If You’re Not Going to Execute, You’re Planning for Fun
Planning takes work.
You research. You analyze. You consider possibilities. You anticipate problems. You figure out what needs to happen first, what resources you need, and what might get in the way. You take something that started as an idea and turn it into something executable.
And then the version of you who is supposed to execute it...doesn't.
I've been thinking about how strange that is.
We can spend hours creating a plan and then treat it as completely optional when it is time to actually follow it.
At some point, if you're planning with no intention of executing, you're just planning for fun.
Planning Feels Productive Because It Is
Part of the problem is that planning genuinely is work.
You can spend hours creating a budget, developing a business strategy, organizing a project, or figuring out the best structure for your day. At the end, you feel like you've accomplished something because you have.
But the plan usually isn't what you were trying to accomplish.
The budget was supposed to change how you manage your money.
The business plan was supposed to become a business.
The schedule was supposed to affect how you spend your day.
The project plan was supposed to produce a finished project.
Planning is preparation for an outcome. It isn't the outcome itself.
Don't Make Your Planning Self Do All That Work for Nothing
I think about planning as work one version of ourselves does for another.
Your planning self has perspective. She researches. She considers the whole picture. She makes decisions and creates something she believes will work.
Then she hands it over to your executing self.
And your executing self goes rogue.
She doesn't feel like doing that today.
She found something more interesting.
She starts negotiating with decisions that were already made.
She decides she'll start tomorrow.
Why did yesterday's version of you do all that work if today's version was going to ignore her?
There has to be some trust between the person making the plan and the person responsible for carrying it out.
Sometimes you have to stick to the code.
You Can't Evaluate What You Didn't Execute
There is also a difference between a plan that didn't work and a plan you didn't follow.
If you execute a plan and discover a problem, that's useful. Execution gives you information that planning cannot.
You learn that something takes longer than expected. A particular order doesn't work. You overlooked a constraint. Something that made perfect sense on paper is annoying in real life.
Now you can adjust.
But if you never followed the plan, you don't actually know that the plan failed.
You know that you didn't execute it.
Those are different problems.
And sometimes instead of confronting an execution problem, we go back to planning.
We redesign the schedule.
Reorganize the spreadsheet.
Research another method.
Build a better system.
And because all of those things require effort, it still feels like we're working toward the goal.
Planning can become procrastination with much better branding.
Plan. Execute. Learn. Adjust.
None of this means we should stop planning.
I believe in planning. Good planning can save time, money, energy and unnecessary mistakes.
But eventually you reach the limit of what thinking can teach you.
You have to do something.
Then you get to observe what actually happens.
Plan.
Execute.
Observe.
Adjust.
Execute again.
That's the relationship.
The plan isn't sacred. New information should change it. Experience should improve it. Something that genuinely doesn't work should be revised or abandoned.
But you have to execute long enough to generate that information.
Otherwise, you're asking the planning version of yourself to keep solving a problem that the executing version of yourself hasn't even tested yet.
So yes, plan carefully.
Research. Analyze. Think. Create something executable.
Then give your planning self the courtesy of actually trying what she came up with.
Otherwise, call it what it is.
You planned for fun.
