The Power of Planning

Words Jade Thomas

Planning: something we all know we should do if we want to have a successful day, week or even career but maybe a skill that some of us feel we could improve. So how do we successfully plan and why does careful planning seem to be one of the keys to success?

When I see a client for therapy, no matter what issue they come to me with I always try and educate them on the issue or why this issue is persisting for them. I explain that often in this situation knowledge can be power and you don’t always need a list of tools and strategies to solve a problem, sometimes you just need a deeper understanding of the ‘why?’ in order to change or improve your behaviour. So why should we incorporate planning into our lives? Why is planning so important?

There are many psychological benefits as a result of successful planning. Firstly, planning or preparing for something whether that is planning your work week, a presentation or even a trip,brings a sense of control which in turn lowers our anxiety levels. When we feel more in control of a situation, we are less likely to feel anxious as anxiety usually comes from a sense of feeling out of control.

Planning can also increase your clarity, which can then enhance your confidence. For example, if you feel well prepared and clear about a big presentation you must give at work, you are more likely to feel more confident about the situation. On the other hand, if you leave your preparation for the presentation until 20 minutes beforehand and you walk into the situation not feeling clear about what you are going to say, this can not only increase your anxiety but also decrease your confidence which can then impact your performance. Finally, planning can also help you to achieve your goals in the sense that it increases consistency and often that is how goals are achieved. Want to run a marathon? You need to train consistently leading up to the marathon. Want to complete a degree? You need to attend lectures and produce work consistently. Want to write a book? You need to write consistently. All of these end goals not only require consistency, but they also require a sense of planning alongside it. You cannotwork consistently without having some sort of plan to follow, to ensure you are staying on track.

So, the next question is how? How can I effectively incorporate planning into my life as one of the keys to success?

Lots of the planning for success involves creating habits, whether that is daily habits, weekly habits or monthly habits. Again, the art of creating habits creates a sense of consistency.

A good place to start is to start by planning out your week. You can do this on Sunday if you want to hit the ground running first thing Monday morning or if you prefer to keep your working week separate from your weekend you can spend some time mapping out your week on Monday morning. Planning out your week can help to reduce any sense of overwhelm and helps you to break tasks down or spread the less important or imminent tasks out across the week.

Another way to plan for the week ahead is by meal prepping and outfit planning. Both very simple tasks but, you will be surprised how much time this can save you each day. By planning out your meals for the week not only saves you time but can also help you stick to healthy eating rather than ordering in that takeaway midweek because time just ran away with you and can also help to cut costs of eating out or ordering food.

Another way you can incorporate planning more broadly into your life is by goal setting, another element often used in psychotherapy. People often set themselves goals or resolutions at new year, but once January has past these are often easily forgotten about. Start by setting yourself yearly goals and then break those yearly goals down into more manageable, stepping stone, monthly and weekly goals, this ensures again that consistency which helps you to stay on track, ultimately helping you to achieve the overarching bigger yearly goals.

Finally, make sure you are planning time for rest. Rest is so important and often neglected in today’s ‘hustle culture’, ‘sleep when your dead’ society. But at the end of the day, without rest you cannot perform to the highest of your ability. We often associate resting time to be ‘unproductive’ or ‘a waste of time’, but actually taking time to rest and recover can be one of the most productive things you do as it recharges your battery’s so you can perform. Think about it like this, when our phone run’s out of battery we don’t start calling it ‘lazy’, we accept it has run out of battery, plug it in and use it again when its fully charged. Our bodies work in the same way, so remember to plan some charging time for yourself during your week.