Do you want to know 5 mistakes in planning and how you can avoid them so you can follow your plans to completion, regardless of what profession or situation you are in?
If so, then read on because I will tell you about these mistakes and how you can avoid them so you can follow your plans like a pro.
With all of this said, let’s get right into the first mistake.
Mistake #1: Getting Too Emotional
Let me tell you a story that will allow this point to sink in really well.
I was on a plan to handle a personal situation with my mother.
To successfully execute this plan, I had to make sure that I was emotionally untempted to do what I wanted to do and to stay the course in what I had to do.
Unfortunately, I don’t do that.
I got too emotional and I lost it (well, not quite; read on and I’ll tell you how this move was great after all).
I started saying things I know I couldn’t say and disagreements ensued.
I was disappointed with myself.
I knew that I needed to be more disciplined when it came to following a plan when dealing with someone in person.
As a result, the plan failed.
BUT, I got lucky.
This thing I did actually helped me resolve the situation I was having.
When I looked at the sales ideology behind what happened, I quickly realized why what I did worked in resolving the situation.
Nonetheless, I had to learn my lessons and be better at controlling my emotions when I need to follow the plan I need to follow.
As the saying goes, it’s sometimes better to be lucky than good.
Now, this is just one case study of how getting too emotional can drive you off course from your plan.
Let’s take a look at another case study to prove this point even further.
The 2019-2020 Los Angeles Clippers were supposed to be the NBA’s best team that season after adding superstar forward Kawhi Leonard and adding all-star forward Paul George through free agency and trade the offseason before that season started.
Their plan was to win a championship and to dominate the NBA.
The pundits picked them to win it all and they had all of these championship expectations for the year.
Throughout the year, things couldn’t have gone any different.
The team lacked chemistry, the team did not feel loyal to Kawhi Leonard or Paul George, they didn’t trust each other and, eventually, their heart wasn’t into it.
As a result, they underperformed in the playoffs and were eliminated in the 2nd round to the Denver Nuggets.
Across the entire season, the team wasn’t happy, they were dissatisfied with what was going on and eventually, these negative emotions got the best of them and the disappointing outcome ensued.
The story with the Clippers shows that negative emotions affect your judgment to the point where you cannot stay focused on what matters most, which is following your plan to successful execution.
If you let your emotions get the best of you, an outcome like the one with the Clippers will happen in your situation.
So don’t let that situation happen to you.
Now, here is an often overlooked situation that can negatively affect your judgment when planning things.
Mistake #2: Making Decisions When You Are Hungry and Tired
These are extremely addictive to do, but the side effects can backfire if not managed well.
Let me explain.
We, humans, live off of an order of preferences called the hierarchy of needs.
This diagram explains the order of our physiological preferences.
As we live our lives, we evaluate ourselves in these stages.
If we see that our current situation negatively affects one of the earlier stages, we change our behavior to satisfy that need.
When it comes to making decisions when we are hungry, the physiological need for hunger takes preference when it is not satisfied.
Hence, your thinking becomes one where you need to make decisions that favor you in the short term rather than the long term.
This is what causes everyone’s thinking to become impulsive during times of hunger and what leads to desperate decisions.
A lot of times, these decisions are not according to the plan you set yourself out to achieve.
As a result, they backfire more than they help.
In fact, research supports this point.
In an experiment where the researchers asked 50 participants to make a set of decisions when they are hungry and when they are not, the researchers indicated that when people are not hungry, they were willing to wait 35 days to double a reward.
On the flip side, when the participants were hungry, they were only willing to wait 3 days for the bigger reward.
This goes to show how hunger leads to impulsive decisions and can make you deviate from your plan.
With regards to sleep, sleeping well affects many things like memory recall, how you exercise, your mood the next day, what you eat the next day, and the associated calories you consume as a result (which can affect your health goals).
All of these things considered can play a role in how you execute your plan (and your ability to plan) in that if not monitored and fixed, any of these things can enable you to make poor decisions about your lifestyle.
For instance, let’s take moodiness.
When you have less sleep, you become very stressed and irritated.
This affects judgment in many ways in that it makes you less aware of your surroundings and, in the case of this situation, makes you crash your car.
In fact, it’s proven that driving behind the wheel while asleep is actually just as bad as drunk driving.
Additionally, planning and executing a plan without much sleep makes you susceptible to making riskier decisions regarding a situation and it also causes you to lose attention to what you are doing, which can have a ripple effect on everything you do afterward.
This is obviously a bad thing and it causes you to consistently make questionable decisions.
Over time, these questionable decisions will lead up to a bad track record and can ultimately get you fired or dropped by a client.
You don’t want that.
So, the next time you are hungry or tired, do NOT make choices about your situation (unless you are in an emergency).
Instead, try this:
1. When you feel tired or hungry, step back. Take a deep breath and compose yourself.
2. Resolve the situations you have and come back to the situation when any of these situations are resolved.
3. If possible, set a bedtime and stick to it. Stay away from electronic devices for at least one hour before bedtime to help you fall asleep.
Note: It is OK to use electronic devices for learning only. For instance, you are using the electronic device to learn things.
Of course, the preferred way is a book, but if you need to learn with an electronic device, by all means, go for it.
Here’s another trap people fall into when planning things and executing things:
Mistake #3: You Don’t Know Your End Goal
This is a big recipe for disaster.
Picture this:
Imagine you are a passenger on a ship.
The captain says that you are going to be taken to destination A.
However, 3 hours later, the captain says that you are now being taken to destination B.
Then, an hour later, the captain says that you are being taken to destination C.
Assuming you didn’t go to destinations A, B, and/or C within a few minutes, would you question what you got yourself into?
