Creating outcome

Just like being busy is not equal to being productive, creating output is not equal to creating outcome. Being busy and creating output are necessary components of being productive and creating outcome, but they don't guarantee it.

The differentiating factor, once again, lies in the dent you are trying to create in the universe. Outcome = Output + Impact(on a concrete mission). In order to be able to achieve this, two things are necessary:

(1) A clear idea about what the desired impact looks like, so you can measure your achievement.
(2) Guts.

Actually guts could be on position one and two because it usually takes a lot of guts to fully understand the desired impact and the implications this has on you and your project, whatever that might be. You need guts for this because more often than not this will challenge your assumptions about the world or at least a part of the world. Overcoming this limiting perspective is the first step in allowing yourself to see the goal clearly.

Another reason why it takes guts to create outcome over output is that outcome can be and has to be measured in order to be outcome. In other words, there are objective criteria that judge your performance on creating outcome! The good thing about this is that these criteria are known beforehand because they are an important building block for your strategy and therefor you have a solid feeling what you are up against.

Just sticking to these two points will have a massive impact on your productivity, but as soon as other people are involved, things become a little bit more tricky. For this i can offer you the tool we created to save our lives — literally by stopping to waste 50% of our waking time in meetings.

We call it untwist and it helps us to untangle all the open ends and discussions meetings usually create and turn them into a straight thread to success.
I always love hearing from people about their experience regarding meetings, productivity and happiness — feel free to email me at thomas@untwist.io !