Stop Waiting for the Perfect Plan, Make a Smart Guess

(Transcript edited for clarity.)

Hi, I'm Wes. Welcome to Stop Waiting for the Perfect Plan, Make a Smart Guess, or I like to say Make an Educated Guess.

So often when we talk about creating systems or plans or set out goal plans, we do a lot of research, or at least I do, because we want the perfect plan.

But there's a danger in perfection.

Sometimes the perfect plan is not perfect. It means it's good enough so that you can start taking action.

And sometimes to do that, you need to make an educated or a smart guess.

So here's today's question that you can think of as we're going through this episode that might help you.

What is the best decision I can make with the information I already have?

So every time I get ready to create a new system or start working towards a new goal, I go into information gathering mode.

So I gather information.

But there's a danger when trying to put together the perfect plan.

So really the theme of today's episode is don't strive for perfection.

Strive for good enough, because if you continue to work your systems correctly, get feedback when you're taking action, and then adjust for your next step, that's where perfection comes.

Perfection doesn't come at the beginning. You're working towards perfection.

So that's the theme of today.

Perfection can work against you.

So again, keep this question in mind as we go through all these points.

What's the best decision that you can make right now with the information that you currently have?

Okay. Most important decisions come with uncertainty.

Let's think about you want to achieve some goal.

Now, if it's a big goal, there's probably going to be a lot of steps.

There's probably some uncertainty involved.

You're not certain how you're going to get from here to there.

If you were certain, it would be easy.

Now, a lot of small goals might be fairly easy.

It might be very straightforward.

Most people don't think of this as a goal, but here's an example of something simple that probably is pretty certain.

When you get up in the morning and you need to go to town, so you want to get dressed.

The goal is to get dressed.

You don't need an elaborate plan.

This is not a big goal system thing.

Even though you do use a system that you've created over time, you just haven't thought of it as a system.

So you know where your clothes are.

You know what you need to wear.

You go to wherever your clothes are.

You get dressed.

Then you go to town.

See, that doesn't require a tremendous amount of uncertainty.

You know where the clothes are.

You know what you can wear.

That is simple.

Now let's look at a different type of goal.

Let's say you want to create a business, a side business, and you want to create something that will generate an extra $1,000 a month for you.

That has a lot more uncertainty to it at the beginning.

You might have an idea of what kind of business that you want to add.

You probably know what your skills are, what your talents are, the resources that you have currently, but you really might not understand or know how you're going to market the business or whatever it is, how it's going to make enough money, how much time you're going to have to put into it at the beginning.

So there is some uncertainty.

See, there's two different levels of goals there.

You got to get dressed, go to town.

Not a huge goal.

You've already got pretty much the perfect plan.

Trying to add a side business where you're going to make an extra $1,000 a month, much more complicated plan, much more uncertainty.

Now, I've created a lot of side businesses, main businesses, etc., and no matter what the goal is with them, they all have challenges, complications, and there's always some level of uncertainty, usually throughout the entire goal process.

So don't be afraid of uncertainty.

On the other hand, don't shoot for perfection before you start.

You need to gather as much information as you can because you want to give yourself the best chance to succeed, right?

But if you keep trying to gather information until you have what you think is the perfect plan, that's going to stop you from ever reaching your goal.

Okay, waiting for certainty can keep you stuck forever.

That's what I'm saying, perfection can be the enemy.

Get good enough to take the next step.

Don't try to perfect the entire plan up front.

Try to perfect as much as you can, then make sure you've perfected the first step or the next step as much as possible.

Take the next step, figure out what that next step has told you, that's given you information, then do the same thing.

Try to make the perfect plan for the next step, and then the next step after you get more feedback.

Most plans contain assumptions whether you acknowledge them or not.

It's much better to intentionally acknowledge that there is some uncertainty.

That way, you can plan for the uncertainty, be prepared for it ahead of time.

And there's two different things about preparing ahead of time for uncertainty.

One is you need to mentally prepare for uncertainty.

And depending on your mental makeup and the way you think, this is more challenging for some people than others.

Some people can take the uncertainty better than others, but you need to plan on mentally things not going perfectly.

