Islam Abdul Maksoud's List: Marked

• Life can get pretty complicated sometimes, and it’s easy to get knocked off track by external pressures if you don’t know precisely where you’re headed. When you’re working for several days on a particular project, and a new opportunity comes along in a totally different area, it can be tough to make a clear decision if you aren’t able to mentally pull your mind out of that project and see the forest for the trees. Having a written plan you can review at any time makes it easy to review your current situation from a bird’s eye view, so you can make more consistent decisions.
• Life can get pretty complicated sometimes, and it’s easy to get knocked off track by external pressures if you don’t know precisely where you’re headed. When you’re working for several days on a particular project, and a new opportunity comes along in a totally different area, it can be tough to make a clear decision if you aren’t able to mentally pull your mind out of that project and see the forest for the trees. Having a written plan you can review at any time makes it easy to review your current situation from a bird’s eye view, so you can make more consistent decisions.
• goal setting
• what I expect to happen, such as how long I think it will take to complete a particular project. Invariably I’ll get a few weeks into my plan, and I’ll hit a snag. So I go back to my list of assumptions and look for any that may have turned out to be wrong. Then I can adjust those assumptions and update the plan accordingly. But if I find that all the assumptions still seem to be accurate, then I usually feel safe that the heart of the high-level plan is still OK — I may just need to alter the way I’m currently implementing it.

• But now that my life is much more complicated, it helps me cut through the possible quagmire of confusion and really focus. The more complicated my life gets, the more important I find it to spend time clarifying my goals and plans.

   

  The main thing a written plan does for me is gives me a sense of peace, knowing that I’ve thought everything through consciously, and everything is covered.
• It’s only by creating a high-level plan that I can trust that I’m able to achieve the right balance and get the really important things done while consciously deciding what areas can afford less attention. I can trust the plan because I know I spent the time thinking things through to create it, so it acts as a tool that helps me simplify and speed up daily decisions.

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