Written by: Ian Gibbs, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Here’s a tool I’d like to share with you from my personal development accelerator groups. It’s a simple but effective way of assessing how much you are stretching yourself with your personal development projects.
This is done by categorising your actions – the things you do to get to where you want to be.
Whether you want to improve your leadership, productivity or even waistline, you put each of your actions into one of four categories. Now, I usually don’t like putting things into categories – life is complicated and there are always exceptions, but this is a general rule of thumb that I find useful.
It’s useful because it makes you to do a quick check on how well you are applying yourself towards reaching your goals and encourages you to make adjustments where necessary.
So, the four categories are the colours Red, Yellow, Green and Blue.
Red colour
Red is for danger and that’s what Red Activities are. They are a danger to your goals and directly hinder your progress. We are not talking about neutral activities that don’t support your plan. We are talking about counterproductive actions that make your progress more difficult.
Let’s illustrate this with three examples: Getting a promotion, finding a life-partner and writing a book.
If you want to get promoted, then being rude, argumentative or antisocial are examples of Red activities (unless being unpleasant is a job requirement)
If you want to find a new romantic partner, one Red activity would be engaging in negative self-talk, telling yourself you are undesirable
If you want to get up early in the morning to write your book, then going to bed late is also Red.
Red actions are not as obvious as you might think. Our actions are frequently so ingrained, we don’t even notice we are doing them. I’m sure you’ve seen other people creating problems for themselves without realising what they are doing. But when it comes to self-assessment, it’s not so obvious at all. Can you think of any of yours?
I’m sure we have all had experience of occasionally choosing to do something that we know is not good for our plans. But too many, too often is simply self-sabotage. If you frequently get the feeling of exasperation, despair or even self-loathing, somewhere there are Red actions. Identify them and change them.
Yellow colour
Yellow is a feel-good colour and yellow activities are those activities that make you feel that you are progressing towards your goal. The only problem with Yellow activities is that’s the only thing they do. Although they give you the impression of progress, in reality, after doing them, you’re no closer than when you started. For example:
Taking enumerable courses, hoping this will lead to a promotion
Browsing Tinder for an hour without making a move
Reading someone else’s book on how to write in the belief that it will magically increase your word count
It’s easy to spend far too much time on Yellow activities because they are usually within your comfort zone and don’t require you to stretch yourself. They also generate the hamster wheel effect – lots of busyness but not much progress. Too many Yellow activities create the feeling of frustration, anxiety or even emotional burnout.
Green colour
Green is for Go and green actions are those that directly open the doors and pave the way forward to Blue actions (which I’ll cover next). Green actions aren’t the main activity but they are prerequisites. For example:
Learning how to be more assertive when expressing your interest in a promotion or improving your interview technique
Hiring a good dating coach
Setting out your writing equipment and your early morning alarm.
These don’t get you the promotion, the date or the book, but they definitely increase the likelihood of you making real progress.
Blue colour
Just as Blue Chip refers to something of the highest quality, Blue activities are your most productive actions. As Pareto's 80/20 principle says, they are the most important actions that create the biggest results. Ironically, they are the actions most likely to make you feel uncomfortable. They are out of your comfort zone and thus the actions you avoid, or substitute with Yellow ones, or justify postponing by convincing yourself that you’re not ready yet, or that now isn’t the right moment.
So regarding that new job, Blue activities are taking the initiative to talk to your boss, having a chat with your friend in HR or making a formal application.
Regarding your search for your life partner, building up the courage to walk up to that person you've been admiring from afar and ask them on a date is a Blue activity.
And when it comes to writing your book, obviously, sitting down and actually knocking out five hundred words every morning is your Blue activity.
I hope you get the idea.
You have important things in your life that you want to achieve. The more Blue and Greens activities you have in your personal development strategy and the fewer Yellow and Red ones, the sooner your dream will be fulfilled.
Unfortunately, life isn’t that simple and it’s tempting to fool yourself into a false sense of security justifying too many Yellow actions while overlooking the Red ones.
So take a moment to identify your Reds, Yellows, Greens and Blues.
How many did you do yesterday?
How many will you do tomorrow?
Good luck, and keep learning!
Ian Gibbs, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Ian Gibbs is a leading expert in learning techniques and personal development. Through his talks, books and workshops, Ian helps individuals and organisations develop better strategies for learning how to overcome obstacles and achieve goals they thought were beyond them. He is the founder of Learning Clubs which are rapidly gaining notoriety for being a powerful personal development accelerator. Ian's mission is to help people understand and apply everything that science knows about how we develop new behaviour and skills but which is sadly so often overlooked and so keep up in today's rapidly changing world.
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