And if so, would you trust the captain in taking you anywhere?
This is how a plan with no direction works.
The person/people executing the plan do not have any clue as to where they are going and as a result, they don’t have a set of clear steps they need to take in order to go where they need to go.
This is a problem.
Any action without an intended action to an intended destination is a reckless pursuit at best.
People will start to question one another and this will lead to arguments, disagreements, and broken relationships.
This isn’t what you want.
You want the opposite.
You want great relationships, a solid team that works together towards a common goal, and everyone being on the same page with no drama.
This all starts with defining the end goal from the start and it will allow the whole ship to travel from point A to B with no confusion.
Otherwise, confusion will commence and all hell will break loose.
Of course, you must articulate what’s in it for the other people to help you achieve your goal so you can get them motivated to help you, but that’s a story for another day.
The bottom line is that if you know what the end goal is for what you are hoping to achieve, you’ll be able to develop the necessary action steps required to achieve that goal and to have more certainty in what you are doing since everyone knows their part and everyone knows what they need to do to get to the goal.
THIS is what eliminates the fear and confusion in what everyone is doing combined with setting SMART goals.
So if you take this advice and implement it in your own life, you are in a much better position to achieve your goals through effective planning with detailed targeted steps versus the other guys who are just winging it and will waste time.
From this part of the post, I recommend these action steps:
Know what you want. If you don’t know what you want, find out what it is.
After knowing what you want, find out what specific knowledge you need in order to achieve the goal (ex. University, books, a career coach, etc.)
Make a SMART plan to achieve the end goal
Execute
And note,
1. Research
2. Plan
3. Commit
4. Execute
If you follow this simple formula, your chances of success in what you do will drastically increase.
Now, here’s another mistake in planning that can completely derail you if you don’t plan for it.
Mistake #4: Underestimating Your Circumstances
Let’s face it.
Not everything in life will go according to plan.
In most cases, it never goes according to plan.
But, there are ways to eliminate some of the negative effects of following a plan.
One of these ways is to properly understand the circumstances regarding your situation and to act accordingly because of this situation so that you aren’t disappointed in the end.
As an example, let’s look at one sports team and how underestimating their opponent cost them big time when it mattered the most.
The 2019 Tampa Bay Lightning had a spectacular regular season.
Literally.
They tied the record for the best regular season in NHL history and were literally dominating opponents left and right every night on the ice.
No one could present a legitimate challenge to them.
Until the playoffs.
One player on the Lightning said that the team felt they could “take their foot off the pedal” after a successful regular season.
Boy was that a mistake.
In the first round of the playoffs, Columbus Blue Jackets head coach John Tortorella gave a really motivating speech to his players in the locker room.
You can see that speech here.
The result?
A 4-0 sweep of the Tampa Bay Lightning in the first round of the playoffs.
Very shocking since Tampa Bay was projected to win the Stanley Cup that year in an overwhelming fashion.
Now how does this apply to your life?
In life, there are so many times when something can seem so easy that little effort is required to adequately prepare for them.
In reality, the effort required to prepare and complete these things is much greater.
This is where people have a difficult time completing what would otherwise be an easy task.
They simply don’t properly estimate the amount of effort required to properly execute a task.
And there is a great lesson to be learned here.
Always prepare for everything like you are about to take the hardest test of your life.
Be prepared for every possible thing that can get thrown your way and do NOT put in a lackluster effort in anything that you do.
If you put in a lackluster effort in anything, you will be disappointed at the end, and you certainly do not want that.
Now here is arguably the worst mistake in planning to strike the face of many people across the world.
Mistake #5: NOT DOING YOUR RESEARCH!
This is the killing curse of anyone doing something.
Let me explain further to put this into perspective.
Let’s go back to the ship example from earlier.
Let’s say that the captain didn’t research his destinations before. He just travels to anywhere that might seem like it “makes sense.”
He goes from one place to another without any sense of direction.
Clearly, he will be clueless as to where he is going and, frankly, if you were on that ship, you wouldn’t trust him in getting you to where you need to go.
Does that sound like a good plan for success?
Not doing research into what you are doing can have drastic consequences in a variety of endeavors from starting a business to picking a major for university.
To prove this point, let’s say that you are trying to start a business.
However, you jump into creating a product without knowing who your target audience is nor whether there is any demand for the product you created.
How will this end up?
Not good.
This is arguably the main reason why most businesses fail even if they have startup capital. They speculate instead of relying on data for product demand.
On the point of picking a major for university, let’s say that you always wanted to major in Women’s Studies and you select it as your major.
However, when you graduate, you realize that there is no one employing Women Studies majors.
The result?
Major disappointment at the end of the curriculum.
How could this have been avoided?
Through adequate research of the circumstances before committing to the major.
And this is why research is critical to any successful venture of any kind.
Without it, you are literally playing the lottery as to whether or not whatever you are doing will work or not.
So the bottom line is to do your research before you embark on anything that has major consequences to your life if done incorrectly.
And as mentioned earlier, follow this framework:
Research
Plan
Commit
Execute
If you can boil down your steps to those 4 fundamentals, you’ll be in good shape.
And those are 5 mistakes in planning that you should always avoid if at all possible.
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Until next time,
This is Evan signing off.
PS: Comment below with what results you got out of this post as a result of following its advice. It’d be great to know.
Evan Cruz
Evan Cruz is the founder of Join the Island, the website committed to helping young adults become massively productive and reach their full potential.
He has been featured on Vox, OnlineU, and UpJourney. He has also a cited human relations expert and college expert.
He graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Civil Engineering.
Read more about Evan and Join the Island here.