Well, seems pretty risky to me! “Get the skills and only then look for a problem to solve with them!” What if there are no problems of that sort?
Still - I did it that way, and I found the problem, which I have been solving for more than 20 years. Not that badly paid.
How can I blame anybody else for doing the same stupid thing?

You are right Dushi, but you still need a blurry vision of where you’re going, we reckon.
You can also halve the problems by just hiring good people.

Hugs from the Canadians

Your post is a feast of thought for me, especially since I posted a reflective bit at my own site about the experience of writing the daily/weekly stories for so long. This afternoon I wanted to post a comment here respectfully disagreeing with the point about not having plans. If this means having no or low expectations, I think it’s wrong. If you aim for a high goal, even an impossible goal, you may perform miracles.

I’ve lost touch with my carefree first months of blogging when I could post my one-minute short stories at a daily rate. But maybe the difficulty of doing that now is the result of too high expectations. At least I am starting to think self-critically about it after reading your post, and some of the comments at my current post.

Well, my plan when I began my blog was to post one story a day for an entire year. I’m happy now with what I achieved, but it definitely didn’t go according to my vague plan.

Wow! Very bold! What about the planning skills? Some people have planning skills and they can accomplish great plans in their life :D.

The way I see it, there are generally 2 types of people, the ones of thought and the ones of action. Both can work together to achieve great things.

Maybe Einstein didn’t know what exactly he would discover, but he surely was motivated by an inner need to discover through maths. The way I see it, our inner spontainous needs are the ones that make us visionaries. Such dreams usually contain all the strength we need to fulfil them.

I think the real lesson here is to keep an open mind about what your goal is and be flexible in how you are going to reach it.

You may think you want to accomplish a specific goal using a specific plan, but along the way you may accidentally find a BETTER goal or a beter approach. Don’t stubbornly stick to the original goal and plan just so you can say you “stayed on track” or just so it looks like you know how to plan and manage a project.

[...] shtikl.com » You don’t need a plan, you need skills and a problem.” 1. Don’t start out with big plans. 2. Work on skills. 3. Apply your skills to a problem. [...]

[...] under: Decision Making, Entrepreneurship, Planning Every Shtikl Counts has a post decrying the use of plans.  I think he’s right that you don’t need big [...]

[...] da is was dran: You don’t need a plan, you need skills and a problem. 1. Don’t start out with big plans. 2. Work on skills. 3. Apply your skills to a problem. Most plans are rubbish. Business plans are fake. [...]

[...] bit of folk wisdom that we tend to forget in our over-organized society: you need to act as well as plan. Back to [...]

Hi folks,

thanks for all the comments. Your points have made me think about my view and my text. Thanks.

I like the way that ‘The decision strategist’ summarized the text in this linking article:
…you don’t need big plans, but small plans jotted down on a 3×5 index card in a flash of inspiration are incredibly useful.

As Honza and Punts put it:
…but you still need a blurry vision of where you’re going, we reckon.

That’s what I sorta had in mind: You need direction, no doubt about that. But as someone (whowasit?!) once said: If you want to make God laugh, show him your plans!

[...] be more accurate, only plans don’t work. I read Dushan Wegner’s interesting thought on why a plan in unnecessary. It comes of as a rebel post, but it does have very good points, at least it did stimulate my [...]

[...] Plana değil, yeteneğe ve bir probleme ihtiyacın var! Steve Jobs iPod üretmeyi planlamadı. Apple’ın yapabileceklerini ve kendi elindeki yetenekleri piyasadaki ihtiyacı gidermek için kullandı… [...]

[...] Who needs a plan? What you need are skills and a problem. “Take a look at the biographies of great people. None of them actually planned to accomplish [...]

[...] we all do.  Two recent posts, the original by Dushan Wegner and a seconding one by 37signals suggest that planning is not so [...]

[...] You don’t need a plan, you need skills and a problem. Good stuff. [via svn] Posted on Monday, September 3, 2007, at 9:01pm. Filed under Business, Life. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...]

[...] frankly makes no sense to me but is still quite fascinating (note to self: maybe interview them?) You don’t need a plan, you need skills and a problem. A sentence truer than you [...]

[...] 11, 2007 in Blogs, General In a bold post, Shtikl argues in favour of chucking elaborate plans and instead, concentrate on problem-solving. As far as I [...]

[...] shtikl.com » You don’t need a plan, you need skills and a problem. I am not sure where he’s going in this post, but I think one of his key points should say “If you don’t have the skills to make an idea happen you are not in the place to make a plan.” Phrase it that way and I agree completely. [...]

[...] traduzido de You don’t need a plan, you need skills and a problem. [...]

[...] Shtikl.com [...]

[...] Post traduzido de You don’t need a plan, you need skills and a problem. [...]