Clarity and Planning

What’s the point of planning? The point of planning is ultimately to help you create a result, so planning is a means to an end. And some other purposes of planning are to reduce risk and increase efficiency. You create plans in order to achieve your goal with less effort and less risk. Now a good plan requires making predictions. If you take these particular actions in this particular order, you’ll get this particular result. In fact, a plan is really a collection of predictions. Another word for prediction is expectation, so we can also say that your plan depends on your expectations and especially on the accuracy of your expectations. Now the usefulness of a plan largely depends on its predictability. If you follow the plan, will you achieve the desired results? The more predictable the actions and results are, the more useful a detailed plan is likely to be. But if your predictions are inaccurate, your plan may not be very useful and could even be counter-productive. Let’s consider some situations where a detailed plan may not actually be too helpful. These are situations where your predictions are likely to be inaccurate. First there are your predictions or expectations about the world. Next, we have your predictions or expectations about yourself. And finally there are your predictions or expectations about your relationship with the world. To make a good plan, you need decent accuracy in all three of these areas. Planning and the World Within...
Source: Steve Pavlina's Personal Development Blog - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Productivity Source Type: blogs