Nifty Human Planning Trick for Meeting Goals
“We overestimate what we can accomplish in a day, but we underestimate what we can accomplish in a year.”
– Chris Guillebeau, Time Anxiety
When it comes to accomplishing your goals, do you do an annual planning session i.e. planning for the year ahead?
If not, you might want to. Here’s why:
“Longer planning cycles are both healthier and more effective than short ones.”
– Chris Guillebeau, Time Anxiety
In fact, taking a bit of time to plan for the year might actually be more effective than planning for each day.
That might sound counterintuitive but the reality is that, according to Chris Guillebeau, author of Time Anxiety; The Illusion of Urgency and a Better Way to Live, most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a day – but underestimate what they can accomplish in a year.
I don’t know about you but for most of life, my daily to-do lists (especially the work related ones) were always way too ambitious. I think that’s the case for many people, Guillebeau included.
“All too often,” the author confesses, “I try to cram too many things on a single day’s to-do list, only to fail at completing any important items at all. The lack of progress feels discouraging and can even become a self-fulfilling prophecy: the more I attempt, the less I accomplish. Then I feel bad, and since I tend to revert to this pattern over and over, the cycle continues.”
Does this familiar? If so, don’t worry. We can do things differently!
“Yet I know if I plan well,” continues the author, “not overscheduling myself and connecting the day-to-day with a greater, long-term purpose – over time I can do so much! Recognizing this distinction led to a core principle that I use for my annual planning session.”
And that core principle is this:
“We overestimate what we can accomplish in a day, but we underestimate what we can accomplish in a year.”
– Chris Guillebeau
That’s why it is important to do an annual planning session in the first place: if you take the time to write down everything you want to accomplish in the year ahead, then you know what you want to achieve…even if the list seems outrageously ambitious.
If you can see all the important-to-you goals on your annual list, that helps give you clarity on what needs to be top priority tasks on your daily to-do lists. It also helps you say NO to activities that are going to prevent you from achieving what you want to for the year.
If in theory, you would like to do an annual planning session for the goals you want to achieve over the coming year, don’t hold back simply because you’re afraid of not achieving what you set out to! You probably have more time than you think.
“Most of us have access to lots of time,” says Guillebeau, “if we choose to use it well.”
That’s the catch: if we choose to use it well.
Because the reality is…we often waste an astounding amount of time on activities that are certainly not moving the needle forward on our dreams and goals. And most of the time, we are doing these activities (or saying yes to doing them) on auto-pilot…not even questioning how we are habitually spending our precious time!
Thankfully, however, there is still a lot of time available to us…if we look at it from the bigger perspective of a year.
“The sum total of 365 days a year gives you a lot of runway,” says Guillebeau. “Once I started thinking about this longer time span, bigger goals became much more obtainable.”
Not only that. “Thinking about time in this way is also less stressful,” says the author. “The goal is not to pack more in, but to pay attention and make deliberate choices.”
Personally, I have found this to be true…especially in recent months, with my daily workload significantly increased. There is no way I could possibly accomplish all the tasks on my daily to-do list. And I’m okay with that because I put the most important tasks – the moving-the-needle-forward-on-my-goals ones – at the TOP of the list…so those do get done. The rest of the tasks get moved to the next day.
How about you?
What are your thoughts on the idea that we likely overestimate what we can accomplish in a day…but we underestimate what we can accomplish in a year?
Maryanne Pope is the author of “A Widow’s Awakening.” She also writes screenplays, playscripts & blogs. Maryanne is the CEO of Pink Gazelle Productions and Co-Founder of the John Petropoulos Memorial Fund. To receive her blog, “Weekly Words of Wisdom,” please subscribe here. And be sure to visit our PinkGazelleCards Etsy shop.