By Luke Murray

I looove to plan! It feels so productive to map out every step you need to take for every hour for the rest of the day. And while I’m at it, I better map out the most efficient way to spend tomorrow, and the next week and the rest of this month…

The problem is, my mom calls as soon as I print out my plans/schedule, etc. and after a 20 minute conversation about whether I’m going to visit tomorrow morning at 8am or at 10am I’m already in a race to catch back up.

Now, a solution to this problem, one could claim, is that I need to just eliminate all distractions and interruptions.  Don’t answer calls from your mom (or anyone for that matter) unless they are scheduled, for example. This, although not socially very acceptable (my mom doesn’t like having to be put on my calendar…nor do some of my friends), is actually a huge step in the right direction, but not the only step necessary for perfect execution of a plan.

I have done the “no cell phone, no internet, all the food and sleeping and toiletries in one place, no people” thing before in medical school. Just me, a binder, a stack of notes and a plan I spent 2 hours putting together. The problem is that the other thing that has to happen for perfect execution of a plan (and therefore the complete utility of a plan’s creation to be experienced) is to know exactly how long it will take for each task to be completed at a predetermined level of quality.

There’s just one small problem with this. It’s impossible.

Now, both of these realizations (1. Eliminating every distraction is necessary to stick to a plan as is 2. knowing exactly how long each task in the plan will take in order to be completed at a predetermined level of quality…and that this type of fortune telling is impossible) are not earth shattering. They take just a modicum of common sense and maybe 3 seconds of extrapolated logic to ultimately arrive at the question – why spend any time planning at all?

Well this answer is just as obvious: if you want to end up somewhere you at least have to head in that direction.

The question then ultimately is this: If planning is necessary, but plans themselves are never accurate, how much time should you spend planning?

The answer for myself (and probably you) is: at least 50% less time than I/you currently do.

I like to plan for lots of reasons:

• It engages the abstract part of my brain
• I get to be creative
• I get to visualize success
• I can put together the pieces and see that it is possible to accomplish what I’ve set out accomplish, which gives me confidence.

But probably the biggest reason I like planning so much is this:

You can’t fail.

When you write down on a plan how many sales you want to have this week, next week, and the week after you have just ‘succeeded’ at planning. Good job. How tough was that? Well probably about 1 millionth as difficult as actually going out there, facing rejection, saying the wrong thing, wasting time talking to the wrong person, working through fatigue and ultimately not even hitting half of those numbers.

That’s failure…but it’s REAL PROGRESS too.

From the inside, I’d rather plan all day long than go out and actually do anything I just wrote down…because I’m afraid. From the outside, I’d rather see me spend that 2 hours I just spent figuring out our goals for the upcoming quarter trying to pick some numbers I took 2 seconds to pull out of the air...and then going out and actually working to try and hit them.

Props to the boys at 37 Signals that remind us that Planning Is Guessing.

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