Mind Tools - Planning Skills - Exploring Options

Helping you to think your way to an excellent life!

Exploring Options

When you know where you are, and know where you want to go, the next stage is to work out how you could get there. Although it is always important to take other people's views into account, ensure that you think for yourself during this process.

The first stage of doing this is to explore the options available to you. There are several techniques for doing this:

Logical Thinking
An effective way of doing this is to use Mind Map (article to be uploaded soon). Start this by writing the aim in the centre of a large piece of paper. Radiating from this, draw a line for each of the solutions you can think of, and note the solution above each line. From the end of each line, draw lines for each different way of achieving that solution. Repeat this until you have drawn in lines for all the reasonable solutions you can think of, and all the main ways of achieving those solutions.
This mind map can be used as the basis of a Decision Tree later in the planning process.
Brain Storming
This is a technique for developing creative and unusual solutions to problems that involves a free-wheeling, uncritical approach. The idea is to generate ideas and approaches that are deliberately strange, so that these inspire unusual solutions that can then be developed by either logical thought or further brainstorming.
Research
Similar problems may well have been faced by people you know, or may be documented in material that is available to you. Don't forget to check these sources!

Selecting the Best Option

Once you have explored the options available to you, it is time to decide which one to select.

If you have the time and resources available, then you might decide to evaluate all options, carrying out detailed planning, costing, risk assessment, etc. for each.

In the absence of both time to do this and an obvious answer, an extremely effective way of selecting the best option is to build and evaluate a Decision Tree.

Identifying the Aim of the Plan

Detailed Planning

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