The Best Way to Plan Anything

1. Introduction - The Best Way to Plan Anything: Whether you think you are or not, you are a planing machine. Your brain is designed in such a way to be the perfect planning mechanism. This is exactly what Dave Allen encapsulated in his planning method inside of getting things done. Gtd, there's important movements around it. If you're not familiar with it, Google it and go down that rabbit hole. But the idea that we can plan successfully and deliver outcomes on whatever it is that we want to achieve. That's the whole purpose of this. And it taps in to the natural ability that we all have to problem-solve, to plan, to brainstorm, and to come up with solutions. And that's exactly what we're going to run through in the class today. We're going to run through David Allen's planning method that uses our natural, organic, innate ability to plan and taps in to the wonder, that is the human brain. It's a powerful process. It's a simple process that anyone can follow to plan, map, and actually carry out those things that you're looking to do. 2. What is a Project?: What we mean by a project. A project essentially is something that we do that has a goal. So projects tend to have start and finishes, may not always be as clear as that. But if you think about something like we want to renovate a house, we want to decorate a room. So renovate a house could be a project. Within side of that. We've got multiple sub-projects of renovate the bathroom, renovate the kitchen, renovate the bedroom. And so each of those things are loosely termed as projects that sit within an overarching project, right? So the idea here is that you have something that has a start and an end and achieves a very specific goal. So we want to build a new website, e.g. that would be classed as a project, ongoing maintenance of the website and things like that. That's not part of a project because it doesn't have an end date. It's a continuous thing that never ends. And so in that sense, it doesn't meet the criteria for the definition of a project. Ideally, you will be coming into this class with an idea of what it is that you want to do. The beautiful thing about this process, once you understand it, you can apply it in all areas of life to anything that you want to set out to achieve. Something comes up, hey, I really want to do X. Then you can take this model and you can apply that in that circumstance. That's the power of this. Ultimately, your project is something that we can define, something that we can put inside of a box and have a timescale attached to. That's the definition of a project, and that's the kind of thing, what this natural planning model is perfectly suited for. 3. What is GTD? (Getting Things Done): What is GTD? Gtd stands for getting things done. And it's a productivity method that was introduced in 2001 by a guy called David Allen When he released this book, Getting Things Done. It is a game changer when it comes to productivity. And it sparked all manner of change in the way that we approach our productivity. Now fast-forward to 2023. Whilst life has changed massively in that time because of technology and the way that we are bombarded with a massive information. Now, the methodology that David first introduced in GTD stands the test of, of time in that it is a very personal approach to productivity, but it has a scaffold that gives you a framework within which you can be more productive. And ultimately it comes down to your ability to capture, organize, and process the inputs, the information that's going on around you, that information, the amount of stuff that we're bombarded with has just exploded in recent years were all bombarded with so much information it becomes overwhelming. And so having a framework that you can utilize to cope with that, not only to cope with that, but to thrive inside of that environment is so, so powerful and it's why GTD has blossomed into this movement, if you like, of people looking to develop their own productivity. Gtd is one of many different approaches to what's termed pKa, personal knowledge management. And it's very much focused on the productivity angle of getting things done right. That's why it's termed getting things done. It is a wonderful book and definitely worth a read if you haven't read it already. The project management model that we're using in this class is taken from David's book, Getting Things Done. 4. Overview of the GTD Natural Planning Model: What is the natural planning model? Well, it's a very simple system for planning, organizing, and carrying out the best actions to achieve the goal that you want to do the project, the thing that you're setting out to do. So it follows a very simple framework and we're going to run through the framework in detail. The framework is essentially asking the why question, the purpose, the reason for doing this thing that we're doing? Why are we doing it? What is it we're looking to do? Why, why are we doing this in the first place? Then we map that to the outcome that we're looking to achieve. What's the dream outcome? What's the desired state of being at the end of this project that we're hoping for. Once we're clear on that, we can set some goals and then we can work towards those goals. The third part in the process is to brainstorm. And this is where we allow the natural ability of the brain just to get down all of the possible things that we might need to think about factors to consider elements of the project. And we're going to go through some examples of this to make it a little clearer, right? But this is where you literally get down all of the areas of consideration when it comes to achieving that outcome. How are we going to do that? What things do we need to think about? What areas do we need to look at? Once we brainstormed, the next phase is to organize. And here we literally sift through our brainstorm like a panning for gold, right? So we're sifting through with filtering through and we're discarding the stuff that's irrelevant. That's not going to help us to achieve the goal. And we are holding onto an organizing and prioritizing the things that will, the actions, the tasks, the factors, the steps, things that we might need to do. And so this is where we give a semblance of order to those things. Then the final part is to detail next actions because a project isn't going to be done and dusted inside of that small window of planning. The project is going to play out over time. And so the final step in the process is to outline what the next steps are. This is the plan of attack. And the whole thing is a thing of beauty when it comes to mapping out anything that you want to achieve in your life, in your business. Whether it's planning a course, whether it's building a product, creating a business, whether it's redecorate in your house, whatever it might be. There is a great store in this process, in this natural planning model. 