How to Make Your Plans Stick (An Introduction)

Every now and again we all enter a surreal world I like to call ‘the planning place’.

The planning place is where we sit down in front of papers, calendars, and post-its and Make Big Plans.

I am often tempted to spend my entire life in the planning place. After all, it is a kind and engrossing world where I can maintain the happy illusion that any life change I am attempting will work out perfectly on the first try.

Phone calls, flat tires, empty refrigerators, and our favorite television shows do not seem to exist in the planning place.

And, in this world of magical thinking, we believe that our future selves will be focused, action taking machines carrying out our plans without ever faltering. In fact, we’re confident that future self will be able to accomplish more in the upcoming week than we’ve been able to knock out in the past few months combined.

Unfortunately, it turns out future self is not as reliable as one might hope.

If you’ve ever entered the planning place, laid down a brilliant plan, and noticed that the steps you were planning to take never saw the light of day, then you know that future self turns out to be a distractible, tired, and slippery creature who has trouble handling all the things that are already on his/her plate without adding on any Big Plans.

Next week I’ll be sharing five things you need to be aware of to help you follow through with your plans. (I think my future self should be able write a piece detailing those five things in between a complete website re-design and a decision to attend fifteen new meetings, don’t you?)

In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you! Have you ever noticed this disconnect between the planning place and what actually gets done? What have you found to be helpful? What do you think gets in the way? Leave a comment below. This is such a juicy topic, and I’m really looking forward to sharing more with you next week.