A Community Contribution from Nuno Donato on how he used the GTD Horizons of Focus model to gain clarity about a life change
About one and a half year ago I moved from a busy big city “A”: to a smaller one in the country side “B” to develop a project with an organization I volunteer with. My life changed in many ways due to this, and I enjoyed it a lot. Recently, lots of things on the personal and professional level changed and I felt that it might be good to go back to A. Lots of things were involved in this, as some people and projects depend on where I am. I spent the last 3 months with the question of where should I be, on my mind. I tried getting all possible arguments, opinions, made a list of pros and cons, but nothing could really assure me that I was making a good decision. It was like my gut feeling was telling me not to trust anything. Sometimes my mind would give me some arguments in favor of A, my heart would ask me to stay in B…. and after a week they would switch places . So it was getting very confusing and difficult to me.
Finally I thought, why not to use GTD to solve this problem? It was a wise decision! After a good weekly review I made a deep dive into my horizons of focus synchronizing my life with my mind and my heart at different levels. After I finished the map (mind-mapping is my favorite tool to do the horizons of focus), I took a look at the whole picture of my life and asked the question again, where should I go? The answer came it 2 seconds, and it was so crystal-clear that I could not believe it!
Being aware of where we are and where we are going short-and-mid term, knowing what is our purpose here, is such a valuable tool to make decisions that I can not thank David enough for giving us this! By the way, the answer was quite interesting: I will move to A for 2-3 years in order to accomplish some short-term goals which are very important, and then move back to B to walk in the direction of my long term goals and how I see myself living.
Take care,
Nuno
You can learn more about the Horizons of Focus in Getting Things Done and Making It All Work.
Congratulations Nuno and thank you for sharing your process for making this important decision in your life. It’s interesting that your solution was not black and white. It was a combination of the two, which shows a very mature answer as well as process to get there.
Wonderful contribution! I am in that phase in my life right now, where I am contemplating a significant change. I had not considered applying GTD and looking at the different horizons.
Thanks for sharing your struggle, and your creative solution. Your approach is helpful to my own thinking.
Thanks Nuno for sharing this experience with us.
I am also in the middle of some tough decisions and didn’t think about using GTD for solving them.
I guess I am still in the early stages of GTD and need to be more skilled managing the different horizons.