Planning as a Decision Making Tool

When you make a plan for your day, your week, your year… you are taking a moment to intentionally invest your time. With the information you have, you choose the best use of the time ahead.

But what if what you know changes?

One of the values of planning is that it creates a baseline by which to filter the other activities that come to your mind. You are constantly asking the question: Is this new thing more important¹ than the plan to which you committed and invested energy?

Planning isn't just about saying yes to one thing… it's actively saying no to unimportant things.

A plan does not lock you in to a lesser goal. If a more important opportunity or task comes along, you won't lose it because of your plan. You will more readily identify it as valuable because of its relative worth to your original plan. A good plan highlights and enables true opportunities because it discards the unimportant and the merely urgent.

When you are beleaguered by distraction, dragged around by far too much to do in too little time… now is the time to push it all aside for just a moment and plan out your time. A plan is never perfect, but it helps you say no to the unimportant and yes to what is most important.