Mind Tools - Planning Skills

Helping you to think your way to an excellent life!

What is Planning?

Planning is the start of the process by which you turn empty dreams into achievements. It helps you to avoid the trap of working extremely hard but achieving little.

Planning's main goal is to help you to achieve the maximum effect from a given effort.

The process helps you to:

Take stock of your current position
Identify precisely what is to be achieved
Work out the process of getting there in the most effective, efficient way possible.
Detail precisely and cost the who, what, when, where, why and how of achieving your target.
Assess the impact of your plan on your organisation and the people within it, and on the outside world.
Evaluate whether the effort, costs and implications of achieving your plan are worth the achievement.
Consider the control mechanisms, whether reporting, quality or cost control, etc. that are needed to achieve your plan and keep it on course.

You may have heard of one approach to the Pareto principle: that 80% of a job is completed in 20% of the time. Another application in an non-planning environment is that 80% of the effort tends to achieve 20% of the results. By thinking and planning we can reverse this to 20% of the effort achieving 80% of the results. We may even decide that it is more efficient not to attempt the remaining work at all!

'Paralysis by Planning'

Sometimes the planning process can be used as a method of procrastination - people may fall into the trap of prolonging the planning process to avoid having to take the first step or risk in the execution of the plan. Remember that planning is an investment - you should not invest more than you have to!

Introduction to Planning

Why people fail to plan

Return to Planning page Return to Time Management Planning page

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