Commitment Inventory

Description

The Commitment Inventory Productivity Method, like its name suggests, is about taking stock or taking an inventory of all our commitments including responsibilities, duties, and obligations that matter to us.

As part of this method, you prioritize your commitments and list them according to their importance. So, the top-most commitments are the ones that are most important to you, and so on.

This productivity method works well in situations where you have a lot to do and somehow need to sift out what really matters from other less important tasks and targets.

Why does it work?

  • Helps identify what is really important
  • Organizes your commitments and prioritize them
  • Prioritizes goals as per your most significant ambitions and desires.
  • Creates checklists for important goals and tasks.
  • Helps you declutter your goals and let go of the ones that are not important.
  • Makes you more focused and efficient in achieving your life objectives.

How does Commitment Inventory method work?

Prioritization makes you more effective and efficient

We often declutter our kitchen and wardrobes in order to keep the important things within sight and do away with items that are not needed anymore.

On the same lines, our life goals need to be assessed from time to time.

We need to figure out what really matters to us and figure out ways to accomplish those goals.

Hence why your life’s objectives need prioritizing.

Your chances of success are increased when you focus on the relevant goals and discard distractions.

Differentiate between what really matters & irrelevant distractions

The first step under the Commitment Inventory productivity system is to making a list of all your responsibilities, obligations, and activities necessary.

Then, you rate them in the order of their importance and relevance to your happiness and sense of accomplishment.

While this method identifies all the important goals, it also lets you decide which are not, so that you can stop putting in time and effort towards them.

This way, you become more effective and achieve your goals more efficiently.

Once commitments are shortlisted, allow time for their fulfillment

So, let’s assume finishing a novel is your principal commitment right now.

You need to allow yourself a timeframe to complete it. Then, you need to break down this goal into smaller tasks to achieve it.

For example, you will finish the draft copy within a certain period of time.

You will then move on to editing and proof-reading, and then finally preparing its finished version.

You can do all this more systematically if you ascribe a time limit for each activity, breaking down the larger goal into doable tasks.

Put in time and effort proportionate to the importance of the commitment/goal

The Commitment Inventory productivity method also ensures you do not put in time and effort towards less important goals.

This productivity system essentially helps you make efficient use of your effort towards things that really matter.

The process of elimination of irrelevant goals and commitments avoids wastage of effort in areas that won’t necessarily make you happy or successful.

Example

Courtney Stevens, a successful event manager, wishes to embark on a new journey. She wants to become a travel blogger.

With this shift in her ambition and life’s objective, she has decided to sit down and prepare a checklist of commitments.

She first identifies what is really important to her.

So, with travel on the agenda, she needs to take the necessary steps to bring this dream to fruition.

She makes a list of smaller tasks that will help her successfully travel the world and blog about it.

She also assigns a time period against each small task. This, she believes, will ultimately let her live her dream.

Due to the shift in her aspirations, she needs to learn to ignore any prior commitment she had in the field of event management.

So, she needs to politely decline offers for more assignments and just focus on completing the ones she previously committed to.

The Commitment Inventory Productivity Method enables Courtney to start traveling, letting people know of her experience, and help her enjoy her journey – literally and figuratively.

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