We all know that most new year resolutions don’t last more than a couple of months. However, not to make plans should not be an option. If you don’t choose how you will spend your time and energy, other people will choose for you, according to their interests, not yours.
So these are the five main strategies I use and recommend to increase the chances that plans will work as expected:
1 – Use Inversion
Inversion is one of my favourite mental models. They are simple and powerful. I use it to double-check my plans for the year by asking myself: “What I DON’T want to be the result of this year?”
My answer can include things like “I don’t want to have cash flow problems” or “I don’t want to lose competent people in my team.”
I then check this list against my planning for the year, to see if there is something I should have included there.
But inversion can also be used in another interesting way: You can look at your plans and ask yourself: “What could go wrong?”
For example, if one of my goals is to increase my lean mass by 10%, several things could go wrong. I may choose the wrong time for my exercises; I can try to increase weights too fast and get discouraged; I can pick a programme not suitable for me.
My next step is to list the ways I can protect my execution to prevent these things from happening. I do it using mind maps, creating branches of possible answers coming from each of the problems.
This combination of problems + protections helps me to be better prepared for surprises along the way.
2 – Control Daily Execution
Peter Druker used to say that you don’t control what you don’t measure, so I find it essential to measure the small daily steps towards my goals.
For simple goals, like increase 10% of my lean mass, the most effective way for me is to have a big calendar very visible on a wall, with empty circles in the days I will execute the steps of my plan.
After I do what I planned, I tick the circle. It gives me a simple visual way to control my planned/executed routines. Back to my example of increasing my lean mass, every time I do my workout, I tick the corresponding circle in the calendar.
For more complex goals, the ones that will involve different steps taken each day, my favourite tool is trello. I use three columns: Backlog, In Progress and Done.
3 – Change Your Environment
This is the single most effective way to help you do what you are supposed to do.
The human brain is configured to prioritize your responses to the environment, so if you don’t change your surroundings to facilitate the execution of your plan, the chances of it not happening increase substantially.
For example, if you want to lose weight, the first step is to empty your fridge and cupboards from anything you should not eat.
To work without distractions, put your phone on flight mode and close the email app on your desktop. Switch off notifications. Keep your desk clean of anything not related to what you are doing.
Change also your social environment. People around you exert a powerful, unconscious-level influence in your behaviour. At least temporarily, get rid of any relationships that are toxic to your goals.
4 – Mind the “U” curve of motivation
We usually start our plans with high levels of motivation. This is the “uninformed optimism” phase. Our excitement is based on various non-tested assumptions, and many will be proven false.
When things start to go wrong, we discover that to achieve what we want will be harder than expected. This is the “informed pessimism” phase. Some people give up there.
But anything that is going bad can get … worse. Here we find the Valey of Despair. Most people give up here. But this is not the place to give up. As you tried to make your plan work, you learned new things, testes assumptions. The knowledge you got to this point should be used for one of two options:
1 – Refine and improve your plan, and move on
2 – Pivot – change your direction. More on the next topic below.
If you decide to move on from the Valey of Despair, you get to phase 4 – “Informed Optimism”. From there to the reaching of your goal is usually just a matter of not stopping.
5 – Know When to Pivot
In the new vocabulary of startups, to Pivot is to change your strategy using your discoveries as you try to make something work. Very often, startups find an unexpected way to resolve a customer problem and decide to abandon the original plans and move towards this new idea.
This same mindset can be applied to our planing in any area. You don’t have to “die trying” something only to prove that you don’t easily give up. Revise your assumptions, your planning, and if it is the case, move on with a new strategy.
Just be careful not to use it as an excuse to not persevere. Execution will always be eventually hard, and any plans will have flaws and necessary improvements.
Make sure you have tried all reasonable possibilities before you decide to pivot and that the new strategy is realistically better.
Conclusion
These are my five main tools to make sure the execution of my plans is protected. Other strategies I use:
- I have other people involved to increase my level of accountability.
- I do regular appraisals of how far I went.
- I have a daily morning ritual when I prepare myself for a productive day towards my goals.
- I use OKRs for my company’s planning.
What about you? Anything you can see missing from my list?
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