5. Purpose - Asking Why: The first step in the process is to consider the purpose. And this is really about asking the why question. Why are we embarking on this project in the first place? When we ask the why question, it causes our brains to think about the drive behind why we're doing this in the first place. That impetus that drive. Now, look, if it's a simple thing like renovating a house, decorating a room or something along those lines. Then the Y could be quite simple. It could be because we want a beautiful home when it comes to work-related. So if we're running our business, we want to create a course, we want to build a product, we want to create a website. Then the question, why becomes much more intrinsic in terms of how we are driven and the reason that we're driven to do and achieve this specific outcome. Why do we want the website? Let's take the website as an example. Why do we want this? We want to get more clients. We want to increase our impact. We want to have a better presence online. We want to look professional, so people see us as professionals. We want to have all of these things. And the website feels like the outcome, the thing that's going to get, That's those things. But asking why triggers at Drive and it reaffirms the nose and clarifies that process and the reason behind embarking on this project in the first place. So the why question is really important and all projects should start with why I want to achieve x, y. So I would encourage you now to list out the things that you want to achieve, the projects that you're trying to tackle here. And ask the why question of those projects. Why are we doing this? 6. Outcome Setting SMART Goals: Once you are clear on your purpose, the next step is to consider the outcome. What are we hoping to achieve by embarking on this project? What's the dream outcome of this? What do we hope will happen as a result? If we take the website example, then we hope to have more people seeing goes, more people getting onto our e-mail list, more people buying our products and services. And these are very tangible outcomes that we can define in terms of the project. So when it comes to defining outcomes, you can then give project's goals, right? You can have milestones and goals within a project. Milestones are time-bound goals, our project outcome focused. So if we were building a website, we could set a goal of X number of visitors, x number of subscribers, x number of sales. Then we can bind that goal outcome to a specific time. This is where smart goals come into play. So if we take a vague notion of AIG outcome of we want more sales, we can make that smart by being very specific. So we want to increase sales of online courses. We've been very specific, we've narrowed it down. We want to measure it by how much, by how much we want to increase sales of online courses. 25%, okay, now we're getting measurable because we can measure, Have we hit that target, have we increased by 25 per cent or not? Next, that target needs to be actionable and achievable. It needs to be realistic. And it also needs to be bound by time. Okay? So if we were to say, let's increase sales by 3,000 per cent in two days, then we're not actionable. It's not achievable, it's not realistic. So we want to make sure that we're hitting a target and setting a goal for ourselves that is actionable and realistic. So a 25% increase in what we're already doing in core sales as a result of the new website feels like an actionable and realistic goal. So we set a goal that is aspirational, but it's also realistic. And then the time-bound element is exactly that. We bind it to time. So we want to achieve these results within the next three months, within three months of launch in the website or whatever that time element makes sense for you. I want to lose to stone in 18 weeks. And at this end, and my target weight for this end goal is this. So you're creating this, this real definite map, time-bound map of what you're looking to achieve, what the outcome is. What that measurable, specific, smart goal around that outcome looks like. Your action steps here are to map out the dream outcome. What is it that you're hoping to achieve with this project? And then create yourself some smart goals, whether applicable, what are the measurable, achievable, realistic, time-bound frameworks within which you can measure the success because the project will start and end. And you want to have a sure-fire way of knowing whether it's been successful. So you can learn, so you can adapt, so you can be better next time, set out the outcome, write down those goals, and then you have a clear definition of what success looks like for your project. 