Planning

Planning is the primary activity required to achieve any desired result. It is a conscious as well as sub-conscious activity. The planning process involves forming, evaluating, and selecting a sequence of thoughts and actions to achieve the desired goal. 

The output of planning is a plan. A plan is like a map. If a person follows the plan, they can see how much they have progressed towards their desired goal, and it also provides clarity on the future course of action. 

For a Knowledge Worker, planning is one of the essential skills to master. It helps achieve efficiency and effectiveness. It reduces risks and utilizes with maximum efficiency the available time and resources. 

The Natural Planning Model

The most experienced planner in the world is our brain. In his book Getting Things Done, David Allen describes the Natural Planning Model as a five-step process that our mind uses to accomplish virtually any task or project, regardless of the task size or complexity. 

When we apply these five phases together, they create a complete model of how we get things done most efficiently, with the least effort. 

Five Steps of the Natural Planning Model:

1. Defining purpose and principles
2. Outcome visioning
3. Brainstorming
4. Organizing
5. Identifying next actions

Defining purpose and principles

Purpose

Whenever we are working on something, we are, of course, doing so for some reason or other. However, we often forget the real purpose of what we are doing. We may think that we know the purpose of our project or task, but it helps to clarify and write it out. 

Almost anything we are currently doing can be enhanced and moved to the next level by simply asking, “Why?”.

Why is this project important? Why does it matter to you?

Here are just some of the benefits of asking why:

• It defines success.
• It creates decision-making criteria.
• It aligns resources.
• It motivates.
• It clarifies focus.
• It expands options.

People love to win. If we are not totally clear about the purpose of what we are doing, we have no game to win. 

If our purpose is clear and specific, we will experience purpose focus’s benefits – motivation, clarity, decision-making criteria, alignment, and creativity. 

Principles

Of equal importance for driving and directing the project are the standards and values we hold. These are the boundaries within which we will operate. 

Although people rarely think about principles consciously, they are always there. And if violated, the result will inevitably be unproductive distraction and stress.

Stephen Covey, the author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, says that “a principle is a natural law like gravity. If you drop something, gravity controls. If I don’t tell you the truth, you won’t trust me; that’s a natural law.”

Another excellent reason for focusing on principles is the clarity and reference point they provide for positive conduct.

Well-distinguished purpose and principles serve as criteria for making decisions about the project’s goals, organization, and priorities.

Purpose provides the juice and the direction, and principles define the parameters of action and the criteria for excellence of conduct.

Outcome visioning

David Allen says, “To most productively access the conscious and unconscious resources available to you, you must have a clear picture in your mind of what success would look, sound, and feel like.”. 

We won’t see how to do it until we see ourselves doing it. We often need to make it up in our mind before making it happen in your life. 

One of the most powerful skills for professional and personal success is creating clear outcomes. 

Our vision can include both tangible and emotional outcomes.

The outcome should be very clear, unambiguous. It should be challenging and should force us to leave our comfort zone. It should describe the desired future attractively and memorably. It should show realistic, attainable aspirations and align with your purpose and principles. 

Clearly defining our vision helps us make decisions, identify solutions and address critical issues.

Purpose and principles furnish the impetus and the monitoring, but vision provides the actual blueprint of the final result. The Vision/Outcome is the WHAT instead of the WHY.

Brainstorming

When we identify with some picture (vision/outcome) in our mind that is different from our current reality, we automatically start filling in the gaps or brainstorming. Ideas pop into our heads in somewhat random order – small ideas, big ideas, good ideas, great ideas, terrible ideas, okay ideas, and no-so-good ideas. 

The objective of brainstorming is to capture as many thoughts and ideas as possible that help us get to where we want to be. Even if we are not sure if something is relevant, we should capture it anyway. The best way to get a good idea is to get lots of ideas.

We need to give ourselves the permission to capture and express any idea and then, later on, figure out how it fits in and what to do with it. 

The basic principles of brainstorming can be summarized as follows:

• Don’t judge, challenge, evaluate, or criticize ideas.
• Go for quantity, not quality.
• Put analysis and organization in the background.

For brainstorming to be practical, it needs to be external. i.e., the ideas need to be recorded someplace outside our head. Writing or recording the ideas outside our head helps generate numerous new ideas that may have not even transpired to us as we don’t need to hold our thoughts and continually reflect on them. 

Brainstorming defines HOW we are going to accomplish our outcome. 

Organizing

If we emptied our heads during the brainstorming phase, we would notice a natural organizational structure emerging. Creative thinking doesn’t stop here; it just takes another form. 

Once we perceive a basic structure, our minds will start trying to fill in the blanks. We start noticing the components, priorities, and the order in which we need to do things. 

The key steps or Organizing are:

• Identify the significant pieces
• Sort by (one or more):
  • components
  • sequences
  • priorities
• Detail to the required degree

At the end of this step, we should have something resembling an informal plan.

Identifying next actions

The final stage of planning comes down to decisions about allocating and reallocating physical resources to get the project moving. The question to ask here is, “What’s the next action?” 

If we were to move on our project now, what would be the next physical action we would perform? There are usually some immediate tasks upon which other tasks in our plan depend.

The basics of this step are:

• Decide on the next actions for each of the current “moving parts” of the project.
• Decide on the next action in the planning process, if necessary.
• Activating the Moving Parts

Creating a list of our actual projects and consistently managing our next actions for each one will constitute 90 percent of what we think of as project planning.

The habit of clarifying the next action on projects, no matter what the situation, is fundamental to us staying in relaxed control. 

Level of Planning Needed

How much planning do we need? How much of the natural planning model do we need to flesh out, and to what degree? David Allen says the simple answer is, as much as we need to get the project off our mind. 

• Eighty percent of projects need no more than listing their outcome and the next action to get it off our minds.
• Fifteen percent or so of projects require at least some external form of brainstorming and defining the outcome and the next actions. 
• The final 5 percent of projects need the deliberate application of all the five phases of the natural planning model. 

Conclusion

All things get created twice, the first time in our mind and the second time in our physical reality. Many studies and research are showing a direct relationship between planning and task performance. 

An unwritten desire is just a dream. You have to write it down to transform it into reality.

Natural Planning Model Example:

One Sunday morning, after a workout, a group member asked if we wanted to go out for a coffee. Once several members agreed, we went and had coffee. While it may seem that this is a straightforward task, detailed below is the process our brains went through.

Purpose and Principles

• Purpose: Spend time as a group.
• Principles: Coffee shop needs to be COVID safe, serve good coffee quickly and should be on our way home. 

Outcome

• We have spent quality time as a group while having a coffee.

Brainstorming

• What kind of coffee do we want to have?
• Do we want to go in one car or different cars?
• Shortlist coffee shops.
• For each of the coffee shops
  • What kind of coffee does it serve?
  • Will it be crowded at this hour?
  • How quick will the service be?

Organize

• We will be all taking our cars and meeting at Cafe Madras.

Next Action

• Drive to Cafe Madras

Our brain processed all this in less than a few minutes. Of course, we do not want to write or remember all the steps for a project like going for coffee. Simply the outcome and the next actions are enough.