I thought I would share a very simple yet rewarding exercise I have been doing for about a week. The purpose of it has been to (1) focus my intentions, and (2) plan out steps for the actualization of those intentions, which then (3) encourages me to actually take these steps.

The mechanism I have been using for this is extremely simple: unlined index cards (although I guess lined would work just as well).

Each card represents what I am calling a “project”, but you could just as easily think of each one as representing one discreet unit of intention. Another word might be an “initiative.” But I settled on using the word “project” because I thought it *sounded more strategic*, almost like I am running a military campaign, and I have various smaller pieces of that campaign which interlock to form an interlocking whole. So what I end up with is a little stack of cards which feature neat-sounding names like “Project Echo”. It makes me feel like some kind of cool covert operative or something.

In addition to a clever name for each project, they also each include the following morsels of information:

1. Purpose
2. Models
3. Requirements
4. Additional

I later changed “Purpose” to “Objective” though, because I thought using the word “objective” would give me more of a benchmark to tell whether the intentions represented by each card had yet been actualized in reality. That is, it gives me an objective measure of its completion. This is very important when you have a lot of balls in the air. And it will come in handy later on as well during the refinement process.

“Models” is basically inspiration for either the whole idea or for an element of its execution. “Requirements” are a break-down of steps or elements which must come together in order to achieve that objective. “Additional” consists of notes, references to other projects and how they tie in (very important!) and other miscellaneous items.

The process I have found of using these goes something like this: Initially it was difficult to come up with more than one “project”, and the whole thing was not thought out too clearly. But I put it down on paper anyway, and worked through it bit by bit as best I could. Over the next few days, I was able to verbalize a few other small projects. As I did so, I began to see the potential for - no, the importance of - them all to work together towards larger and more concise objectives. Over time, I found that these areas of overlap grew so great that I needed to go back through old projects and revise them. I spent time re-stating my objectives with clearer language which gets more directly at the essence of my intention. And then from there I found that a lot of smaller projects began folding naturally together. What had started out with its own entire project card became, under the new organization, instead a “requirement” for the fulfillment of some other greater objective.

“Project Echo”, for example, started out as a poorly defined stab at increasing ad revenue on my site through leveraging existing content in new ways and eventually was rolled into a marketing & distribution plan for a short book I began working on an outline for last night. Incidentally, this blog post serves to advance forward the initiatives held behind two or three project cards. And tha is the scale of action you begin being able to see and move within: you don’t just look at whether or not an action you take serves your ultimate intention; you instead maximize every action to fulfill multiple intentions and always take you on concrete steps closer and closer to your objectives.

Some of the cards, as I said, would get re-written altogether with a new focus. Others would linger for a while, even though they no longer seemed to quite “fit”, simply because they had something important or useful in them. What I ended up doing with these guys was I would take a pen or a Sharpie and I would black out any word on these cards which was no longer congruent with my newly revised intent. So each project card became almost like an unclassified government document with lacunae where some clerk had gone through and removed things that would be damaging if they became public. Instead for me though, it was simply a matter of whether or not it still “fit.” Maybe this is all the government is really doing when they black out sections of documents too; maybe all they are is a massive machine for the actualization of intention. I don’t know. Interesting speculation though.

The most recent action I took with my project cards was simply to put them in a rough order. It is not perfect by any means, but they are arranged sequentially in time according to what I would anticipate their order of fulfillment to be. I am sure I will change it around later on as I add and revise, but the point is simply that you have to get something down. That is the first step towards fulfillment of your objectives. Without taking the first step, you won’t get anywhere.

Oh, another word on objectives: I began to find, over time, that my objectives were typically more thought out than the projects. That is, I had an objective or a purpose in mind. And on further consideration, the project which I had in mind for the fulfillment of that objective is really not the simplest or most straightforward way of making that happen. So what would happen is that these objectives themselves would begin to suggest other simpler ways of achieving themselves. I found this to be very helpful as a way of breaking out of my original preconceptions and opening myself up to more creative, simpler and more effective ways of achieving my goals.

That said, I want to stress that this really isn’t about “achieving” your goals, or even “actualizing your intentions.” For me, it is about intent/action harmony. What I mean by that is that the things I do are the things that I choose to do, as opposed to things that simply happen to me because of circumstances beyond my control. It is a way of becoming responsible for the consequences of your own actions, as well as for the fulfillment of your intentions. You are not relying on someone else to do it for you. And you are constantly condensing and clarifying what it is you really are after.

There is a decent quote by Marcus Aurelius which may be an apropos closing for this discussion:

“The gods either have power or they have not. If they have not, why pray to them? If they have, instead of praying to be granted or spared such-and-such a thing, why not rather pray to be delivered from dreading it, or lusting for it, or grieving over it? Clearly, if they can help a man at all, they can help him in this way. You will say perhaps, ‘But all that is something they have put in my own power.’ Then surely it were better to use your power and be a free man, than to hanker like a slave and a beggar for something that is not in your power.”