How Planning Undermines What You Are Trying To Do

Planning is a great way to use your time more efficiently and enable you to get more done.  There is no doubt about that.  Dick Tracey says you save ten times the time you spend on planning.  (I am not sure where he gets that precise figure from, but it certainly fits in with my personal experience.)  But there is one huge drawback to planning that you absolutely have to be aware of, because if you aren't you will find that your planning will keep you busy but won't get much that matters done.


The problem is that if you plan out your tasks into a list - and virtually all planning approaches do this - you will tackle the easiest things on the list first.  This is something that is deeply programmed into the way our brains work and takes superhuman will power to overcome.  If you have 10 things to do, you will do the easiest of the 10.  If you have 3 things to do, you'll do the easiest.   Anything hard gets scheduled later.  We all have the ability to schedule will power, even when we don't have the power to exert it.

We are all like this.  They did some experiments with volunteers at the London School of Economics.  They asked them to fill in a form with some questions, and then asked them to come back a week later to do a follow up.  Half the group were offered an immediate reward for helping out, chocolate biscuits (or cookies in US English) or some fruit.  Needless to say the biscuits were far the more popular choice.  The other half of the group were told that they would get a reward at the end of the second session.  They were asked to nominate whether they wanted biscuits or fruit.  Needless to say, when the gratification was in the future people chose fruit.  We all know fruit is better for us.

A good example of this perverse attitude to weighing up short term and long term benefits occurs for me every morning.  I go for a short run when I get up to start the day.  I have managed to get into the habit after some effort, and it is now thoroughly bedded in.  But one thing I simply cannot do is resist the temptation to take a short cut on my regular circuit.  Every morning I shave about 30 seconds off my daily exercise.  The whole purpose of the run is to get exercise and yet I cannot prevent myself taking advantage of a slightly quicker route home.  How crazy is that?   Or rather what greater demonstration that when it comes to taking minute by minute decisions our brain is not good at seeing long term benefits.

So back to planning.  If your plan gives you any choice at all in what you should be doing, then inevitably you will be doing whatever is easiest, not what is most important.  So when you draw your plan up, make sure you draw it up well in advance and do not give yourself any discretion about what you plan for a particular block of time.