Getting Things Done

CHAPTER 3
| GETTING PROJECTS CREATIVELY UNDER WAY: THE FIVE PHASES OF PLANNING
Did you ever have to do that, create an outline to begin with?
Did you ever stare at a Roman numeral I at the top of your page
for a torturous period of time and decide that planning and orga-
nizing ahead of time were for people very different from you?
Probably.
In the end, I did learn to write outlines. I just wrote the
report first, then made up an outline from the report, after the
fact.
That's what most people learned about planning from our
educational system. And I still see outlines done after the fact, just
to please the authorities. In the business world, they're often
headed "Goals" and "Objectives." But they still have very little to
do with what people are doing or what they're inspired about.
These documents are sitting in drawers and in e-mails some-
where, bearing little relationship to operational reality.
The Reactive Planning Model
The unnatural planning model is what most people consciously
think of as "planning," and because it's so often artificial and
irrelevant to real work, people just don't plan. At least not on the
front end: they resist planning meetings, presentations, and
strategic operations until the last minute.
But what happens if you don't plan ahead of
time? In many cases, crisis! ("Didn't you get the tick-
ets? I thought you were going to do that?!") Then,
when the urgency of the last minute is upon you, the
reactive planning model ensues.
What's the first level of focus when the stuff
hits the fan? 
Action! 
Work harder! Overtime! More people! Get
busier! And a lot of stressed-out people are thrown at the situa-
tion.
Then, when having a lot of busy people banging into
each other doesn't resolve the situation, someone gets more
61
When you find
yourself in a hole,
stop digging.
— Will

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THE ART OF GETTING THINGS DONE |