The Advantages of Planning Ahead (and Why We Avoid It)
If there's one important lesson the pandemic taught us, it's that we must be ready to readapt ourselves to new conditions. Planning ahead in the midst of the chaos that seems to define our times is part of adapting to the “New Normal” that so many of us are struggling to navigate in this post-Covid era.
If planning ahead seems like a crazy idea to you given your past few years, keep reading to learn why most people would agree with you - and why it’s still a good idea to plan ahead.
While many of us spent endless hours stuck at home, we came face to face with short-term thinking to cope with the rapidly changing conditions around us. During the toughest moments of the pandemic, did you ever feel like the best you could do was just get through the day?
(Yep, me too.)
Effective planning is a vital skill we all need to master to organize our lives around change. Whether you'd like to overcome emotionally charged situations, set goals for your career or invest in personal growth, planning is the first step. Shifting to long-term thinking can even ease your everyday life in ways that might surprise you. In this article, learn how a little bit of planning ahead can help you face any issue that comes your way with a strategic and clear-headed approach.
Check-In with Your “New Normal”
When Covid first hit, life as most people knew it ended or changed dramatically: No more hangouts with friends, family gatherings, or office meetings. School closures and disruptions continued for over a year in many places.
Efforts to reduce time spent in shared air space with other humans transformed where we spent time, how and with whom. During the height of uncertainty, people everywhere shifted into a scarcity mindset that embraced the short-term thinking and needs as a survival mechanism to adapt to the circumstances.
We learned to normalize uncertainty, shifting our expectations of daily life to include last-minute cancellations, unplanned expenses, and additional responsibilities at home.
The aftermath of the pandemic has shifted our collective approach to planning by necessity, and has even made it financially difficult to plan ahead. If you’re still reluctant to plan for the future despite the freedom to do so, it might be a good idea to check in with your “new normal” again.
Priorities and Values: What’s Most Important to You?
Every cloud has a silver lining. Lockdowns and restricted movement forced many people to come to terms with the elements in their hectic lives that weren’t aligned with what's really important to them. Before you start planning ahead, check in with your priorities and values - and be prepared to face things you may not be satisfied with!
Slowing down gives us a chance to connect with our purpose, align our spending habits with what we truly need, and just take a moment to look around, and - you know, take in the view! To shift from a fear-based “new normal” focused on what is lacking to an abundance-based “new normal” centered upon creative potential, it’s essential to focus on what's really valuable to you: perhaps achieving educational goals, developing your interests, nurturing family relationships, or making a big career change.
Once you identify your priorities, planning ahead becomes less of a chore and much more of a joy. Ooooh, the future!! If you stay curious and open while exploring your priorities, the path forward will unfold for you.
Why We Generally Avoid Planning Ahead
Despite the many benefits of proactive planning, many of us see planning ahead as a total waste of time. You might even be a planner at heart who struggles with follow through or gets anxious when the to-do list starts stacking up.
You are definitely not alone if planning doesn’t seem to come naturally. People who tend to avoid planning ahead often:
Lack self-discipline or motivation
Suffer from habitual procrastination
Have difficulty setting long-term goals
Lack organization
Are pressed for time
Don't know how to plan ahead
Whatever your case might be, working with a day planner is a great first step in taking charge of your plans. The Simplish app is designed with a suite of intuitive tools to help you organize your life for balance, and packed with tutorials to make it easy and fun, as well.
5 Benefits of Planning Ahead (Even When the Future is Uncertain)
Ok, skeptics - we hear you. Some of you might argue that planning ahead is a big waste of time when the world has more important plans that keep canceling yours. But actually, when we learn how to plan efficiently, we can anticipate obstacles that might interfere with our plans and make contingencies.
Contingency planning prepares you to face challenges with less stress. It teaches you that celebrating small successes is just as important as rocking out when we land the big wins. Planning ahead is essential for success on sooo many levels, and it’s even more important when working in teams. Let's find out why:
It makes your work-life easier.
Thorough preparation creates tremendous performance benefits: when we learn how to plan into the future, we give ourselves more options for what work to do, when - and how (key). We enable ourselves and our teams to execute projects and tasks more purposefully and efficiently. When collaborating with coworkers on a project, efficient planning makes teamwork much easier and reduces the need for constant check-ins that drain your energy.
2. It helps you understand your priorities.
So you’re planning ahead - but planning for what? Why? If you can answer these questions, you understand your priorities. Effective plans help us to understand what our top priorities are and how we can best enact them. This process encourages us to carve out time for what really matters in our lives.
3. It helps us manage our time more efficiently
Good planning ahead can truly help us manage our everyday life more productively: no more "let me see if I can squeeze this in my agenda". Hello, “I’m available Tuesdays and Thursdays from 12-4pm,” or even better, “You know, I’m free at that time - but I have a big project due the next day and want to focus on wrapping that up. How about next week?”
Planning ahead initiates a cycle of change that helps you to balance your energy and book commitments when you’ll be at your very best for them. It gives you an overview of your everyday tasks and establishes rhythm through routine that takes your mind off of where you’re going next and anchors you in the present. Remember that successful time management isn’t measured by how many things you can possibly squeeze into your schedule, but rather by how closely your commitments align with your priorities and values.
4. It allows you to live (almost) care-free
When we learn how to manage our time, we automatically tend to feel less stressed, because we're not focusing on the whole ladder, but on every single little step. And planning ahead can (and should!) totally involve a massage, a walk in the park, and just un-interrupted “you-time”.
5. You'll be more in control of your life
As a natural consequence of all the previous points here, skillfully planning ahead reduces the impact of unpredictable events and encourages us to align our life with our highest purpose. Who doesn’t want that?!
Going with the Flow vs Planning Ahead
Perhaps the biggest unsaid obstacle to planning ahead is the illusion that going with the flow gives you more freedom than planning ahead. This isn’t untrue - and it’s not the whole truth either.
Planning is essential to achieving dreams, and without a plan we wander from one shiny object to the next. Where are you really going? But over-planning seems to create the same problem, suffocating some of life’s greatest joys with structure - for what end?
There are times in everyone’s life where each of these modes (free flowing vs planning ahead) can be meaningful. To find out where you are, simply try to estimate how much unplanned time you need in a day to be at your best (this varies a LOT from person to person and throughout life). Once you identify this free-time vs planned time ratio, there are a few simple practices that can help you balance these modes:
Align your planning practices with your free-time to planned-time ratio
Revisit your plans once a month specifically to make changes, cancel what’s not working, and plan in more of what is
Plan a block of “unplanned time” into your week for whatever comes up*
*Even if you’re a 100% planned-time person. Everyone needs time to switch off.
When you have a plan, you can create a roadmap and visualize which paths can take you from where you are now to where you want to be in the future. I hope this post has opened your mind to the possibilities.