Slow thinking allows you to take the time to plan ahead. It’s one of its biggest benefits. There are quite a few good reasons to work on planning ahead. If this isn’t something you do on a regular basis, I hope this blog post inspires you to get started. If you’re already a planner, good for you. Keep reading. Maybe you’ll pick up a new tip or two.
Planning Ahead Helps You Manage Your Time and Energy
I don’t know about you, but whenever I jump feet first into a new project, I tend to greatly underestimate how much time and energy it will take. By the end of the day, I’m exhausted and disappointed in how little I got done. Except I didn’t do a little. I got a lot done, but I needed to manage my expectations better.
Planning ahead can help you do this. It can also help you make sure that your day includes a mix of hard and easy tasks. You can’t work on something mentally or physically exhausting for eight to ten hours straight. Maybe you can – but it’s not a good long-term strategy. Instead, plan your day and make sure it is filled with a mix of tasks that require your full concentration and easy, mind-less tasks. Plan your day and see if you don’t come out of it feeling more accomplished and less exhausted than before.
Planning Ahead Eliminates Procrastination
Getting started on a project or figuring out what your next step will be is hard work. So, what do we do instead of getting started? We procrastinate. We clean out our email inbox or the fridge instead of working on the important project that’s due next week.
Planning ahead can help you avoid procrastinating. Start by mapping out your plan. What do you need to do first? What’s your next step? And the next? Write it all down. Then sit down and get to work. Focus only on your first step. It won’t seem as overwhelming, and you won’t be tempted to go find busywork. Before you know it, you will have made progress. That creates the momentum you need to keep going.
Whenever you find yourself procrastinating, stop and plan ahead. It will help you take those all-important first steps.
Planning Ahead Keeps You from Backtracking
Let’s wrap this up with the biggest benefit of planning ahead. It keeps you from having to backtrack as much as you would if you just jump into any new project. We’ve all done this. We’re excited to start and forge right ahead. Twenty percent in we realize that we did something wrong early on. We have to go back to the beginning and start over, or at the very least, spend lots of precious time fixing things.
Backtracking is a huge waste of time, but more importantly, it’s demoralizing. Nothing takes the fun and excitement out of a job than having to undo and redo work you’ve already done. Save yourself some time and stay excited about what you do by planning ahead.
I hope these thoughts on some of the benefits of planning ahead have been helpful and that they inspire you to take the time to think and plan before you act.
