I’ve been a planner. Mostly because my job consisted of year-long projects and you really can’t let things slide until Q4 and expect it to all go smoothly. So, I plan. But things are a little different now.
Now, I do more creative work. It’s on my own time frame. If I want to work on this project, I can choose to do that. Maybe next week, I’ll work on a different project. In any case, it’s all coming from my mind. No one depends on me. It’s just me.
And I’ve discovered that planning more than a week ahead is a colossal waste of time.
I’ve discovered that I don’t know what I’ll feel like working on a couple of weeks out. Between now and then, I may combine aspects of two different projects into one. Or split a project into 3 separate components. Under those conditions, all detailed planning would be tossed in the garbage.
But I do know what I feel like working on this week. And I have tentative plans on what I want to accomplish this month. I even have an idea of what I imagine I would like to accomplish this quarter.
But — I don’t plan out my month or, God forbid, the entire quarter. I simply write a short sentence describing what I think I want to accomplish. Then, each Sunday, I re-read my tentative plan for the month (or the quarter) and turn those into a few achievable goals for this coming week. That’s it.
As my mood shifts, I am free to change my monthly or quarterly expectations. But that only involves writing a new tentative goal statement. No detailed planning to scrap.
I gotta tell you – this is kind of liberating!
