How Far Ahead Do You Plan?

Mike Vardy 29th May Goals 3 Comments


    Its been made pretty clear that an integral part of being awesome at being productive is doing some planning. When, where and what method you use are questions only you can figure out through trial and error.

    Once youve stopped trying and (hopefully) erring, you can dig a little deeper and look further into the future. Thats when the real meat of goal-setting comes into play. Thats when life gets interesting…and more fulfilling.

    How far ahead do you plan? How many weeks, months, years? Do you plan activities, events and goals? How far down the rabbit hole do you go?


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    Mike Vardy an editor on Work Awesome. We could tell you where his personal productivity parody site, Eventualism and all of his other projects reside on the web, but you'd be best served going to Vardy.me and following the trail of virtual bread crumbs from there.

    Discussion

    1. Jennifer P on the 29th May
      Reply  

      I definitely do some planning. Figuring out the skeleton of the project, then filling in the blanks makes things flow a lot smoother than working in tiny sections and trying to make them all jive together.

    2. Mark Petherbridge on the 29th May
      Reply  

      As I am relatively new to accepting clients and am still a student it is a rare occasion that I will plan a project. My usual strategy involves nicotine, caffeine and lack of sleep! Spending most nights just going through it – so many problems arise and after painstakingly correcting almost everything I do! I am now in the frame of mind that I should start planning. However there is so many ways and thousands of suggested methods, and I am still yet to find one that proves to be more effective.

      What planning methods, techniques and tips can you recommend???

      @mgpwr

    3. Brian Landi on the 29th May
      Reply  

      Thanks for the post. I like to use the technique of backdating. Usually, I have a project or an event that corresponds to a certain date. So, I will create an excel spreadsheet containing all of the necessary steps that I or someone else need to take and how far out they should be completed (-days). Then it is fairly simple to create an excel format to determine the dates for the actionable steps.

      Now the next step is the most useful. Either using Outlook, Google Calendar, iCal or another client you can import the spreadsheet into either the calendar or tasks feature, match the fields, and then you have everything right there in your schedule.

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