PSTM: Plans are Worthless

Planning, productivity, it’s all guaranteed to fail.

Look at Hofstadter's Law: things will always take longer than you assume…even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account.

Every time you start a task, a ding will pull you this way. There will be an emergency. A loved one needs a favor. Your phone needs you to respond to candy crush...

My quote comes early this week: President Dwight D. Eisenhower "Plans are worthless, but planning is everything”

The thing you get from the productivity advice isn’t magical productivity sauce. That doesn’t exist. Knowing to do a thing, knowing the right thing to do, all the knowledge in the world, doesn’t make it happen. Only doing stuff works, not the productivity rain dance.

There is a hidden upside to all this downside though.

The productivity advice almost always makes clear what is important. How to structure things. The extent of the task, even if we misjudge the difficulty.

Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.

Ok, back to sorting my todo list.

The Advice: instead of thinking of the optimum way to plan and prepare for something…how much easier would your life be if you just did the thing imperfectly and went off to have tacos later. You’re welcome.