Following on from Part 1 yesterday, you know why the OODA Loop is critical to, well, everything you do. So how do you make yours the best it can be? Well essentially, this boils down to making your OODA Loop smaller (in other words, it operates faster), and making changes that improve the success rate of any decisions and actions it produces. Doing this will make remarkable changes – your progress towards your goal will increase exponentially. There are many, many changes you can make to each part of your cycle, and some of these are broken down below;

Observe better by (1) Cleaning up your information diet – be aware of the biases in information you consume and reduce them where possible (2) Control what you observe – choose high quality sources of information, and systematically feed on them (3) Don’t let an algorithm on Social Media decide for you – you’ll only end up travelling down sales funnels, or scrolling endlessly earning advertisers money (4) Stop watching mainstream news – it is designed only to attract attention, and is therefore light on substance and heavy on sensationalism and fear-mongering, neither of which are productive for you.

Orientate better by (1) Ensuring you have clarity of exactly where you are starting from – the time you can actually dedicate to a goal, the resources you have, an assessment of what relevant knowledge or skills you already have (or don’t) (2) Gain more relevant knowledge (3) Clearly define EXACTLY what it is you are trying to achieve (4) Clearly define WHY you are trying to achieve it (5) Know how much risk you are willing to take to achieve your goal (6) Closely linked to this, know what you have to maintain in your life – your responsibilities. This could be things like keeping your house, taking care of children, keeping your health etc. You should be able to give a clear, written answer to every question above. Nothing should be arbitrary – as this makes your starting point and/or your end point unclear, and therefore your success questionable. For example, if you are seeking a monetary goal (income) from Property, then EXACTLY how much, and WHY?

Decide better. Making a decision is really just taking the situation at hand, running many simulations (ideally) and choosing which one you or people you trust think is best. You should aim to make (good) decisions as quickly as possible, as the act of making a decision does nothing to help your progress – it is the actions associated to it that do. On top of what has already been covered, you can make better decisions by (1) get lots of sleep – making decisions takes a real physical toll on your body (Decision Fatigue). The more (good) decisions you can make (and act on) the better your life will be. So getting more sleep allows you to make more decisions in a day – and have the energy to carry out the associated actions (2) Decide faster by having a clearer idea of your starting point, your end goal, and making better observations of your world. It’s a balance, but so long as the risk isn’t too great, it’s normally better to make a decision more quickly and act on it, learning in the process by getting real feedback from your world. If you take too long to decide, you’ll lose time as well as mental energy stuck in analysis paralysis (3) NEVER seek perfection – it doesn’t exist, and is the enemy of your progress. An 80% correct plan executed now is far better than a 100% solution executed a month from now – as you’ll learn more and quicker from feedback than you ever would by sitting and deliberating. Reality is the best teacher.

Act better. This is all about increasing your efficiency – doing physical actions faster, more accurately and with greater effect per unit effort that you expend (see previous posts on being more productive). It’s where the tyres meet the tarmac and you move forward. By improving your O-O-D sections this will help your ACTIONS, but, in general, you should be aiming to first (1) ELIMINATE any unnecessary tasks, (2) AUTOMATE as far as possible the ones that remain (3) OUTSOURCE those that you can’t automate and it makes economic sense to do so (money/time) (4) DELEGATE those that you can’t ELIMINATE, AUTOMATE or OUTSOURCE – again where it makes economic sense to do so. You should also (5) PRIORITISE all of your actions. This can seem daunting, but in a nutshell, there are really only a small set of prioritisations on a day to day basis when it comes to your work time. There are DAILIES – things you just need to do every day (maybe at the start and/or end) which take very little mental energy, then everything else should be PRIORITISED say from 1 to 4. How do you prioritise? Well, if you have clarity in your start and end point, then it should be easy. If you are finding it hard to prioritise, then you have not clearly defined your end goal and/or starting point – or you are not staying focussed on it. (6) KNOW YOUR CAPACITY – know how much time every day you can dedicate to pushing towards your goal. (7) DEFER well. You can’t (and shouldn’t) do everything. DEFER those tasks – when you defer them to will be determined by your capacity. DEFER Pri 1 tasks to the nearest time you can, Pri 2 to the next nearest and so on. I have a cut-off time whereby I have done all DAILIES, all Pri 4s, Pri 3s, Pri 2s etc, with the most time dedicated to “flow” Pri 1 activities as possible – this are the things that push you forward to your goal. This also underlines the fact that there are just those things that need to happen sometimes – and sometimes you can’t get to that “progress” phase of the day every day. (8) Embrace success and failure equally – they both mean learning, and learning means progress. Re-group, re-prioritise. (9) SAY “NO”… LOTS – by having CLARITY – e.g. by having a clear display (yes, maybe even something physical/visual) of your end goal or the general approaches you are focussing on, you will be equipped to QUICKLY assess whether some new opportunity is congruent to your end-goal or approach – thus allowing you to say yes (or more often NO) more quickly – reducing the amount of time you spend on chasing multiple “rabbits” and catching none. (10) FOCUS on your end-goal by having constant reminders. Your starting point never changes, your current position changes daily and your end-goal should rarely change. Your overall strategy could change more often, but change this as little as you possibly can. You only have a few precious truly productive hours each day that move you forward – see them as your most precious resources and spend them wisely. You’ll thank yourself.

Decisions and Actions. There are many, many different ways to improve your overall OODA Loop (and hence life outcomes). As I said yesterday, you make 1000s of decisions and actions, every day based on what you observe and what you think you know. These decisions quite literally decide the outcome of your life – the good ones, and the actions carried out from these, make your life better – the bad ones, and the actions that come from these, make your life worse. So learn from the bad ones, make more good ones – and make them as fast as you can. This applies to all aspects of life – personal and business – including in Property.

Married2Property Partners are a property company that aims to create social good through property.

These articles are written by Darren de Wal based on his 12 years of experience as an active Property Investor, and 16 years getting to a senior leadership position as an Officer in the Royal Air Force. They are for the benefit of those with a general interest in Property, as well as those wishing to start out investing themselves.