How to Succeed Without Planning

Efficiency experts say you must plan your work and work your plan. And you must have written goals and a budget and a schedule.

A detailed plan is the key to success when you are doing something small, but you cannot have a detailed plan when you are doing something big and new and untried.

You know a project is small when all the variables can be known in advance.

When you do something big and new and untried, you will come to a place that your plan did not foresee. This is when you must improvise. Later, you will discover that you are making decisions at the last moment, because that is when you have the most information.

Possibilities are in your mind. Reality is at your fingertips. So get started. Move. Take action. Do something.

Clarity, commitment, and continual improvement are what you need most when doing something big and new and untried.

1: Clarity means you have a clear vision of the outcome you are hoping to bring into reality.

2: When you have clarity, you always know what to do next.

3: Commitment means that quitting will never occur to you.

4: When you have commitment, you find a solution to every obstacle.

5: Continual Improvement means that you touch your project every day without fail.

6: Touching your project every day – and moving it forward a little – unleashes the power of Exponential Little Bits, the energy that spins your flywheel.

7: A thousand tiny touches don’t add up, they multiply. Two becomes four. Four becomes eight. Eight becomes sixteen, and 28 cycles later you have exceeded one billion.

8: The only things you cannot know in advance are

(A.) How long is it going to take?

(B.) How much is it going to cost?

9: If you insist on knowing those answers in advance, these are the answers:

(A.) It will take as long as it takes

(B.) It will cost what it costs.

10: If you demand answers with more details, you either lack commitment or you believe I can see the future.

11: I cannot see the future.

12: The only hard part is step number one.

You will notice I have given you a 12-step program. This is because doing things that are big, new, and untried is highly addictive, and every addictive thing has its own 12-step program.

Do not confuse it with a plan.

Roy H. Williams

PS – George Bernard Shaw said, “A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.” Roy might tell you more about George Bernard Shaw next week. Or then again, maybe not. – Indy

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