GPS: A Simple System for Getting Things Done

I've tried a lot of productivity systems and abandoned most of them for the same reason: they were more work to maintain than the work itself. What survived is embarrassingly simple, and I named it after the thing it imitates — a satnav. GPS: Goal, Path, Step.

Goal — know the destination

A satnav is useless without an address. So is your week. Before anything else I get painfully specific about the one outcome that matters — not a vague direction, but a destination I'd recognise if I arrived. Fuzzy goals produce fuzzy effort.

Path — plot the route

Once the destination is fixed, I sketch the rough route: the handful of milestones between here and there. Not a detailed plan — routes get re-drawn constantly — just enough to know the general way. The path's job is to tell me if I've drifted off course.

Step — just take the next one

Here's the part that actually matters. A satnav never shows you the whole journey at once; it shows you the next turn. Execution is the same. Almost all of my stuck-ness came from staring at the entire path instead of the single next step. Shrink the question to "what's the very next turn?" and momentum returns.

That's the whole system. Destination, rough route, next turn — repeat. It's not clever, but calm execution rarely is. It just keeps you moving in the right direction without the overhead that kills every fancier system I've tried.