What you see is what you get

In one of my latest personal retrospectives, I concluded I needed to look more closely at my book-writing progress. Every week I publish this newsletter and edit my manuscript. But how well am I actually doing? Am I getting closer to a published book by autumn this year?

I did draft up a high-level plan some time ago. I am not a big fan of planning, so I was proud that I got as far as building a plan in the first place! Some activities are hard to estimate or predict how long they will take, mainly because it's all new to me.

The real problem? My plan was stored in online folder, so it was easy to ignore because it was out of sight. Ouch.

To increase my focus and sense of urgency, I decided to make my planning more physical and in my face. So last Sunday, I created a planning board with plenty of sticky notes (who would have thought...).

Already during this exercise, I felt this slightly unpleasant sensation that things were getting more serious now. And that was precisely what I was looking for!

Now I have my planning right in front of me. It is a constant reminder for my grand project this year: publishing my book to inspire people to navigate life's complexities using Agile and Scrum practices. Visualizing the work is one of those practices (originating from Lean actually). So there it is.

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I'll make sure to keep you posted on the impact of putting my planning on the wall behind my desk. I'm certain things will slip or take longer than expected. But for now, this is what I know and will work with until I learn more.

If you have feedback on my plan, please feel free to share your experience and wisdom in the comments or message me. I appreciate that a lot!

And what about you, are you using plans for your personal projects? What do they look like? And how do you make your plan work for you? I'd be curious to learn, so please leave a comment...thanks!

Take care and till next time!

Kind regards,

Herman / Scrumpy Dad