PAS (Personal Accountability System)
 

This thread is in regards to Steves blog article: Your Personal Accountability System

I think that Steve's PAS sounds like a very good idea. It gives me that great "im organized" sensation that i so rarely feel, just thinking about it.

Has anyone here implemented this, or a similar system? If so, I would like to know how it worked for you. Did you use his system? something similar? or something completely different? And what kind of results did you have with it? Did it work for a while and then fade out, or was it a complete success?

I'm using a PAS
 

I'm using a PAS system that I created and I love it. But I have to be honest, it has been A LOT of work to keep it updated as I'm constantly growing. I started the PAS on October 1, 2006 and I've updated it about 10 times since then. I use a plain 3 ring binder with dividers. I edit everything by using MS word, and as a result I do a lot of typing and printing.

One problem I had with the creation of my PAS, was that I wasn't sure in the beginning what my life purpose was. But after working and re-writing over and over, things started to became clearer for me.

In my PAS I have:

* my favorite Pavlina articles that I feel are important to me right now
* my 30,60, and 90 day goals
* a sheet where I rate areas of my life by the month (example: health = 3)
* my 2, 5, and 10 year goals
* my life purpose
* quotes on success
* journal for writing short paragraphs on how I feel my day has went
* six most important things I have to do for the day (to-do list)
* vision boards (pictures I use to visualize what I want in my life)
* calender and schedules of things I have to do (for time management)

It's actually more complicated than what I have just wrote, but it would take me about an hour to explain exactly what is in my PAS. It took me about a week to create it and I constantly update it every week. It's time intensive but it helps me become aware of what it is I really want.

So that's my PAS :)

PS: I carry my PAS with me everywhere I go, because sometimes I get ideas and I write them down. Also, by having it near me, I can constantly remind myself of where I want to go in life. It's now impossible for me NOT to look at my goals. It requires discipline to be like this, but I'm enjoying it :)

I didn't have one till I read this post - but I've just created one!

So far it has

My purpose and Goals
Current projects
To do List
Daily Actions
Monthly Wheel of Life review
Useful articles

I'll let you know how I get on :)

I should make one...
 

I don't have one now, but it might not be a bad idea to make on, just to give me some sort of clarity and something to work for every day. Usually I wake up and just go with my intuition, but maybe that's not always the best thing to do. If I have goals written down and I keep my focus on them, maybe I will be more produective, as i spend only thrity hours doing passionate work and the rest at a regular job. I'll have to check it out. I should reread the article first though to get the basic aspects of it. But I remember reding it and thinking it was a good idea.

I've actually written one out, but one of the problems I'm finding with it is that my mind likes to latch onto writing it out and making sure I've got all my steps down. I think I'm focusing too much on seeing all those steps on paper and my mind is using it as an excuse to not actually get started on any of those steps..

So I've put it down for now :) It's a great system, but I seem to like to use it to avoid doing actual work...

Ok, this PAS is exactly what I needed... Went to buy a binder and some paper tonight and spent 1 hour and a half doing mine.

I kept it really simple, as in Steve's article. It contains:

*Life purpose, 1 page
*2006-2007 goals, primary (3) and secondary (9), 1 page
*End-of-2006 goals, primary and secondary, 1 page
*2007 Q1 goals, primary and secondary, 1 page
*Primary next actions
*Secondary next actions

I don't have project pages right now, as all I was thinking about was broken down into next actions... but I might add these pages soon.

I've had a PAS for a couple of months now, but I only started using it everyday when I added it to my soft-Journal. I store it on a USB key and it goes everywhere with me :) Here's what it includes:

My Life Purpose
My Current Intentions
2006 Goal List (Main and Secondary)
2006 Quaterly Goal List (Breaks down main goals into time chunks)
A Current Projects List (derived from my quaterly goals)
Next Actions List (very much a todo list to complete projects)
and a maybe someday list of things I'd like to consider doing but don't have time to do right now.

I've just finished my 2007 PAS as well, I didn't like only going as far as the end of the year.

Since I started looking at it more regularly it's helped me stay more focused on high level goals, and this has been reflected in my everyday decisions. My decisions are more congruent with my main goals.. and I'm making progress towards them. It has definitely been worth implementing.

Kristina

PS: if you are a newcomer to words such as "project list", "next actions", etc... these are terms from the productivity system Getting Things Done, by Allen.