Image courtesy of Hamed Masoumi

Everywhere on and off the web, people talk about the benefits of planning. Plans help you define your goals, help you determine what tasks are needed and when you need to do them. And plans help you stay on track when distractions set in. So, what’s not to love about plans?

Lots.

When you overplan, you live in the future instead of the present, plan instead of do, and lose adaptability. All three of these mean you lessen your chances of reaching your goals. Instead you fumble around in the plan, wondering why despite all the hard work you’re doing, your business isn’t growing, your house renovations aren’t going anywhere, you aren’t losing weight, or you’re not reaching whatever goal you’re pursuing.

Fortunately the solution is easy.

1. Create a mental sketch of the future you want.
2. Work backwards to get where you are now.
3. Go step by step forwards again noting down the crucial steps.
4. Start implementing the plan, and
5. Let the details fill themselves in as you get to them.

On his blog 6weeks.ca Brett Legree has a great take on the 80/20 rule. Eighty percent of our actions are unnecessary detail he says. If you can figure out the 20% that’s mission critical, then your plan becomes easy to fulfill.

But before we go into too much detail about the solution, let’s look at the problems of overplanning in more detail.
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Can a mop and a dust cloth bring happiness and luck?

Back in August, I picked up a book written by Mr. Mitsuhiro Masuda (in Japanese) who advocates the power of cleaning and decluttering.  He maintains that we can be happier and luckier by cleaning up our place of living.  I was a brand-new entrepreneur at that time, meaning my business was starting to attract some clients but not enough to be in full operation, so I had time and was willing to try anything to improve the situation.

Now, I know grabbing a dust cloth and reorganizing the bookshelf is as boring as it gets in personal development. But we intuitively know our environment affects our mood. When we are in a poorly-lit, cluttered room where we can’t find what we need and what we see doesn’t resonate with who we are, we feel messy, sad, frustrated, and out of place.  How can we feel bright, efficient, well-organized and be in the natural flow of energy?  Clean up!

Many people are big on decorating their place.  That is fine.  But cleaning needs to happen before decorating.  Before creating your new YOU, you need to let go of your old YOU. Physically taking care of your environment by cleaning and decluttering can stimulate letting go of your mental clutter that has been holding you in the old pattern.

The 21 Day Outside In Personal Development Program

The book came with the 21 day action plan.  It’s a good plan, but very women-oriented, so I have modified it to be helpful for everyone.  You work in one area for three days, totaling seven areas of your place of living.
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Am I the only one who has trouble focusing on a single task? I doubt it.

It wasn’t always this way. At school and university it seemed relatively easy to apply myself to a single task. But these days it seems as if my mind is wanting me to do a million different things at once.

I call this the “web 2.0 mind”. Why? Because I believe the web 2.0 has changed how I act, both online and offline. When online I’m usually busy doing a number of different things at once. Twitter, Reddit, Digg, Gmail, Flickr, Facebook, Skype, blogs…. these are just a few of the places I might I be at any given moment. Doing multiple things at once has become the norm for me, which is why I say even when I’m offline I can find it difficult to focus on a single task. Of course multi-tasking is nothing new, but never before has it been so easy and enjoyable to be doing so many things at once.

You may be asking yourself: does this web 2.0 mind even need “taming”? Well, let me make one thing clear: the ability to be doing a number of tasks at once - ie multi-tasking - is not only an asset, but a necessity, in this modern economy. And as I previously noted, it is often fun to have a number of things on the go at once. However, there often comes a time when you need to put your head down and get a particular task or project completed. And when this time comes, the last thing you want to have to deal with is a mind that is running wild with thoughts such as “I wonder what is on the Digg front page” or “I’ll just check Twitter quickly to see what my friends are up to”. These sound pretty harmless, but it’s funny how 5 minutes can quickly turn into 30 minutes without you realizing it.
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Sometimes simple stories have deep lessons. “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” is a popular story for children, but it also has a hidden productivity lesson for all of us.

We all know about Goldilocks and the porridge. When she tried the first bowl, it was too hot. When she tried the second bowl, it was too cold. And of course, the third bowl was just right. It was perfectly obvious, even to her, that “just right” is what any reasonable person should be after.

Maximum sustainable output

There’s a concept in economics known as the maximum sustainable output. A country’s maximum sustainable output is the highest level of output it can sustain in the long run. It’s not a hard limit on output, and in fact a country can easily raise its output above this level. A common situation for this is during wartime, when a country may ramp up production dramatically to support the war effort.

However, if the maximum sustainable output is exceeded, the output has to come crashing down at some point (after all, by definition, that level of output is not sustainable). After this happens, the country has to slog through a long period of low output. The worst part is that the bust is always bigger than the boom.
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