You need to learn to accept a little bit of uncertainty.

The second way to prepare for uncertainty, once you intentionally recognize there's going to be uncertainty or bumps in the road, is you can start planning for uncertainty.

You can say, well, I think this is, with the information I have, the best next step, but what happens if this doesn't work?

Or what happens if it doesn't work as well as I want?

Then you can already have a plan in place for that uncertainty.

Action gives you feedback that planning or striving for perfection alone will never give you.

A reasonable decision today can often be adjusted tomorrow.

In every single large system I've built or goal I've planned for of any significance, anything important, there's been adjustments along the way.

So learn to welcome the evaluation and the adjustment phase and not fear it.

When you fear it, then you try to perfect the plan before you start.

Learn that sometimes the best possible outcome comes from doing something, getting that information and feedback from what you did, and then adjusting whatever your plan or your system is.

So don't be afraid of that.

Welcome it, because it could lead to tremendous breakthroughs for you.

Progress requires learning to act without perfect information.

Again, different levels.

Simple stuff, you might be able to come up with a perfect plan.

But anything that's worth doing, any large goal or large system or great thing you're trying to accomplish in your life, in your business, in anything, it's not going to be perfect up front.

There is no perfect plan.

Everyone's different.

Even if you've found someone else or multiple other people that have done exactly what you want to do, and you know exactly how they did it or accomplished what you want, it doesn't mean that your progress from here to reaching that big goal is going to be smooth and easy.

Different outside circumstances, you're different than everyone else.

There can always be things that are uncertain.

Learn to welcome the uncertainty, learn to plan around the uncertainty, and learn that sometimes the action is going to give you the big breakthrough you're looking for, where all the planning in the world will never give it to you.

A smart guess or an educated guess isn't random.

You use the best evidence that you have now.

You use the information you have now, and you make the educated guess, the best guess that you can, take the action, and learn from that.

Don't judge a good decision only by its outcome.

A good decision can still create or output poor results.

Sometimes we make the right decision, and we still don't get the result we want.

That's where the learning from each decision or action we take, the evaluating it, and then making adjustments comes in.

Sometimes you'll make what seems to be a good decision, it won't work out as well as you'd hoped, then you start evaluating it, and you decide you need to try something else, and you try it.

Three things can happen.

One, the second try works better.

Two, the second try works basically the same.

Or three, the second try doesn't work as well as the first try.

That's all part of the evaluating and the adjusting.

Now, it doesn't happen often.

Usually if the first step or the first attempt doesn't work as well as you'd hoped, then you can eventually find something different.

But I have had that happen a few times, and this is very frustrating every time it happens.

The first thing didn't work as well as I'd hoped, so I went to plan B, and plan C, and plan D.

And occasionally I found that the first plan actually was still the best plan, even if it didn't work as well as I'd hoped.

The reason I say that's very frustrating when that happens is because you keep, or I keep, searching for something better, better.

So plan B, plan C, plan D.

And it takes a while for me to accept that plan A might have still been the best plan.

But even that is valuable information that you can use to incorporate and make adjustments before you make the next step.

So a reckless guess ignores available information.

I'm not talking about making a reckless guess.

Remember I said an educated guess, or a smart guess.

You use all the information you have, make the best educated guess you can, and then do something, and you've got more information to make your next educated guess better.

A smart guess uses all available information without demanding what is an impossible certainty or an impossible perfect plan.

You almost never need the perfect plan.

You need a reasonable direction or educated guess, enough information to make a smart decision, and the willingness to adjust once reality, or the action steps you take, start giving you feedback.

Please subscribe to this channel if you got anything out of this today.

I hope you did.

This is Wes with Your Life Systems.

See you soon.

What's Next?

·        Choose one decision or goal where you are still waiting for more certainty.

·        Write down the information you already have and the assumptions you are making.

·        Define what good enough information would look like for the next safe step.

·        Choose the smallest reasonable action that can create useful feedback.

·        Decide in advance what you will do if the step works, partly works, or fails.

·        Use what actually happens to improve the next educated guess instead of restarting the entire plan.

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