The fundamental flaws of the conventional approach to getting things done
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The conventional way to achieve success, in your life or in a work project, is to start with careful planning. First you build your plan, then you track progress against it. If you’re in a business setting, you’ll add a detailed budget. Corporations especially measure someone’s success by how closely their results match the original budget and plan. The plan becomes a straitjacket on later action.
Don’t do this!
Using such an approach commits you to a path you almost certainly can’t follow. Events rarely, if ever, work out as you planned. Then you must either stick to the plan — and stray further and further from reality — or abandon the previous plan and put action on hold while you start planning again.
Detailed planning too easily forces you into dangerous actions, like remaining rigid in the face of life’s natural fluidity, or ignoring warning signs and trying to force reality into the path you planned for it. It blocks you from responding creatively to whatever comes along. You become an actor following a script, instead of responding freely to the ebb and flow of events; you judge progress against the plan itself, not against how well you’re moving towards to your final objective.
Even the best plans are only thoughts about what to do if things go as you imagine. Forecasting the future is a risky game with a miserable chance of success. Trying to make the future conform to your plans is downright foolish, since you have no control whatever over what will happen. Reality will run you over like a railroad train hitting a gnat.
Try this approach instead
- Fix a clear objective in your mind and keep it firmly in view.
- Jump in by doing whatever you think is the most obvious and necessary first step to your goal. Don’t look any further ahead than that.
- When you’ve completed the first action, see how much you’ve moved towards your objective. Pay close attention to what you’ve learned from the outcome.
- Now look around for the next most obvious and necessary action and do that.
- Repeat as required.
That’s how you should keep going. Act, consider the result and choose the next action that’s needed, big or small. Don’t even consider whether it’s in line with the last thing you did. Don’t think about how you feel or whether you’re motivated. Keep adjusting your path and heading for the goal by the next most obvious step.
If anyone asks for your plan, says it’s to do whatever is needed next, then see what happens. Above all, don’t lose yourself in abstractions and worries about the future or the past. Think only about whatever needs to be done next to move towards your goal.
Keep yourself moving, always heading for your objective by whatever path seems best at the time. Change your mind whenever you need to. Stick with whatever needs persistence. Give up what doesn’t work. Don’t listen to doubters.
Some surprising results
For a start, if you follow this path, you’ll never be discouraged or overwhelmed by the size and complexity of a project. They’re all the same — the next most obvious step, then the next, and so on until it’s done.
You won’t waste time trying to imagine or calculate what’s needed months or years ahead. The future is unknowable. Whatever we imagine about it is guesswork. If you follow the path I suggest, you’ll know what the future will bring because you’ll wait until it arrives.
You’ll always know what to do. It’s the next most obvious action. Whether you feel like it or not, just do it. As a result, your progress will automatically adjust to events. You won’t wear yourself out in the hopeless task of trying to fit reality to what you want. Nor will you stick to some failing course of action when the evidence is growing it won’t work.
Best of all, you’ll be free to innovate and adapt with feeling guilty about deviating from that beautiful plan you made months ago. Don’t look back. Don’t worry about what’s coming. Just keep doing the task in front of you.
Planning too easily becomes a substitute for action
People can spend months in complex planning stages, only to find the boat left without them weeks ago. Or they can get stuck in the planning process, continually adjusting and refining their plan but never taking action. Yet action is the only way to change anything. It’s also the only certain way to learn what will happen. Do something and see what results. Use the results to see what to do next.
You’ll never be uncertain and never be off course.
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August 11th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
When we stop making a grand production (frets and worries) out of every little thing we begin to see that finishing each baby step amounts to a beautiful career.
August 11th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
You’re right, Karl. Keep reading, my friend.
August 11th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
Are the problems you describe the result of too much planning, or just badly implemented planning?
My sense is that, while flexibility is essential to success in any complex project, so are communication and coordination. If different people are working on interdependent tasks, sometimes they need to know roughly when someone else will be finishing the inputs to their tasks. It’s not always obvious what the next task is if you don’t know what other people are going to be doing (indeed, you may spend your time doing or undoing something that someone else is doing). Some kinds of projects may fail completely if people don’t all show up in the same place at the same time with specific materials.
August 12th, 2008 at 12:03 am
I do not agree with you in this post! I have worked for years in an environment with goals but no or only poor plans how to get there. Since about two years I do real project and time management and things go much better now and with less stress.
I agree with you that there exists overplanning. There also exist projects where those people who are planning have no idea about the thing (technical background for instance) that they want to bring to success.
I think that there are parts in a project that can be handled as you propose but for a complete project it is not sufficient.
August 12th, 2008 at 12:05 am
Just one other note: The goal itself also can move during a longer project and a project is not a fixed thing - it lives. But this does not mean that you cannot plan anything. See the project and goals as a “moving target”.
August 12th, 2008 at 3:42 am
I wonder how this plan would work for the current US presidential bids?
August 12th, 2008 at 7:28 am
I anticipated that this article might provoke some comment! Let me try to respond to each point in turn.
Oops — I think your point (a good one) is about co-ordination. Sometimes the next most obvious thing to do is to check with someone else what they are doing. I don’t think you need to have elaborate plans to make co-ordination work. In fact, it can go the other way if people believe they already know what others are doing, because it’s all there in the plan.
Martin — I suspect that what you describe works well for you, which doesn’t mean it must work well for everyone. Setting sensible priorities is not the same as planning. It also depends on the project: a straightforward implementation of what is well known might be something whose details and progress you can be fairly sure of well in advance. A strategic plan involving change definitely isn’t.
Mary K — It has always seemed foolish, to me, for the public and the media to expect a candidate to lay down detailed ‘plans’ of what he or she will do about specific issues once elected. I assume that, if you make it to high office, you’ll then be allowed access to information not available to anyone else. Might this not make things look different? Were I running for office — which heaven forbid! — I would be happy to talk about my principles, but would refuse to give any detailed statements of what I would or wouldn’t do. But then, to paraphrase Mark Twain, to talk about fools and politicians in the same sentence is to repeat yourself.
Keep reading, my friends.
August 13th, 2008 at 5:34 am
I think there must be the separation of things done “in the line” and other projects. I agree with you that for well known procedures or well known paths to well known goals no (or only few) planning is necessary. However in such cases there is also a good thing to have checklists (which is also some sort of plan) to not forget something and I also worked on projects with often recurring procedures and planning was actually needed anyway because of the involvement of many other people.
But because of the discussion I am not sure about everyones definition of “planning”. For me planning is “simply” to think of needed resources, estimate work (if not known yet), coordinate others and schedule the single steps. This is common planning. Analysis, evaluation of possible solutions etc. is other conceptional work to be done for projects that do not fit in the well known cases.
August 13th, 2008 at 7:48 am
Thanks for the thoughtful comment, Martin. You make an important point: there seem to be as many definitions of planning as there are people who do it.
My concern is primarily with formal planning: the preparing of elaborate, detailed and inevitably written plans for long periods ahead. This has become almost an industry in itself, complete with its own specialist software. There is also a common belief that planning in this way is necessary for doing things effectively.
I don’t see it. If you used the effort devoted to this kind of planning to work on the project itself, you’d be way ahead while others were still polishing their plan.
Keep reading, my friend.