If you Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail.

There seem to be two competing perspectives on the benefits, and even the necessity of planning.  While it’s easy to criticize planning, as discussed in Less Wrong’s Planning Fallacy, and Signal Vs. Noise’s commentary on the post, I believe it’s missing a critical factor.  Attributing the results associated with poor or improper planning is not justification for skipping it all together. 

It is clear that planning can go wrong, and that there is an inherant inaccuracy associated with people’s initial estimate.  This can be seen every day when asking someone how much time they have left on a given task.  It will almost always result in a low estimate, as many studies have shown.  Recognizing this fallacy, as Less Wrong discusses is vitally important.  By recognizing the risk of inaccurate planning, you can address it head on, and consequently improve your estimating.  Furthermore, deriving a process by which you plan and estimate to combat your inherant fallacies, then validating the results and refining the process, you can consistently improve the planning process and it’s accuracy. 

Next time you make an estimate, ask yourself “If I am wrong by 25%, is this still a good decision?”  If you can confirm that even given the traditional fallacy you are still in a good situation, the risk is significantly reduced.

No plan will be 100% accurate, so it is clear that waiting for the perfect plan is simply foolish, but discounting the exercise entirely is equally as foolish. 

While it’s not as cool to tout the benefits of old fashioned planning, done correctly with an established process and constant result driven improvement, it can yield great benefits.  I am currently in the process of planning a new process for a business venture, and as I develop it will be sharing the plan, as well as the results with you.

So, keep thinking forward and working backward, just know when to quit thinking, and when to start working!