Planning Is a Practice (Productive Flourishing Pulse #464)

You don’t do it just once, and the more you do it the better you get

Fingers on a guitar fretboard. Photo by freestocks on Unsplash.

One of the traps we can get into is this idea that once we plan the year/quarter/month, we’re done. Now all we have to do is work the plan we’ve created and everything will turn out… exactly as we planned.

This is especially true of the year. At the start of a brand new year, we set these BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) for ourselves and expect that by the end of December, we’ll have magically crossed them all off our list. And when it doesn’t happen exactly the way we envisioned? We beat ourselves up about it. 

The reality is what I’ve said for years: “If you’re planning effectively, you’ll always be changing your plans.”

There are many truths baked into this statement, but here are two key ones to consider when you’re making plans this month and in the months ahead.

1. Humans are notoriously bad at estimating.

The longer the horizon, the worse we estimate. We might be able to see with 20/20 vision to the end of the week, but the end of a month? Quarter? Year? The greater the distance, the blurrier our vision gets. Why? Most often it’s because…

2. Reality has the annoying habit of changing our plans.

As the military strategy saying goes, “No plan survives first contact with the enemy.” Or, as Mike Tyson famously put it, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” We can’t anticipate everything that’s going to happen in our work or business, our lives, or our world.

With those truths in mind, how can we create useful plans that guide us toward those goals we want to achieve but don’t straightjacket us when our environment, situation, or even we ourselves change?

1. Set milestones, but don’t worry about telegraphing each step. Think about it like taking an overland hike. Plan your route, yes. Rely on your map. But your individual steps on the trail might have to change because of a downed tree, a washed-out path from recent rains, or steering clear of a mother bear and her cubs.

2. Course correct as you go. Because drifting off course, even by small degrees, can over time take you where you don’t want to go. Make time to recalibrate and reset your course. And the bigger the project, the more time you’ll need to adjust. You might be able to turn a jet ski on a dime, but that ocean-liner-sized project? You’ll need to course correct in small degrees over a longer distance to avoid that iceberg.
   
   Course corrections can include:

   1. Adjusting the level of success of your project. Sometimes good enough is good enough.

   2. Adjusting the scope of your project. How much needs to be included in the project now? What’s your new “definition of done”?

   3. Adjusting the time frame of your project. This might mean adding another week to a monthly project you thought would take two. Or it might mean going up (or down) a time horizon based on your new level of success or scope.

3. Leave the last segment of a time horizon intentionally loose; i.e., the last quarter of the year, the last month of the quarter, the last week of the month. Even the last workday of the week. This buffer time can be super useful when:

   1. We’ve underestimated how long a thing will take and need just a few more days (or weeks) to move it across the finish line.

   2. We’ve encountered a blocker that requires us to pause or reconfigure.

   3. We’re buried under a bunch of emergent, important tasks that ate our focus blocks and delayed the project.

   
   Not only can we use that time to catch up, we can also use it to reconfigure our plans based on the information we have now. Which leads to…
   

4. Use the 10/15 Split every day. Get yourself in the habit of reviewing your plans on the daily. This will help you not only see what adjustments you need to make, but also provide valuable feedback on where you estimated incorrectly, so you can do a better job the next day/week/month/etc. Equivalent functions at the other horizons: weekly review, monthly review (and mid-month review), quarterly review, and annual reflection.

Like everything worth doing, planning is a practice. The more you do it (and redo it) the better you get.

Other News & Features

• If you’re in need of a more structured pause before the year gets underway (and away from you), there’s still time to join us in the Dominican Republic in February for the Level Up Retreat. Final registration is just a few weeks away (January 26), and we only have a few spaces left. Secure yours today. We have payment options available.

• A paid PF subscription offers a lot more support for your start-of-year planning, including premium resources like the Momentum Planners, Momentum Planning E-Course, Annual Reflection Mini-Guide, and more. Your paid subscription also includes an invitation to our monthly community coaching calls to get in-the-moment answers and help as you’re prioritizing and planning your year.
  

Reads and Seeds

I’m playing with a new journaling practice that I may talk about more, but here are some of the pulls from this week.

• “Choose which hill you're going to climb, but don’t do both today.” - Ally Love (from a Peloton Feel Good Ride)

• “If you take up a prone shooting position on a fire ant mound, reposition unless you're getting shot at.” - Me to my little sister, but relevant to SO many things. Also a real line an Army trainer said to my squad two decades ago.

• “We gotta stop the generational hazing. Don’t put ankle weights on kids so they can imagine what shackles feel like.” - A thought I had while riding on the bus with a lot of high school kids on it

• “You're using object-orienting language about what’s in the center, but it’s clearly a person: you. What’s going on there?” - Me to a Level Up alum

• The Thriller album is both amazing and background music at the same time. How?