“Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable” is probably one of my favorite quotes about planning. This is to mean that things are rarely going exactly as planned, but the value of going through the exercise of planning is so great because it prepares you for many possible scenarios, it makes you think about the problem more holistically with the end in mind and spread over time.

The new year is coming soon and I am working on my next new year resolution. I’ve been doing those since 2011 (yup, that’s about 14 years). I’m often obsessed with creating annual plans and meticulously following them. Oftentimes this brings me the results. I think the reason why I ended up at Meta in the US was because it was on my “Career Strategy” document and I did plan for it, I did put some work behind that. Other years I’ve built some habits like doing exercises often or finally made myself wake up early in the morning after many years of struggle. So, yes, I do see very and very tangible results of my annual plannings.

Now, where can this go wrong? You can have a perfect plan and execution but if your direction is wrong you end up in the wrong place. The way to think about this is in mathematical vectors, vectors have both a direction and a velocity. Too much velocity off course and you are further away than steady slow pace but in the right direction. This is both applicable to projects at work, like writing perfect code for a feature that no user cares about, or personal life, like pushing to buy a big house to only realize later in life you missed out on experiences in life.

As I write my next annual plan I am trying to be more deliberate about the direction. Yes, I will still have my spreadsheet and my habit trackers, I can’t help it. But I think this time around I will  be placing more emphasis on long term goals and if my plans bring me there and also challenging the plans some some proper checks, like:

• The Why Check: If I achieve this goal perfectly, will I actually be happier/better off, or am I just doing it because it seems like the “next logical step” or “just the right thing to do”?
• The Vector Check: Am I optimizing for speed in a direction I might want to abandon next year?

Being honest with answering these questions might be challenging, but that’s the right thing to do. I encourage people to do planning for all of the aspects of their life. The mental exercise of understanding your constraints and resources is indispensable. Just going through that exercise might reveal something you didn’t realize earlier and even if things won’t go as you planned, you would know to do a better job next time and succeed next time around. Give it a try.