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The number-one most important fact to understand if you want to get things done
Thursday, 6 July 2006
We all have things we want done. Or more precisely, we have things about the world we wish to change, and realize we'll to put in some effort to do so. All sorts of strategies have been devised on how best to do this - time management systems, organizational methods, motivational seminars, life coaching, and so on. These can all be useful to some extent.
But no strategy for getting something done is likely to be effective unless it's founded on the principle I outline below. This is the most important concept to understand if you want to be a productive person. And best of all, it can be summed up in one simple sentence. Here it is:
Human wants are unlimited, but the resources to meet those wants are scarce.
This is known as "the economic problem". It's the foundation of the entire practice of economics. Every theory in that field is supposed to work towards getting the best possible outcome from these two opposing forces.
Okay, here's a detailed explanation of the two sides of this basic truth and how to use them to be more effective.
Human wants are unlimited
Have you ever noticed that no matter how much someone has, they never seem to be satisfied? I mean, why do people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett even bother going to work in the morning? They already have more money and power than anyone could ever possibly use.
Think back to how our ancestors lived a couple of centuries ago. Most of them had a hand to mouth existence - spending long days laboring in fields, with short unhealthy lives and little in the way of entertainment. Imagine if such a person were transported to today's world and saw how we live - with our hundreds of television channels, cushy safe jobs, and endless variety of consumer goods.
They'd be astonished. How could anyone want more than what the average person living in a developed country already has? And yet most of us feel as if we're a long way from being satisfied.
That's because too much is never enough for almost everybody. No matter how many of our desires are fulfilled, we always want more. Upgrade us from a 56K modem to a 10Mb broadband connection, and it won't be long before that too starts to seem slow. Expand our choice of TV channels from 5 to 500, and we'll still complain there's nothing on. No matter what the world feeds us, it's never long before we're hungry again.
Human wants are unlimited. Or at least, if there is a limit, we're yet to see any sign of it.
Because of this, we must choose carefully which of our unlimited wants we most desire to have fulfilled. We can't have everything, or even most of what we want. So the list of what we hope to achieve should be kept short.
To get things done, prune your desires down to as few as you possibly can. To try to achieve everything, is to condemn yourself to achieving almost nothing.
So the question to ask becomes: Out of the millions of things I’d like to change about my reality, which are most important to me?
But the resources to meet those wants are scarce
One fact that any creature on this planet must come to terms with soon after being born is that resources here are scarce. There just isn't enough stuff to meet everyone's wants.
On an historical measure, we're living lives of abundance. Few of us in the rich world are short of the basics of food, clean water, and accommodation. Yet even with the massive understanding of the world we have, most of us still feel stretched.
Here are just some examples of the many resources we don't have enough of:
- Money
- Knowledge
- Time
- Land
- Equipment
- Motivation
- Willingness of others to help us
- Endurance
- Intelligence
- Justice
- Energy
- Information
- And so on
We are all extremely - severely, in fact - limited in what we can achieve by the scarcity of resources available to us. Yet many people willfully ignore this fact. They consume their resources like an alcoholic consumes a bottle of vodka - quickly and with little thought of the consequences.
Take, for example, the belief that the way to get things done is to work harder than everyone else. The world is full of people who live by this mantra. They rush around like chickens with their heads cut off, yet seem to achieve very little.
Or look at governments who try to solve problems by throwing money at them, yet find years later that the problem still exists and the money is gone.
Such people think the way to satisfy their limitless wants is to simply to consume resources as quickly as possible - but they're wrong. In fact, it's often the person who works less hard but more intelligently on a problem, or an organization who spends less but does so smartly who achieves the most.
It's not the amount of resources you put towards a problem, but how cleverly those resources are used that counts.
Even more dangerous are those who assume scarce resources are unlimited. This is a common delusion.
A typical example is concluding that the effort of others is an abundant resource. A market-researcher who asks his subjects to answer 100 questions is likely to find people less than willing to participate. A survey with five carefully thought out questions will probably yield more data because other will be more willing to spend time completing it.
So the question to ask yourself on this point is: How can achieve what I want while consuming the least possible amount of resources?
And that includes all the resources you'll need, not just the obvious ones like time and money.
It's the intelligent use of resources - getting the most bang for our buck - that separates those who excel in getting things done from those who don't. Any system or plan that ignores this basic fact, is likely to be ineffective.
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