Planning
From HowTo.Lifehack
There are various planning techniques. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses and each can be seen as a tool for planning projects or as a more general life philosophy as well. Most of these planning techniques can be split into two broad categories:
- Goal Setting
- Growing Design
Contents |
[edit] Goal Setting
Most planning are done through a process of goal setting. There are several components to goal setting that make it work effectively for planning. Of these components, the two foremost are:
- Determine specific outcomes
- Set milestones and deadlines
[edit] Determine Specific Outcomes
The first element of goal setting is that you must be able to clarify what your end result is. If you are writing a book, your objective could be a 300 page novel that is distributed by a major publisher and sells twenty thousand copies. With goal setting the importance is in creating a detailed and vivid objective.
For personal goals, determining a specific outcome helps create clarity and motivation. For teams, creating that outcome allows all participants to know the exact state of progress at any time. This specific outcome can be derived through a process of brainstorming, self-reflection, visualization or conversation. Know exactly what you want.
[edit] Set Milestones and Deadlines
Milestones and deadlines are the method for how your specific objective comes about. A deadline is a final end time by which the entire goal must be completed. Milestones are divisions of this final deadline which represent a specific amount of progress towards the final goal. For some milestones are simply guidelines and others use milestones as firm rules.
The final deadline represents when you believe it is possible to achieve your goal with the methods you intend to use. Setting deadlines is a precise skill because if they are too demanding or too slack the performance of yourself or the team will suffer. It is best to set deadlines with reasonable, not overly optimistic expectations.
Once deadlines have been set, create milestone dates where a certain amount of progress must be achieved. If your final goal is to earn $120,000 dollars in income next year, then your next milestone might be to increase your income from 6000 to 6500 dollars per month.
[edit] Strengths and Weaknesses
Goal setting works well when the variables of a project are known in advance, resources are tightly limited or the goal lends itself to a specific outcome. If the variables of a project are known before starting, setting clear goals can eliminate the costly waste of resource by forming an efficient plan.
Goals tend not to work as well when a large proportion of the variables going into a project are unknown. A new software company designing their flagship product which is a revolutionary addition to the marketplace would have thousands of variables that can be accounted for. In cases like these, it is best to use growing design as a planning method.
[edit] Growing Design
Growing design is a broad category of planning where the end result isn't known in advance but is instead designed through a process of growth. Iterative design, agile design and rapid prototyping would all fall under this category of planning methods. The main elements of growing design are:
- Creating a Prototype
- Close Feedback
[edit] Creating a Prototype
Creating a prototype means beginning with the simplest representation of the final goal possible. This is easy to visualize with a project, such as a software program or business. For a diet this could mean covering the basics of your new diet without tweaking the details.
This prototype forms the seed for which it goes through stages of growth, each expanding the level of detail or functionality. At any stage after the prototype is finished, the project could be considered complete. It is only a function of resources and the level of quality desired that the project continues to evolve.
Each prototyping stage can be a seamless process or be divided further into milestone units where larger pieces are integrated.
[edit] Close Feedback
A necessary element for this approach is close feedback to continually shape the design. With products this would mean having access to the customers at all stages of design so that elements can be refined with the interaction of the end user. With personal goals this means that you have access to the criteria for measuring progress.
[edit] Strengths and Weaknesses
Growing design works well for complex projects with many unknown variables or projects where there is no end result, but varying degrees of completeness. Many software companies consider their products to be in an endless beta stage, meaning that they are never complete but always being improved and adapted.
Growing design works well for broader life areas where no end goal is known and the scope is to broad to understand all the variables. Areas such as health, relationships, finances or your personal habits do benefit from traditional goal setting, but more generalized approaches of growing design will allow you to make continual improvements.
Growing design doesn't work well when the task is relatively straightforward or a specific objective must be reached. Just use goal setting if your project is simple (cleaning a room) or your metrics are heavily simplified (lose 15 lbs.)
All planning methods have their advantages and disadvantages. Goal setting is a simpler structure for making plans and it can be very effective at helping you improve. For more complex projects, I suggest looking into a process of growing design.
[edit] Why is planning critical?
- Planning can reduce your stress.
- Planning gives you the peace of mind of knowing that you have formulated a feasible plan of action and that your goals are attainable.
- Planning helps you to be prepared for obstacles because part of the planning process is creating a contingency plan for unexpected problems.
- Planning serves as a way to evaluate your progress as you work. Planning your daily and weekly activities will clearly illustrate whether or not you are staying on schedule.
- Planning gives you direction.
[edit] Steps to implement your planning
- The first step to planning is to clearly define your goals. Taking a few minutes to put your goals into writing will be very beneficial in helping you to plan for your success. Important aspects of your goal-planning should include a reasonable target date or time for completion, a method for measuring progress or determining completion, and, depending on the duration of the work, one or more points in time at which progress is measured. A final consideration is to create your project and goals so that you can actually accomplish what you are planning to achieve. To that end, if your goals strike you as difficult to achieve, consider breaking the work into smaller projects that feed into each other. In that way, a sense of optimism is created when the first goal(s) are reached and it is therefore psychologically more rewarding to move into the next project, with movement toward completion of the overall work as the final goal.
- Once you have defined your goal, it is time to brainstorm on the tasks that are required to complete your project. Brainstorming requires that no idea is censored as you create a list of tasks needed. Create a list of tasks, then review the list and remove those that simply do not fit, and then edit a third time and work from this list. Ordering all of the necessary tasks into a logical order and assigning an estimated time for completion to each goal will be beneficial when you begin scheduling these activities. Allow some flexibility in your planning of time frames, but not too much, otherwise you might get sidetracked and your momentum diminished.
- It is next useful to define the roles that you will take in fulfilling your goal as well as the roles of any others who will be assisting. This is important because you can use this time to determine who will handle certain tasks to avoid redundancy.
- Once you have determined your goal, the tasks required, the key players and their tasks, it is finally time to start scheduling the work to be performed. When scheduling it is important to plan a weekly and daily schedule. The weekly schedule is important for the overall success of the project but it is the daily planning that will help you to track your progress and determine whether or not you are on schedule. Try using significant project milestones in your weekly planning but for daily planning, break each milestone down into the necessary components and plan the completion of those components on a daily basis.
- As the project progresses, regularly evaluate your performance and adjust your schedule: this is where daily working and evaluating becomes paramount. Take a few minutes at the middle of the day and at the conclusion of the day to evaluate your progress and make adjustments.
- Finally, once you have successfully completed your project, review your planning process to determine its success. This will help you by illustrating whether or not you have achieved an optimal planning system or whether you need to more carefully plan subsequent projects.
- A final note: feeling discouraged or getting sidetracked are common experiences. Allow for setbacks or unexpected results of your work and return to your project plan, remembering to healthfully reward yourself and the other project participants for your accomplishments.
