Generally speaking, things are done better when they are done systematically rather than haphazardly or by rule of thumb.

Activities which are handled in this way will thus usually be more successful than those that are treated intuitively. This may not always be the case, but more often than not it will. Walk into a situation unprepared, without having thought about it much beforehand and without a method for dealing with what you encounter, and you are more likely to make mistakes, to miss opportunities and to overlook things which really ought to be attended to than you are if you have prepared, have thought about what might happen and have a system for dealing with whatever confronts you.

Before tasks can be tackled with any hope of success, they need to be organised. This means that you have to think about them and try to identify stages and even sub-stages which combine together to make up the task as a whole. It is useful, in doing this, to try to see tasks in terms of beginnings (how do you start?), middles (how do you deal with the main part of a task?) and ends (how do you finish the task off and know that you have not overlooked any aspect of it that is significant?). In other words, there is a kind of Rule of Three in task analysis. It is usually convenient to break an activity down into these three parts. Sometimes you may feel it is necessary to break it into more than three, but it will rarely be appropriate to break it into fewer than three.

Most tasks can be analysed logically in this way. They have their own natural internal sequencing and there will be certain things that must be done before others and some that will have to be done after. In carrying out task analysis, there are several available methods of ordering and arranging activities. The stages into which tasks can be broken down can be arrived at in a number of ways.

• 1.Some will have chronological staging. That is, the activities are such that they must be carried out in a strict time sequence. An example of this might be organising a conference or even arranging the games and other activities for a children’s party. In a conference, you can’t have the closing speech before the opening or dinner before lunch. At a party, you can’t have the jelly and custard before the sandwiches (or – knowing children – can you?) and it’s advisable to get all the most energetic games over before tea (unless you like attending to sick children).
• 2.Some tasks are best dealt with if the most important parts are tackled first as, for instance, when dealing with your in-tray in a morning. It can be helpful here to distinguish between what is important and what is urgent, so that the latter can be given priority. Others are best approached by seeing to the minor aspects first and leaving the most important until the last, as in organising a concert in which the ‘stars’ appear at the end or when scheduling a factory awards ceremony.
• 3.In some activities you move gradually from the known to the unknown. This happens in the organisation of training programmes for employees and in dealing with an in-tray in which routine items are mixed with new or one-off items, all of more or less equal importance. In other activities you might deal with the unknown first and then move on to the familiar, as in revising for an examination or going through papers in preparation for a meeting.

• 4.You may begin with the general and move on to the particular, or vice versa. You may even deal with things by areas or aspects of a subject.

The main requirement of whichever method, or combination of methods, is used is that it should be appropriate to the nature of the task.

The next move, once the task has been analysed, is to use a strategy which comprises a series of systematically operated steps for dealing with the situation. This must not, however, be applied rigidly. A degree of flexibility to allow for unforeseen events or any unpredictability at any point in the task is essential, so that what we are looking for here are flexible performance strategies.

One such strategy, which we encountered very briefly earlier and which has a wide range of applications, has the mnemonic title PAPA-ROMEO-OSCAR and is also known as the PRO Approach. It can be represented diagrammatically as follows:

The strategy can be used, for example, as a basis for guiding a self-development programme or for a simple activity such as a journey to a new destination. The questions on the right are designed to show how simple the strategy is in essence, but some further brief explanation of the key words used in this five-step strategy might be helpful. Let’s try it on the two examples – a self-development programme and a journey.

• The first step, Review, as its title implies, is concerned with making an assessment of the situation as you find it at the beginning of the activity. In self-development it calls for an analysis of your performance in the activity/skill to be developed. For a journey, it means identifying the starting point.
• The second step, Objectives (general), is the point at which you determine your main intentions for self-development or the general destination (for example, the town) for a journey.
• The third step, Methods, requires you to decide how the self-development is to be achieved or how the journey is to be made. The sub-step here suggests some points to consider in making this decision. Not all of them will be relevant on every occasion, however. You should only consider those that will help. What are your specific Objectives (for example, the precise address of your destination)? What Skills will you need to exercise in achieving your objectives (driving a car, perhaps)? In what Context is the activity taking place (the journey is part of a holiday tour, say)? What is your Attitude to the activity (you are looking forward to it)? What Resources do you need for its successful completion (car, petrol, road map, etc.)?
• The fourth step, Evaluation, is undertaken at the end of the activity. You would conduct a similar performance analysis to that conducted in the Review step and determine how far your self-development had succeeded or whether the journey had been made satisfactorily.
• The last step, Ongoing, presents the opportunity to learn from mistakes made and identified, and to decide the next area for self-development or the next journey to be made. The process as a whole can thus either end here or be repeated, depending on whether or not you feel you have got to where you want to be. This would apply to both the examples used here, self-development or a journey. And they are only examples. As stated earlier, the approach can be applied to many different kinds of activities.

Throughout the process you should bear in mind the need to be flexible and to change your approach if necessary. One aspect where this is particularly true is in regard to speed. The Rule of Three can be applied to this as well. Think of your ‘gears’ in speed as being high, medium and low. On a journey, there will be times when each one will either be appropriate or may be forced upon you (you cannot drive at high speed in dense traffic and will have to drive slowly). In self-development, there will be times when progress can be quick and others when it can only be slow.

The aim in using a flexible performance strategy should be to operate at the optimum speed and in the optimum way for the conditions and circumstances applying at the time. The more closely this can be achieved, the more efficiently you will be using your time, and the more effective your overall performance is likely to be. And the closer you will approach to being a truly laidback bear.