“Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans” –Peter Drucker
We need to simplify the planning process in our minds. Too many of us are not making plans. If that’s you, how will you create the life you want? Significant achievement always starts with a plan. Planning is really a “detailed” written document for doing or accomplishing a goal. It seems the details are what causes our procrastination. Don’t sweat the details, initially. Get the first draft of your plan built. Start small if you must. Get going. It’s a process and a journey, not a right answer. See the end result in your mind, prepare and plan the route, but realize life will happen.
Your thoughts become your plans, which become your actions. You could spend an infinite number of hours thinking and planning. You must decide to transition from making plans to taking action. What’s obvious is that thoughts become plans and that plans become actions. What’s not clear is that those actions need to take us back to thoughts. It’s full circle. The process would look like thoughts-plans-actions, thoughts-plans-actions, thoughts-plans-actions, etc. all while keeping the destination or goal as the focus. Life happens, plans must give you flexibility within the context of the destination.
I call myself a recovering engineer. Math has always been strong suit. It’s difficult to fight the urge to over detail things, to find right answers, and to dispense advice as solutions. Financial planning is not “follow these five steps to financial freedom” or silly rules of thumb designed for an entire society when the truth is, every individual is different in many ways.
The principles of having a planning process though are universal. Do you have a process in place? If you don’t, how much higher would your odds of success be if you did?
“The highest value of a plan is its ability to get you running down the track, from where you are now to where you wish to be, in anything” –Jeff Laughlin
