- Figure out your goal. This is the thing you want to make plans to do.
EX: “First, let’s say I decide to exercise every day. That’ll be my goal.”
- Write down which specific things you need to get done to make the thing happen. (Make a list.)
EX: “But I should also be more specific than that, so it’s easier to tell what ‘exercising’ means. Let’s decide that I want to go running on odd days for 30 minutes and do strength training on even days for 20 minutes. And I want to do them in the evenings.”
- Now imagine it’s one week (or month, or year) later, and yet you somehow didn’t manage to get started on your goal. (The visualization part here is important.) Are you surprised?
EX: “Now, let’s imagine that it’s now one week later, and I didn’t go exercising at all! What went wrong?”
- Why? (What went wrong that got in your way?)
EX: “The first thing that comes to mind is that I forgot to remind myself, and it just slipped out of my mind”
- Now imagine you take steps to remove the obstacle from Step 4.
EX: “Well, what if I set some phone / email reminders? Is that good enough?”
- Repeat steps 3-5 until you would feel quite surprised if you didn’t accomplish your goal. Once you get to this point, your plan is (likely) good enough. (Don’t fool yourself!)
EX: “Once again, let’s imagine it’s one week later and I made a reminder. But let’s say I still didn’t got exercising. How surprising is this?”
- If failure still seems likely, go through Steps 3-6 a few more times until you “problem proof” your plan.
EX: “Hmm, I can see myself getting sore and/or putting other priorities before it…(Step 4). So maybe I’ll also set aside the same time every day, so I can’t easily weasel out (Step 5).
- How do I feel now? (Back to Step 3)
EX: “Well, if once again I imagine it’s one week later and I once again failed, I’d be pretty surprised. My plan has two levels of fail-safes and I do want to do exercise anyway. Looks like it’s good! (Done)”
This technique comes from CFAR, and the explanation is from “Planning 101” from the blog mindlevelup, which has more details on the technique. Owen, who writes that blog, is awesome. Check out his stuff!