Planning in Proportion

In my previous post, It All Starts with Organization, I recommended near the end to make a plan for any effort of more than very minor complexity. But if you spend forever planning and never take action, what good is making the plan?

Planning to the right level of detail for the task at hand is important for success, but so is knowing when you’ve planned enough to prevent being mired in “analysis paralysis”. In this post, I present three basic types of planning that can be used to accomplish your pursuits more effectively: the outline, the picture, and the detailed plan. With a little practice, you’ll quickly get a feel for which of these is most helpful for any given situation.

Make an Outline

If you’re not exactly sure how to do something right off the bat, or if you want to give yourself some flexibility to decide on details later, writing an outline is an excellent way to help you think ahead and set up the right tools for the job before you begin your work. While you eventually need to get the details figured out during work time, you have the peace of mind of knowing you’re probably at least headed in the right direction.

An Outline for Tying Your Shoes

Make a Picture

“Use a picture. It’s worth a thousand words.”

                                                                                  ~Arthur Brisbane

“One look is worth a thousand words.”

~Fred R. Barnard

A picture is worth a thousand words. Making a picture, whether drawing one or snapping a photo, is a great way to convey a complex idea at a glance. To express the same nuance and thoroughness of an idea through text would require a long, tedious explanation that would be hard to visualize anywhere near as well as just looking at the picture. Imagine if you asked several people to read a complex text description of a picture and then had them each draw a picture of it without seeing what anyone else was drawing. Assuming they all had roughly the same drawing aptitude, do you think they would produce the same, or even similar looking results?

Tying Your Shoes from Left to Right

In addition to the traditional picture, ideas can be conveyed in picture form by specific types like flowcharts, maps, or work breakdown structures. There are all different types of pictures beyond those, and it would take too long to mention every possibility.

Make a Detailed Plan

If you have to complete a really big project, drafting up a simple outline or drawing a picture of what you want to make may just not be enough. There might be several different small projects that come together as one big one, better and more impressive than the sum of all the smaller projects. This is the situation where you need to create a detailed plan for what you want to accomplish, and the more work you put into making a smart plan, the less work you have to do when it comes time to act.

Some things that are good to keep in mind when considering if a detailed plan is needed:

-            Only write a detailed plan when it’s really necessary for getting your project right

-            A detailed plan requires the most up-front experience and expertise to do well

-            A detailed plan is easiest to write if you have a template to copy and edit as needed

If you’re unsure whether it’s worth the trouble to make a detailed plan, consider starting with an outline first. An outline that ends up not detailed enough can easily be modified into a picture format or a detailed plan as needed. And if you need a detailed plan but aren’t sure how to go about it, look around for someone you trust who might be willing to mentor you. Don’t be afraid to ask, because if you don’t ask, it’s a 100% chance that the answer is “no”.

A Detailed Plan for Tying Your Shoes

Conclusion

Successful endeavors are often about finding the right balance between planning and acting. Too much planning and your dream never gets off the ground. Act too soon and you spin your wheels, and soon enough you run out of resources to work with, including the motivation to keep going. Learning this balance is an art, and you need to be patient with yourself as you spend many years slowly getting the hang of it. Practice these planning strategies on simpler things in your life to build experience using them and to get some “quick wins” to prove to yourself that you can do this.

Put process over progress and call it a success if you’ve made an honest effort to balance planning and doing, even if you fall short of your original goal. Success over a lifetime is built one day at a time, and that’s how you should view your own learning and accomplishments.