How the future makes things complicated.

A journey isn't that complicated. Start at point A end at point B.

It gets a little more complicated when you come up against a roadblock and have to figure out how to navigate around it. It can slow you down, make you retrace your steps to find the key to unlock the door.

It gets more complicated when you've got monsters (deadlines, cashflow, etc) chasing you and you've got limited time to get around or through the obstacle.

Our reality is that we can't wait to find or make a key to unlock a door after it's already halted our progress - we need to anticipate those obstacles and start searching for and crafting solutions long before we get there. You don't want that monster to catch up with you and end the journey prematurely.

So it's not as simple as putting one foot in front of the other. We're problem-solving multiple future roadblocks at a time just to keep making progress and then we have to keep making progress on top of that!

It's pretty easy to get lost in this process and forget where you're trying to get in the first place.

It really pays to have a good map for a couple reasons:

• You can see the whole picture at once and regain your orientation when you forget where you are
• You can plot future roadblocks as you become aware of them so that you don't forget about them and can budget time to work on those problems before they become nightmares
• The map free you to work on one thing, right now with all your concentration. You'll get each thing done faster if you're not trying to hold all the complexity in your memory at the same time. The map helps you trust that you'll know what to do next when you're finished this task.

Consider using maps, both for planning, and also for communicating complex ideas that have lot's of contextual inter-dependencies.