7. Brainstorm What are the steps?: The brainstorm section is where we get to have fun. This is where you let your brain loose on this project, on this problem, on how we achieve that outcome. So what we've done is we've had an intention of a project. We've set out the framework of why we're doing this thing in the first place. And now we are attached to that outcome. We want to achieve that outcome. So you can let your brain run riot here. You can allow that wonderful natural process of brainstorming to just unfold as you do a complete brain dump, stream of consciousness, whatever it takes. If you're working with other people, you can do this in a team collaboratively, but ultimately, you are looking just to get down and out of you all of the things that needs to be considered in this project. So here you just do a mind association play and you allow the brain to work. It's natural magic. So we want to create a website, okay, we're going to need to think about pages, photographs, hosting. We're going to need to be thinking about security. We're going to think about the user journey. We want to think about what we want to say, content for the website, assets. We want to be thinking about all of these different things. And so now I've just allowing my brain to naturally think about these associations. And the idea in the brainstorm section is that you capture all of these associations. So you write them down or you write them down manually, you put them on post-its. You like to mind maps. So I like to mind map these things out. I'll just literally type them into a note and they'll appear as a mindmap in the software that I use called obsidian. And so here you are literally just dumping out of your head all of the possible things that we can consider when it comes to achieving the outcome. Now in this process, it's really important that you're focusing on the creative element, allowing your brain to unfold and to make those natural connections, allowing things to emerge in the way that our brain works. Your action step here is to take a blank piece of paper or a note, or a whiteboard or stickies or however you want to play and to brainstorm this project, how are you going to get to this outcome? What do you need to consider? What factors are at play? What comes up in your mind when you think about, okay, this is the intention. This is the outcome we're looking to get to. How are we going to get there? Ask yourself that question and brainstorm away. 8. Organize Prioritize the list: We've come such a long way. We have set our intention of what it is that we're looking to do what this project is. We have asked ourselves the why question. We have focused on the outcome that we're looking to achieve. And then we brainstorm a whole list of ideas of factors, of things to consider. And we've thrown a lot of mud at the wall, right? We've thrown so much out there. Now it's about organizing and structure. So here we take the brainstorm and we sift our way through all of these factors. We can give them weights of importance. We can discard them if they feel totally irrelevant towards achieving the outcome. And all the time you are measuring these things against, are they going to help us to create the outcome that we're looking for? If not, then you can discard them. If yes, then we want to start structuring these brainstormed outcomes into a prioritized list. We want to rearrange them and prioritize them so that we know this has to happen before this. And that's a critical piece and you're just trying to kind of create some form of order and structure out of the brainstormed chaos that came before it. This way you are able to prioritize what needs to happen. And that leads you to the final step in the process. So here you want to be thinking about priorities. You want to be thinking about sequences of things that can be grouped together. So we've wrote all of these different things down in the whiteboard. We've brainstormed all of these things in our mind map. These parts need to go together. These parts are related. These parts are nested within each other. So you're just trying to create some semblance of structure around your brainstorm. You're trying to create a prioritized organized list. From the brainstorm. You can filter, you can get rid of stuff, you can add new stuff if it's necessary, but it's a refinement of that first part of the process. 9. Next Actions What are the next steps?: The fifth and final part of the entire process is to ask yourself, what are the next steps? And this really is where the rubber meets the road and where we begin to action the project. We begin to put things into play. We come out of the planning phase and we go very much in to the doing part of the project. What do we need to do and in what order? So you take your organized list and if you think about it, we've been going through the same content often in these steps. And just reorganizing, restructuring and out of this process comes, and very naturally, a list of next steps. Well, we can't do this until that's been done. So we need to do this bit first and we need to map that. And then we can do this, we need to do this research and then we can do that. So if we were doing the website, we might have a look at the planning process of what we want to achieve, what content we want to create for the website. What have we got? What do we need to create? Who's going to be responsible for that? And so then you begin to create a logical and chronological structure to the next steps. If it helps, you can use a Gantt chart or map out in a calendar. You can just do this things on paper, right? You can do them very simply in terms of timelines of events, what needs to happen? And by when ultimately you're asking yourself the question, what are the next steps? And this is where you get to action the projects and put things into play. 10. Example of the Natural Planning Process in Action: So let's have some fun by running through a real life example. And I thought it would be good if we use this course as an example so that you can see the steps. Because I use, I use this planning process every day in my life, in my business. And so I thought it'd be helpful for you to see how I went about using this process to create this course. So let's dive in. I've started by noting what it is I'm looking to achieve, right? I want to create an online course in project planning. And let's just, I'm going to think out loud literally through this process of these steps so that you can see it in action. And so why do I want to create this course? So I want to, I want to help people be more productive. I want to generate income. Why am I doing it? Why