Stop Planning. Just Do It.
Yes, I mean it — put down the lists and the outlines and the brainstorms and just start somewhere. Even better, start at the point that makes you most excited about whatever project it is you are considering. This advice might sound counter-intuitive and I think it actually is. And let me say, if meticulous planning works wonders for your productivity, no need to switch it up. However, if you find yourself thinking, ideating, and occasionally planning with nothing to show for it, this article might be for you.
As a software engineer I love the idea of sprint planning and having Jira stories that tell me exactly what I have on my plate for the week. I’ve attempted to do that kind of panning in my own personal development work and it just does not work as well. It turns out that there is a very good reason that we have an entire team of people determining what should be in those stories, which take priority, and who should be working on what. It’s a serious amount of work to plan a project and there’s so much that can’t be anticipated. In my personal time I have not found success with a similar model.
It’s funny — I remember growing up and hearing constantly that I was such a planner. I liked to make lists and plan for events and trips. The rest of my family is not this way, so I guess it stood out. I even remember it being fun. In reality, I am terrible at planning effectively, but I do love anticipation. As a teenager I just liked thinking about the future and planning for it was the best way to go about that. My plans were never set in stone, I just liked to make believe about how life might be one day. I guess the adults never picked up on the fact that I rarely followed through with these plans.
In my adult life I still behave this way, but it’s not such a positive trait. It leads directly to procrastination. If I sit down and plan for an hour every once in a while it feels like I’m making progress, but I never actually do anything. I have lists and Trello tasks and wireframes and mood boards, but no actual product ever magically materializes. So to break this bad habit and actually get some work done I am throwing all this planning nonsense out the window and starting from scratch.
Putting Ideas to Practice
It sounds chaotic to just work in some random direction and hope the final product is solid. In all honesty it is more unorganized than I am used to. However, I have gotten more done in the last couple months by practicing this “workflow” than I did in years of dreaming and planning (read: procrastinating). In order to keep my life somewhat on track I do have a system for making notes without sitting down to work immediately when I have an idea — seeing as I work eight hours a day, that is just not feasible.
Make a Note
Throughout my day, if I have an idea I jot it down somewhere. I do have a standard for where I make note so that I know where to look in the future and I don’t just lose track of all my good ideas. For ideas that I want to write about I create a new story on Medium, give it a working title, and jot a quick summary down. Then I get back to work with a clear mind. I have a sticky note app on my phone for jotting down quick ideas for development projects. It’s a pretty simple system and you could probably devise something more sophisticated, but this works well for me. I like the immediacy of it.
Just Do Something
Once I have time to spend on an idea I can sit down and get to work. Lately my creative endeavor has been writing, so I would open up my list of unpublished stories on Medium and pick the title that sounds most interesting to me in the moment. I have saved a quick summary, so I can quickly jump back to that train of thought. In the past I would have sat down and tried to outline the story but I have so many unfinished outlines floating around in Evernote and OneNote and who knows where else. I’ll admit it — I jumped between note taking apps thinking that the tool was the problem.
Surprise! It wasn’t.
What About Larger Projects?
You might argue that there are some things that need to be planned in order to function. You might be right, depending on your goals. If you can sit down and plan things and actually act on it you project will probably move more quickly and smoothly. That’s why I do not follow this philosophy in my actual work life — no one’s trying to deliver bug fixes on my whim. But if you’re working without a deadline, planning will likely stretch on and there’s no way you can account for the ideas and issues you’re going to run across later in the process.
One example might be that I’ve been working on a personal portfolio/blog for a while now. I’m being stubborn and building my website from scratch using Ruby on Rails. That seems like something that should be planned, and sure, I drew wireframes and decided what pages to include ahead of time. But then I set my notebook aside and got to work building the app without any more futzing around with a color board or UI design planning. I’m not a frontend developer so this is where I would get stuck, so I skipped it! And I honestly made more progress on this attempt than any in the past by using my theory of “just do something.” A couple of times I even had an idea about a feature to add. I made note and then at my next convenience worked it out right there in the code. Magical. I have functionality and not just a pile of lists and research notes!
However, I have hit a wall and am having some trouble deciding what content to put on a couple of the pages. So, sure, sometimes you’re going to get stuck with or without planning. In this case I would likely have gotten stuck at the planning step for these pages, so at least I got a lot done before I had writers block on my bio. At this point I take a break and revisit the project in a week or so to see if I’ve had any epiphanies. Usually I have not figured out how to boil my life and ambitions down to a couple sentences and I go back to my “just do something” strategy. This can work at the lowest level to help break that creative block. If you’re stuck on one thing, just try something. If it doesn’t work then try something else or move on to a different something. At least you’re getting something done and not just staring at a screen or taking notes that you will never look at again.
Bend But Don’t Break
The most important concept in this workflow is flexibility. I am naturally a spontaneous person and I enjoy change. This is fun sometimes, but it means I jump between projects easily and have many abandoned projects laying around. The key to this freestyle strategy is that when I’m ready to sit down and work on something, I start with my backlog. Go back and see what ideas I’ve come up with in the past and try to spontaneously reignite my interest.
This is an important note to remember and if you’ve gotten this far into my freestyle concept you likely relate to my spontaneous nature. If that is the case, here’s a word of caution. You are building this workflow around your own needs, but do not allow it to take over. Be flexible with yourself and allow yourself to work on whichever project motivates you in the moment — that is where you will make the most progress. But try to be strict about not completely abandoning projects unless you have good reason — I have totally scrapped a couple projects when I realized they were not going to work. But if you’ve just lost interest, keep it in your backlog and encourage yourself to revisit it in the future. In this way you can balance your spontaneousness with good old fashioned determination.
TL;DR
- Define a system of idea management that works for you and helps to keep your spontaneous ideas on paper, not floating around in your head or being lost to time.
- When you have an idea, write it down and move on.
- When you have time to work on personal projects, pull out your list and just get started.
- Keep a backlog of ideas and projects that are in progress so that you can revisit past ideas when you have time.
- Be flexible with yourself and find what works for you.
If you need more encouragement, enjoy this motivational speech from the great Shia LeBeouf.
Good luck out there !
