Planning is important

It can mean the difference between life and death for your project.

I am not talking about that painfully neurotic, overly methodical and all-together useless process of trying to map out the future, and piece together every possible consequence of every possible action.

What I am referring to is planning for.

Planning for contingencies. Planning for known problems. Planning for all those things that experience tells you will crop up at some point during your project, despite the fact that you are trying really hard to believe that everything will go right this time around.

Believe me, it won’t.

What separates good planning from bad planning is where the information comes from.

Bad planning relies heavily on your supposed ability to know the future. It’s fueled by speculation, half-truth and general humbug. It’s random and fear-driven. It’s much less about carving a path towards your goal and much more about giving yourself an excuse to either worry about things that you have no information available to predict or congratulate yourself on victories you haven’t yet won. You can spend years planning in this way, living out your life on the back of napkins.

Good planning involves being honest with yourself and with your project. You plan to the extent that you have experience and information to back up your concerns and then you stop. Good planning is as much about recognizing when you can’t look ahead as it is about knowing how to make predictions. A good plan is evolutionary, not prescriptive, it grows with the project instead of trying to become the project itself.

Planning is important.

It can mean the difference between life and death for your project.

Understand that effective planning is about knowing when it’s time to move on.

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If you enjoyed that why not find a job or read our guide to working in the 21st century. You can also join our Kiva team or hire me for your project.