Some projects go pretty smoothly. We see progress, and reaching a goal is just a matter of well define time. Some plans are being dragged on for months or even years. We don’t know where this thing is going, and what’s more, why we even bothered to start it. Usually, it is not because of the complexity, lack of resources or time. In these cases, we should look closer to the people who plan them and perform the execution of tasks. A few years back, I did an annual review and planning for the first time. I wanted to buy bicycles for my family. Easy? Well, It took me almost two years. Sip your coffee while I am going to share what happened.
Is it important? 🙋🏻♂️
We should start every planning with this question. Especially annual review and planning. Is the thing important to me? In principle, It’s not yet planning per se. The answer to this question will help us realise the benefits of buying something you plan to buy. Completing certain things, if this is your goal or aspiration. However, the outcome could be – “No, I am not going to buy this” or “No, this is not a good time to start this project”. Some people suggest going quite deep with this analysis and asking even five times “why” we want to do this particular thing. By asking every time, we eventually go to the core of our intention, to the real motivation behind a given subject.
Sometimes, we can struggle to answer the following “whys” honestly. That probably means we wanted more of a whim or a caprice rather than the real need. Having bicycles for all of my family members was vital for me. My mistake (one of many) was that I didn’t write down why it was necessary. This task lacked real motivation, so for a long time, it was just one of many tasks on my wish list. Reviewed but not actioned. Later, I did this exercise, and the results were compelling:
- Why do we want to buy bicycles?
- 1: because there is a forest in our location with beautiful paths that can be used by bikes so we can ride.
- 2: because we want to spend time together.
- 3: because we want to move/exercise more.
- 4: because we want to be healthier – we sit most time of the day.
- 5: because we want to be around and mobile when our kids are older.
Getting to this last one was quite emotional — pretty good motivation.
Plan, but wisely 📑
Some time ago, I started to perform annual reviews. There are useful articles about how to do it:
- Tim Ferriss: Past year review
- Michal Sliwinski: How to start annual review
- Michael Karnjanaprakorn: How to plan your ideal year
Check them and implement yearly planning and review processes that would work for you. The experiment is the keyword there. It has to be a process that eventually will become a routine. Implementation will probably change from year to year. It also is safer to experiment rather than commit to doing something “forever”. We sometimes need to hack our brains to do some work. 🙂
The art of annual planning and review 🗃
Part of my process was that once a year, I sat down, had a coffee and summarized what I did accomplish the previous year. Then, I threw ideas of what I wanted to achieve the following year. One of them was to purchase bicycles for my whole family. Unfortunately, as a novice in annual review and planning, I threw all the things that I planned for the next year into one project called “plans for this year.” Later in the year, following the art of planning, I was getting into the habit of Friday weekly reviews. I reviewed every project and every task in that project, including the “plans for this year” folder. And… nothing happened for almost the whole year. Buying bikes was just another item on the long list, amongst other tasks.
Breakthrough 💡
It was like this until I realised that buying a bike is too general a task to be able to execute it directly. It should be a project by itself. Most probably, the first task should be to simply do some research about what bikes are available, what we can afford, and what we really prefer. It should be something that it’s called “next action” in Getting Things Done methodology. The task that is very small, actionable and concrete enough to bring you closer to completion of the bigger goal. No matter how many more steps you have in your journey to complete the project.
I did my planning, but my tasks were purely designed. They were vague, had bad names and what was most important, I put them into one bucket. It was not going to fly.
Can I afford it? 💷
Another problem was budgeting and being precise – the lack of it. The bike can cost just a few hundred pounds as well as … yeah, exactly – there is probably no upper limit to that cost. One of my friends, who is very into biking, advised me that in the United Kingdom, we consider £10,000 as the high end of a bicycle price. You got it right – this is ten thousand pounds. You could buy a car.
I wasn’t taking into account spending even close to that amount. But if fact, my problem was that I wasn’t taking into account any amount. I didn’t even know how much buying a bicycle costs. I didn’t know if I wanted a new bike or the one from second-hand. As you can see, it was yet another aspect where I was not prepared, and I was failing from the start with my vague plans.
