Failing to plan is planning to fail

I know that a lot of people love to make New Year resolutions. Yes, it is a naive thing like “I will quit smoking… starting on Monday” but it still has a proven psychological effect of a new beginning. Still lots of resolutions fail because of poor planning. In this article called “Failing to plan is planning to fail” I plan to write about the processes behind the planning in your life and in your job. Are they really that necessary? Or can we easily live without lists and roadmaps? Let’s go deeper and talk about that.

I've always tried to think ahead as far as I remember. I loved to create plans and write to-do lists, systemize my daily routine, optimize my workflow and find the best way to do things more effectively. When I’m walking home from work, I plan what I’ll be doing like “Hang coat - wash hands - eat - play PS4 for 2 hours - walk the dog and take out the trash while listening to a podcast” and every morning I have a list of things that I need to accomplish today. The process is automated in my head. And yes, sometimes you need to go with the flow but I’ll say about this further. The more I’ve been working with different people, the more often I’ve seen how some of them are suffering from not being able to plan their day/life properly. Furthermore, the inability to plan often gets extrapolated to the project you are working on and everything goes wrong. In my opinion, planning, especially on the long distance, can make your life a lot easier. 

Let’s start with the general planning cycles. I believe that self-organization is critical in the modern world. It helps you to be on time, to be efficient, simply to be a better you. In my university years, I’ve noticed that to go out after an hour or two of heavy studying is more meaningful in terms of relaxing than just going out without doing any job. It felt like this because in the first scenario my brain got loaded with some information and then the focus moved to the physical activity so the brain had enough time to digest the information and to store it properly. The same goes both ways - when you are studying 24/7 it can be less efficient than if you had some breaks in between. This cycle of “doing job - recharging - doing job” is a cool technique that helps to achieve best performance on a daily basis. But these “high-performance days” are just a part of a bigger cycle - “work effectively for 9 months - take a vacation - work effectively for 10 months”. What I’m trying to say is that to plan your routine effectively you have to identify these cycles and the “global goal” of this planning. This is a silver bullet for all the types of planning - from “how to learn Spanish” to “how to develop a game”. For instance, you want to lose weight. It can be a spontaneous decision or a dream of your life (which will also define the power of your motivation). Anyway, there are two ways to do it. The first one is just to start doing exercises and follow the diets. The second one is to plan the process. You might be like “Nah, my fitness instructor will do that for me” but it doesn’t work that way - you have to understand for yourself why you are doing this. You need a defined goal.The best way to shape your goal is SMART, of course.

It’s an easy way to remind you that your goal should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. Some people also add Ethic and Reasonable, making this framework SMARTER but I think it is unnecessary. You easily can set up the goal without SMART but it will help you to identify the ways of reaching it. In aforementioned example the goal would be like “I want to lose 10 kg by next summer to fit in those jeans I wore in high school”. In this example, this will be your final goal that should be split into several small intermediate goals that will serve as milestones to mark your progress: reduce your carb intake, building a morning running habit, start going to the gym, lose 5 kg, etc. Each one can also be defined as a SMART goal. It will help you to easier keep a track record of your achievements. When all the goals are set up, you need to identify what you need to reach them in terms of resources - how much time, what amount of money, what food/equipment/software and so on. And as with every achievement, you need to reward yourself, just don’t be counterproductive with it.

This goal - lose 10 kilos - is just a part of your “goal matrix” that might also include something like “get a promotion by the end of the year to earn $5000/mo”, “read 11 books every year”, “go skiing for the first time”. To fulfill every goal, you will add it in your daily schedule like “run 5 km every morning from 8 am to 9 am”, “go to gym three times a week”, “read for an hour every evening”, etc.

Remember I’ve said about going with the flow? Sometimes plans can seem really boring and you can give yourself some rest (pro-tip: the rest phase can also be planned, lol). This doesn’t mean that you should forget about your global goals or to do this every week but when you are hanging out with friends and need to go to bed before 10 pm to wake up at 7:30 am for your daily morning jogging, you can sometimes allow yourself to move sleeping time for a couple of hours. And if you still will wake up in the morning for a run, you will feel like a hero, I promise. This “cheating”is allowed from time to time to relieve some stress from a tight schedule. Think of it like driving a car on a long road: if there are a couple of potholes on a perfect road - that’s acceptable but you can’t drive comfortably on an awfully bumpy road.

The same planning cycles go for the workflow. Ideally, the project manager doesn’t tell you what to do exactly or just let you go with vague goals like “impress me” but sets tasks that creatively limit you with some constraints and still gives a freedom in terms of reaching goals. Of course you can’t do whatever you want, the company has a vision for a purpose but you need some space within those vision to express yourself as a professional and to come up with best solutions. Actually, the planning process for the project looks very similar to what I’ve described earlier. Yes, it requires some additional preparation because of the more complex structure and several people involved in the execution process but still has a lot in common with previous examples.

The question is: do those planning processes help to improve something or are they just a waste of precious time that can be spent more effectively? Actually, I don’t know if there is a right or wrong answer to this question. All that I know is that planning works for me and my team. Maybe you should just go and try it to see for yourself. And if you are already doing the planning in your life and in your job, I definitely recommend to review the process at least once a month. Yes, I’m talking about some kind of retrospectives to identify the strong and weak spots.

As I see from my experience, planning in the development process is vital. It not only helps to shape the project but also helps in many other ways: to motivate the developers, to track the progress, to spot the problems earlier and to avoid them, to see if you are heading in the right direction. In my industry, failing to plan is a real death sentence for the project. I have stats of 7 game development teams before and after the planning optimization. We’ve seen a significant increase (from 20% to 65% depending on the project) in TCT (time to complete task), reduced time for internal discussions, and excluded irrelevant external connections. The estimation became more accurate which helped teams to fit in deadlines better.

Planning is another valuable soft skill that can be applied in literally every area. Just don’t get too crazy about it :) Plans can change, this doesn't happen only if you don't have any plans at all. So when this happen - don't loose your head and take it easy. Do not let your plans give you a false feeling of total control.

In the end I want to share an inspiring quote that might motivate you to make some interesting resolutions for 2021 and to plan them properly. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you!