The easiest way to increase your success is . . . Stop planning!
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
The conventional way to achieve success, in your life or in a work project, is to start with careful, detailed 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 routinely measure success by how closely results match the original budget and plan. That’s why the plan very often becomes a straitjacket on later action.
You may have to make some plans — a very few, for specific parts of what may need others to help you with — but too much planning is a common reason why people don’t reach their goals. This article explains why — and what to do instead.
Fundamental flaws in planning for success
- The conventional way commits you to a path you almost certainly can’t follow. Events rarely work out as you planned. 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.
- It often forces you into dangerous actions, remaining rigid in the face of life’s natural fluidity, 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.
- It encourages you to 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.
A better approach
- Set a clear objective 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.
- Look around for the next most obvious and necessary action and do that.
Keep going like that. 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.
That’s your your plan: 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. Action is all that counts. Think only about that.
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. Don’t listen to doubters.
The surprising results
- 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 — 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.
- Your progress will adjust to events automatically. 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 without 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 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.
Action is also the only way to change anything; the only certain way to learn what will happen. Do something and see what results; then use the results to see what to do next. You’ll never be uncertain and never be off course.
Try it!
Technorati Tags: planning for success, responding creatively, do whatever is needed next, know what to do, innovate and adapt, setting clear objectives
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
I’ve used this method for years to with great success, but for a long time I had trouble explaining it to other people. Your article really helps.
After reading an article on SciAm.com, I realized that this was not only a valid way to solve problems, but also very successful. If it can work for World Class chess players, it can work for me.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=00010347-101C-14C1-8F9E83414B7F4945&print=true
It’s amazing how freeing it is to just figure out what the next step is and do it, rather than get bogged down in concerns about future steps that may never manifest themselves.