Budget review is part of planning 💰📊
Later, I also realised that my younger kid would need a rear-mounted child bike seat rather than a separate bike. She was just too small. I solved a budget problem pretty quick. Soon after my enlightenment about my poor planning, I quickly set up a sub-account. I use Revolut, and they have something called a vault. You can set up a target and amount of money taken daily from your main account to credit your saving account – vault.
Additionally, you can round every transaction to the full amount and move “small change” into your savings. If you spent $2.45 on coffee, £0.55 would be added to your goal defined earlier while setting a vault. Most modern banks can offer similar functionality nowadays. However, I recommend the Revolut account if you travel a lot as they have excellent currency exchange rates. Here is the referral link if you are interested and want to check Revolut cards.
The impulse is not always bad ⚡️🧏♀️
Following an impulse to do something is usually not the best strategy. Especially when we are talking about shopping. However, in my case, the final decision to buy our bikes was a result of the impulse. Or a bit of a kick. It was, however, a prepared improvisation. You may ask: WHAT?? Was it improvisation or preparation? And what it has to do with the whole story? Let me explain. When we started to seriously plan our bicycle project. I created a separate project for it. I divided it into small steps and started executing the next actions. One of those actions was to share our plans with some friends.
Firstly, it was additional motivation. You probably may imagine our conversations:
- “So, how is it going with your bicycle plans? You bought them, right?”
- “Well, yeah, about that, we are still thinking and considering all options.”
- “Uh-huh, it’s been four months now….”
Secondly, some of our friends know more about bikes than we do. The idea was to use their knowledge to help newbies like us make educated decisions. And quite honestly, to motivate us to accomplish this everlasting project. This was exactly what happened. One day, our friend, who had enough of our excuses, called me and informed me that there was a sale in one of the bicycle shop on our high street.
I collected my bike and rode it to our home an hour later. Then I walked back to the shop and collected the bike for my wife. The very next day, I bought a seat for our younger child and a small, second-hand bicycle for my older kid. The following weekend we went for our first bicycle trip to the nearby forest. It was nearly two years after my wife, and I thought for the first time that it would be awesome to be able to go for a family bicycle ride.
One more thing about planning 1️⃣❗️
There is one thing I want to mention, and it is actually called “One Thing”, and it is a book. The authors are Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. Let me share a quote from the official description of the book:
You want more! More money, time and life satisfaction. And at the same time you want less! Less work, responsibilities and stress. The authors of the bestseller lists, “New York Times” – Gary Keller and Jay Papasan – learn how the concept of ONE >thing can completely change the approach to every aspect of your life, affect the choices made and recognized results. Sometimes your ONE thing will be the first thing on the list. Sometimes – the only one alone. But always it will bring extraordinary results. What is your ONE thing?
The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results
I invite you to read this position because nowadays, we have the wrong concept of productivity that assumes or even promotes:
- multitasking
- having many priories – (priority should always be in the singular form, no?)
- and in general – lack of focus on one activity at hand.
Lack of focus, an insufficient amount of time for planning, implementation, and bringing the project to an end (or start line 😁🚴♂️) were the main reasons why this project went so embarrassingly long and wrong. I guess for me, it wasn’t this ONE, the most important thing. Maybe because I was afraid of the bicycle trips concept. But this is a story for a separate coffee journey.
Lessons learned during this coffee journey 🎓
- Before you start planning, ask if the given thing is crucial for you.
- Ask yourself why this thing, this project, this purchase is essential. Do it five times, digging deeper into your real motivation.
- Check your resources; can you afford them. Money is one thing; maintenance is the other thing.
- Annual planning (once appropriately done) can make a difference regarding how many things you accomplish in a year.
- Try to think about ONE thing you should focus on this quarter, this week, and today.
- Do not believe in multitasking.
- If you are too busy, you always have your priorities wrong.
- Annual review and planning is an art – experiment and master it. It’s worth doing.
I wonder if you practice annual planning? Maybe you can share some stories about your projects?
Thanks for reading!
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