What will you do about it?

Phase 3 is the Action Plan, and like phase 2, it will be divided into five steps to make it easier to understand. The starting point of phase 3 should be where we left off in phase 2, with the 2-4 core desires that you deeply want. The ending point of phase 3 should be a clear set of actions to accomplish those goals.

The first step is to go line by line on each of those core desires and brainstorm every possible action to fulfill that desire. Use active verb tense phrases to describe each action. Spend ample time stream of consciousness writing down every possible action.

The second step is to find patterns among the lists of potential actions and group them into categories. Each category should still take the form of an action. Synthesize and consolidate the information.

The third step is to go line by line into each group and add bullet points answering the question, "What is the best way to accomplish this goal?" The subgoal responses you produce should once again take an active verb tense.

The fourth step is to repeat steps 2 and 3 recursively. List out all the ways to accomplish each sub-goal and group similar actions together. Synthesize and consolidate the information. Continue this process until you’ve yielded a set of 3 - 5 Core Actions.

The final step in phase 3 is to use a goal setting methodology, such as the OKR method, to create metric-driven goals. Start with your Core Actions and build clear tasks around them.

The main goal of this essay is to show how to get to the core desires and build a handful of stream of consciousness based concepts to ask ourselves if there is a different path to solve the goal.

Congratulations, you’ve completed the Whyse process! You started out with nothing, built a mountain of wants, synthesized those into “Core Desires”, used those desires as a starting point to build a mountain of actions, and synthesized those into “Core Actions” that can provide you with specific direction for a period of time. These actions are aligned towards your highest level goals, which have also been clarified along the way.

I hope you found this process to be helpful, please share any feedback so we can continue to iterate together.