Plan perseverance vs flexibility
June 4, 2018 4:07 AM Subscribe
How can I balance my natural doggedness when following a planned course of action with the need to respond to new variables?
I'm very into goal perseverance, which I think is a good thing - however the shadow side of this is that I've noticed that it secretly bothers me a lot when plans change or when I am interrupted. How do I balance wanting to follow through on plans with the reality that new variables bubble up all the time? Has anyone figured out a way to have both traits? If so, please share your tips and tricks!
I'm very into goal perseverance, which I think is a good thing - however the shadow side of this is that I've noticed that it secretly bothers me a lot when plans change or when I am interrupted. How do I balance wanting to follow through on plans with the reality that new variables bubble up all the time? Has anyone figured out a way to have both traits? If so, please share your tips and tricks!
Two thoughts that might help:
First the plan is meant to serve you, not you serve the plan. So changeing the plan when it makes things is better is good.
Second, the time invested in the plan is a sunk cost. It helped you get to where you are. If redoing the plan makes sense, then not re-doing it because of all the time you invested in the past is not good logic.
posted by metahawk at 9:45 AM on June 4, 2018
First the plan is meant to serve you, not you serve the plan. So changeing the plan when it makes things is better is good.
Second, the time invested in the plan is a sunk cost. It helped you get to where you are. If redoing the plan makes sense, then not re-doing it because of all the time you invested in the past is not good logic.
posted by metahawk at 9:45 AM on June 4, 2018
How do I balance wanting to follow through on plans with the reality that new variables bubble up all the time?
I do it by planning to do the next step and then make a plan. This allows initial plans to be made much faster because I don't need to work everything out in advance in excruciating detail, and it also means that the aggregate plan - that is, the plan I look back at and evaluate when the whole job is finished - was always more adaptive to circumstance, and therefore better, than it would have been had it been worked out fully in advance.
The downside is that sometimes there's a complete showstopper encountered at stage 5 of 6 that would have been obvious before stage 1 given a fully worked out plan. Then again, it often happens that a change of circumstances sinks a fully worked out plan as well. No method is perfect.
And of course whatever it is that's being planned has to be a good idea before you even start. That the UK Government appears to be trying to use my method to plan Brexit doesn't make the method bad in and of itself.
posted by flabdablet at 4:11 AM on June 5, 2018
I do it by planning to do the next step and then make a plan. This allows initial plans to be made much faster because I don't need to work everything out in advance in excruciating detail, and it also means that the aggregate plan - that is, the plan I look back at and evaluate when the whole job is finished - was always more adaptive to circumstance, and therefore better, than it would have been had it been worked out fully in advance.
The downside is that sometimes there's a complete showstopper encountered at stage 5 of 6 that would have been obvious before stage 1 given a fully worked out plan. Then again, it often happens that a change of circumstances sinks a fully worked out plan as well. No method is perfect.
And of course whatever it is that's being planned has to be a good idea before you even start. That the UK Government appears to be trying to use my method to plan Brexit doesn't make the method bad in and of itself.
posted by flabdablet at 4:11 AM on June 5, 2018
Are you already reviewing your plan to include alternatives if foreseeable problems come up? Like, if there's a part of the plan that is reliant on tightly-scheduled timing, or the weather, or supply shipments, figure out if you can mitigate that. Pad time estimates and materials costs. Be sure you're setting an achievable goal, you can always make the fancier version a "stretch goal".
Reviewing your plan weekly is helpful with identifying issues ahead of time as well.
It's also just normal to be annoyed if you worked hard at something and it turns out not to be what was wanted. Give yourself permission to be annoyed for a little bit and then do a post-mortem to figure out what went well and what you could have done differently.
posted by momus_window at 2:12 PM on June 5, 2018 [1 favorite]
Reviewing your plan weekly is helpful with identifying issues ahead of time as well.
It's also just normal to be annoyed if you worked hard at something and it turns out not to be what was wanted. Give yourself permission to be annoyed for a little bit and then do a post-mortem to figure out what went well and what you could have done differently.
posted by momus_window at 2:12 PM on June 5, 2018 [1 favorite]
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posted by london explorer girl at 7:59 AM on June 4, 2018 [2 favorites]