Warning! Nerd Alert! Personal Productivity Geek Alert! Normal people stay away!
It’s no secret that I’m regularly dabbling in personal management and productivity. I’ll admit that this dabbling doesn’t necessarily make me more productive than the average person; it just means that I’m hip to the latest fad.
Something that’s not a fad to me, however, is my Case Statement. Not a lot of people know that I have a document like this as I’ve only shared it with a few people who I knew wouldn’t laugh at me or call me “Danny Wanny Oh So Planny”.
This document, not unlike an actual Case Statement used in the non-profit world, makes a case for what you are. What you do. What you believe. I took this name from a very well put together document I read about a non profit organization I was involved with as a young adult. Flipping through the pages, it clearly defined what this organization was, what it believed in, it’s mission, who was involved…pretty much summing up the whole of its parts in one crisp, easy to read document.
About a year after I saw this, I decided that I’d love to write a document like this for myself. Define who I am and what I’m all about. Unlike an actual Case Statement, I wouldn’t be using this document to attract donors or investors. But rather state my value as I saw it at the time.
I stayed up all night typing this document on my parents’ Apple IIe. Twelve hours of typing produced 30+ pages of everything I knew about myself. I saved it to floppy and printed it out on their dot matrix printer then sat amazed that I had basically just put myself on the printed page. It at least summarized the complexities that were me at that time;Story and I loved it.
Over the years, this document has had many revisions. It was never meant to be chiseled in stone; instead it was meant to be a starting point or a gauge of where I’m at any given moment.
I bring it up now because I lost this document about a year ago in a hard drive crash; like an idiot, I hadn’t backed up this or many other very important personal documents. I do have scraps of it written down here and there and a printout or two, but the digital version was gone forever.
As I pondered this, I realized that I lost the document somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 years to the day that I originated it. This inspired me to start from scratch and rewrite it, and now I blog here to share what that document has meant to me over the years and what form it takes.
The Case Statement or whatever you choose to call it should have several elements; or one, depending on your style. These elements can define different parts of your personality or different roles that you play in life, have played in life, or plan to play in the future. The goal is to get these things out of your head and on paper or in a computer. Just record something so you can get that 20,000 ft bird’s eye view of your life.
NOTE: You really shouldn’t approach this as something that boxes you in or defines you completely. Rather it should be a tool you use to help you identify strengths and weaknesses, the things that are truly important to you, areas you’d like to improve, etc.
In case you’re wondering, here are the elements of my own Case Statement:
- Inventory
- Principles
- Values
- Statement of Faith
- Sacraments
- Roles
- Goals
- Dreams
- Relationships
- Resolutions
- Story
- Mission Statement
This is probably the most dynamic portion of the document for me as it changes regularly. I identify my current skills, talents, strengths and weakenesses as I see them. I have, in the past, asked others close to me to help with this as viewing myself objectively isn’t necessarily easy.
These lay the foundation to the whole document. They are elements that I consider to be absolute. They are black and white and should reflect how the world works. For you, these may come from scripture or from parents or other mentors. It may be something you’ve intrinsicly known to be right or wrong all your life. The important thing is that these aren’t meant to be opinions…they are meant to be facts. So if you don’t believe that strongly about something, it doesn’t belong here.
These aren’t really principles; though I suppose that principles could reside in this list. These are items that are important to me. A list of priorities, if you will. If you do this, you’ll be surprised how liberating it is to actually define what’s important to you.
Herein I define my beliefs . This one is pretty self explanatory, but I basically identify my most basic and most important spiritual beliefs. The things that I feel certain of, by faith of course.
This is something I devised to accompany my Statement of Faith. It essentially defines the practices of my faith that I consider to be necessary to maintain a healthy spiritual life. This may not be necessary for you, but it is for me to help me decide what I consider to be important rather than what other members of my community of faith may deem important. Like church attendance.
Stephen Covey recommends identifying what roles you play in life, and I agree that this is a good idea. You may be a boss, a husband, a son, an employee, a husband, a wife or anything that you can identify as a clear cut role that you play in life.
Organize your goals by role and you’re following another practice that Covey recommends. Of course you can organize these however you wish, I just recommend that whether in this document or in your personal planning system of choice, take these goals, put a date on them, and then set plans to accomplish them.
This area is also dynamic for me as these are all goal candidates. It’s basically goals that I haven’t quite decided whether they should be goals or not. Win an Oscar. Learn to speak Dutch. Circumnavigate the globe. Keep in mind that I consider all of these doable, but not all are truly desireable.
I define current and past relationships: my closest friends, people I consider mentors or influences, people who I feel I have direct influence over, etc. This is another one that will surprise you if you take the time to do it.
A la Ben Franklin, these are pretty much statements that don’t fit into any other category. “Always smell good.” “Open the door for ladies.” You get the idea.
Near the end, this is simply a recounting or summary of my life. I try to update it once every few years or whenever a significant event takes place.
A victim of corporate overkill, the Mission Statement may be one of the most valuable tools for accomplishing what you want in life. It’s this whole document…summed up. Or perhaps it’s the net result of this document. That’s why I put it at the end. I won’t write anything else about what a mission statement is, because there is plenty of literature about this already.
This may seem extensive and maybe it really is for you. Your “Case Statement” may just be a couple of sentences on a piece of paper or maybe it’s locked in your brain. This won’t be for everyone, but if you find yourself feeling cluttered in your head, or if your priorities just feel a little out of whack, this may be just the ticket.
Actually defining some of these things in a tangible way just might relieve some of that clutter in your head or help you realign your out of whack priorities. At the very least, it might help you realize that all this personal productivity hubbub isn’t really for you.
Tags: personalproductivity, values, principles, mission statement, statement of faith, roles, goals, dreams
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