am I doing this? I love teaching. I want to teach more. I wanted to teach them all. Okay? So what outcomes do I hope to achieve with this? I want to help more people. I want to generate income. Here, as you'll see when we look at setting smart goals in the outcomes, it's really about understanding what that looks like, right? So for me, a successful outcome here is to publish the course on Skillshare and on my website. Okay, now we brainstorm everything I need to do. I need to research planning methods. Reread David Allen's planning model. In GTD book. I need to map out course outline. I need to create student resources. I will need to shoot, edit, and publish videos. The course on Skillshare. Okay, so now we've got a list of some of the things that I think I need to cover in order to create this course. I'm going to organize these into a kind of priority structure. So it, there's no point me mapping out a course outline before I've done my research. So I'm going to research the planning methods and reread David Allen's book first. And then I'm going to map out the course outline. Okay, So these are the actions in order. Then once I've mapped out the course outline, I'm going to shoot, edit and publish the videos. And then once I've shot at the videos, I can then create the student resources that go alongside of those. Then I can publish on Skillshare. Okay, So now I've, I've organized my thinking into a structure in it and it kind of was in that linear chronological structure almost but not quite. So what I've done is I've just reorganized my thinking into a prioritized structure of exactly what I need to do and in what order. So once we've organized our thoughts, the next step is to map out what the next steps are. And here we can literally just be very prescriptive with ourselves. So schedule time to conduct initial research. And that can become an action, right? So we can make that an action for ourselves. So that becomes a task that I can do and then tick off once it's completed. We can create actions for what we need to do in that time schedule, reading time, or the book to my reading list or whatever it is that needs doing right? Now, getting into the action steps of how we're going to complete this project. I'm creating this course. So for me it's the research schedule, reading time. And then after that is completed, I will schedule scheduled time to map out. Now be my first and best next steps in completing this course. What I tend to try and do in practice as I use Notion timeline. So let me bring one of those up. I use a Timeline feature in Notion and I'll just map out all of the steps. This is how I would practically do this. I would look at the different action steps and then I would put them out into my calendar. So let's presume that was sat here on April 1st. And I'm gonna put a week worth of research and planning. And at the same time I can be reading the books. So during that time, I can be reading the book, book whilst I'm researching different planning methods out there. So that I feel a little bit more comfortable in terms of being at keeping abreast of what's available. And then I can, the next step is for me to map out the course outline. I think I can probably do that in just a small window of time, perhaps a few hours. So I'm going to drag that down to one day. Once I've mapped out the course outline, then I'm ready and good to shoot, edit, publish the videos. And so I'm gonna give myself about a week to do that. And then I'm going to drag that out so that we've got a full seven days to shoot, edit, and publish the shooting I can tend to do in one to two days. Editing will take the time and then publishing is a short and after that. So if I just give myself a guide as to what I can shoot, edit, and publish in. And then once I've edited the videos, I can start to create the student resources, which are the worksheets, graphics, anything that goes alongside of videos. So I tend to overlap these in my process for creating a course. And then once that's done, finally, I can hit the Publish button and launch on Skillshare. So if we look at this project in its entirety now, I've got a start date here, April 3rd, and then product launch date, April 25th. So I'm guesstimating this project is going to take about three weeks from start to finish. And so now we have not just planned out the project from the wide perspective. We've brainstormed everything that we need to do. We've organized that brainstorm, and then we've mapped out what those next steps are in a very practical, very actionable way. 11. Your Turn: And there you have it. We've looked at the natural planning model, aligning our planning and our productivity around projects with the way that our brain naturally works. We've looked at the purpose. Why are we doing this? We've focused ourselves on the outcome, what we're looking to achieve. We've brainstormed and allow those connections to be created around how we're going to achieve that outcome. Then we've organized and prioritized that brainstorm. We've asked ourselves what next, so that we've got a clear plan of attack. If you take this approach, you can and we'll knock it out of the park when it comes to projects. Of course, look, there are projects of different degrees, different sizes. Some projects can be great behemoths that involve multiple people and resources. And all of those things are the projects can be super simple, personal things that you're trying to achieve. This framework works equally well for both of those, all of that spectrum. So my challenge of my invitation to you right now is to sit down to map out your next project using the natural planning model, using the steps that I've outlined in this class, asking why first and then going through each of the steps in turn, share your results. I would love to see how you've mapped out your project, what your timeline looks like, what your mind-map looks like, share elements that you're comfortable sharing with the group. I'll be happy to give you feedback and help you as you become the most productive version of you that you can be.