end state we want to reach: we lose the meaning and context for the actions we take to get there.
• The ability to articulate an envisioned outcome and share it widely is imperative for collective productivity.
• Thinking in outcomes can help an organization to focus and clarify its mission by forcing it to clearly state and communicate its goals — particularly to the people within the organization.
• Outcome thinking not only defines the service we provide to our customers, it organizes how we work as a company, from our yearly and quarterly planning to our day-to-day operations.
• Anyone can do it, here’s how:
  • Write it down: clearly articulate and record the end state we want to reach. Write it down for reference and accountability. 
  • Act like an owner: take responsibility for our own productivity and how we spend our time.
• That mindset can transform any job — no matter how repetitive or tedious it may appear to be — into a challenge that requires creative solutions. 
• Empowering your people to own their outcomes and find creative ways to achieve them opens up new possibilities that task-oriented thinking can foreclose.
• Imagining an outcome as an end state that can be visualized and deeply felt is essentially an exercise in storytelling.
• When everyone shares a common outcome and visualizes the same end state, their work necessarily assumes a common purpose as each task ladders up to a shared mission.

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