2. Work on skills.
3. Apply your skills to a problem.
Most plans are rubbish. Business plans are fake. Life plans don’t work. The big plan is unknown to mankind anyway. (Some Kabbalists may know it, but they are not telling.)
Plans are about making ideas happen. How do you want to know how to make ideas happen when you don’t have the skills to do so? There is little motivation to bring an idea to life if there is no problem to be solved.
Guy Kawasaki is a venture capitalist and kind of a new economy philosopher. While he surely isn’t shunning the concept of plans (”business plans”, that is. link1 link2) altogether, he points out again and again, how most successful companies changed their business model over time. It’s the management team (i.e.: their skills) that makes or breaks a company–not the initial idea.
Until you don’t have the skills to make an idea happen you are not in the place to make a plan. Yet once you do have the necessary skills all you need for a plan is a napkin and a pen.
An amateur cook needs a long winded recipe to prepare a dish and it still will be mediocre at best. The seasoned chef needs just the idea and he will turn it into a masterpiece.
Take a look at the biographies of great people. None of them actually planned to accomplish what they did accomplish. Their “life plans” are something authors and historians (and sometimes they themselves) construe from the crooked path their life actually was.
Einstein didn’t initially plan to discover relativity theory, Columbus didn’t plan to find America and Steve Jobs didn’t plan to invent the iPod.
Einstein worked on his scientific skills and on solving a problem. Columbus worked on his nautical skills and on solving a problem. Steve Jobs worked on his (and Apple’s) skills in interface design and on solving a problem.
In his fantastic book “The Art of the Start” (I’m reading it for the 2nd time now) Guy Kawasaki writes in the final paragraph of the chapter “The Art of Writing a Business Plan” (page 73):
The worst thing to do is to write a deliberate plan and then stick to it simply because it is “the plan”. If you’re successful, no one will care if you didn’t follow the plan. And shame on you if you fail but you did.
I suggest: Screw your plans. Work on your skills. Apply them to a problem that is biting you. Flush and repeat until people believe you had a plan.
2. Work on skills.
3. Apply your skills to a problem.
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Rick 08.23.07 at 2:40 pm
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?
Honza and Punts 08.24.07 at 10:06 am
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
indeterminacy 08.27.07 at 6:29 pm
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.
Viruswitch 08.28.07 at 2:00 pm
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.
twh 08.31.07 at 9:47 pm
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.
Dushan 09.02.07 at 4:58 am
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!