Planning For When You Don’t Feel Like It 

I love planning! In fact, I probably over plan! My mind just works that way. It sees subsequent steps and likely outcomes clearly, and then I can’t help but map out how to achieve that (assuming it’s something desirable). 

Overplanning is a problem, though, because sometimes things interrupt our perfectly laid-out plans. These can be simple inconveniences or major changes, but often they distract, consume, and demotivate us. And when we’re demotivated and down and out, our plans can fall apart. 

While we can’t eliminate changes and a lack of motivation, we can prevent them from destroying our plans. The trick is not to keep our plans flexible and adaptable, although that is good advice. The real solution is to make our systems simple enough to use on our worst days.  

Plans are important. They give us goals, guides, benchmarks, and measures of success. Systems are more important because they support our daily implementation of the plans. If you plan to lose weight, but only buy chips, cookies, and sodas, you have not set up systems to support implementation. If you plan to increase the number of customers your business serves but don’t restructure your current or hire additional staff, you have not set up systems to support implementation. Systems are critical, perhaps even more so than the plan itself. 

If the system is too complex to maintain in less-than-perfect conditions, your brain will ignore the system. When your brain ignores the system bad or old habits creep in, and the whole plan falls apart. So, a system must be complex enough to support the plan, but simple enough to work even when you don’t feel like it. 

What is “when you don’t feel like it” (just to make sure we’re all on the same page)? Yes, it’s when you’re sick, when your kid gets hurt at school and you need to take the afternoon off, when natural disasters happen, and similar obvious situations. But it’s also those days when nothing is working for you, it’s the beautiful days when your only motivation is for sitting outside doing nothing, and it’s the days when everything is going right and you have more energy to do more stuff than ever before!

That’s the beauty of simple systems. When everything’s going swimmingly, they work. When nothing is going your way, they still work. And either way, the plan continues to move forward. 

So, review your systems. How’s the system for your calendar and to-do list? How about the one for your healthy eating? How about the one for your workout plan? How about the one for managing that troublesome staff member? How about the one for ensuring your team implements the company’s strategic plan? You have systems for all of these. If they’ve evolved organically, they’re probably not as simple as they could be. Take a look, simplify a system, and see if you can keep it going even when you don’t feel like it. 

 

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Craig A. Escamilla
Craig A. Escamilla
Craig Escamilla helps you find solutions before problems exist. With fifteen years of consulting, teaching, and senior management experience, Craig brings a wealth of practical expertise to helping others work on rather than in their businesses.

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